“I tried to find a coffee mug like that everywhere,” said Delilah as I stopped to give her a fist bump in the hall during afternoon dismissal, “But I couldn’t find one anywhere. So I used an app to create one for you. The company sent it to my house so I could give it to you.”
She designed the mug just for me.
Earlier in the day, she had knocked on my classroom door.
“I have a present for you,” she said with a twinkle in her kind, brown eyes and a “sonrisa,” a sunrise kind of smile, on her 10 year old face.
“Can I open it now?”
“Of course,” she answered. “But you have to be careful because there’s something breakable in there.”
I carefully opened the present.
I knew by it’s shape and feel that it was a coffee mug.
My students know I like coffee.
“You have to have your coffee every morning,” laugh my students.
“Well, it’s ALL because of YOU,” I laugh back.
Because of this, they give me Christmas coffee mugs, Valentine’s Day coffee mugs, Teacher Appreciation Week coffee mugs, and birthday coffee mugs.
That’s a lot of mugs, more than my little cupboard can bear.
But as I unwrapped this coffee mug, I saw that it had the face of Albert Einstein on it.
My students also know I like Albert Einstein.
I have a giant poster of him sticking out his tongue at the front of the classroom.
And I have his quote, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler,” outside of the classroom door.
“Wow,” I said.
And I couldn’t say anything else.
I was overwhelmed by wonder.
I was overcome by kindness.
So I could only say, “Wow.”
Today, I wore my hoodie to school that says “Be Kind” across the front.
She wore that saying in her life.
And it meant the world to me.
All in a day in public school.
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