Celebrate: the first two weeks

On Wednesday, when the weather was summery warm, I took my students, my smallest ever class of sweet kids, to a park, where they ran through a fountain, climbed up a spider web tower, and later ate cinnamon rolls. We stopped twice before reaching the park to write and wrote twice in the park. When I sat on a bench watching the kids, I felt immense appreciation for these kids, the job I have, and the opportunity to be in the park in the middle of a weekday. The first two weeks have been filled with appreciation every day. For years I have wished to carry the summer feeling to the school, a challenge hard to meet, and this year finally I kind of have managed it. I have purposefully slowed down, monitoring myself not to rush the kids. I haven't given tasks but rather voiced invitations to share, to create, to try, and they have responded so well, with joy and creativity beyond what I expected. We have written a lot together already, plus collected plenty of ideas for future writing, read aloud and individually, talked about poetry, sorted and labeled our classroom library (but didn't move furniture), created art, estimated and counted objects, played games. In the past I used to be hesitant to share the good things because of a strange belief that then the luck would turn. No more. I wish to share the joy I feel, and believe that it is a sign for the whole year, that gratitude creates abundance.