Little Love Monsters

My years at Johnsonville were the most difficult years of my teaching career, yet with great difficulty comes great reward. The school was broken. I offered steadiness and hope and safety and encouragement, and the students and staff graciously took what I offered and returned it as best they could. Somehow, I was always flooded with gifts at holidays and during teacher appreciation week and I knew that the kids and staff loved me because I loved them.

 

Today’s Throwback Thursday note takes us back to those days at J’ville. A lot has changed in education in ten years. But one thing remains the same: The need for steady, consistent relationships with people who care. 

 

5.6.16

 

I think I’ve accidentally created some little monsters.

 

Picture me standing in the front hallway of the school, right in front of a set of double doors that are placed at the intersection of a T.

 

Picture a 36 inch stool in front of me, my computer sitting on top of the stool, me working on morning announcements while monitoring the comings and goings around me.

 

I open the door for bus drivers, stop wayward parents from going too far into the building, speak firmly to kids loitering in the bathroom, say good morning to both students and staff over and over again, and give quite a few hugs.

 

It’s in the saying good morning that I’ve accidentally created little monsters.

 

I have one little monster who hugs me every morning and stays right beside me until I kiss him on his forehead.

 

I have another little monster who slowly walks toward me every morning and pretends not to be waiting for me to say, “Good morning, handsome,” but is really waiting for me to say, “Good morning, handsome,” at which point a tiny, almost unnoticeable smile appears on his face and he proudly walks to class.

 

I have one little monster who expects to see me in place each morning, lest her morning start in anxious tears.

 

I have at least five little monsters who stop for a hug every morning and many more who stop at least a couple of times a week.

 

I have a handful of 5th grade boy monsters who like to walk past and speak to me about random 5th grade boy things like shoes and hair cuts. Last week, when the question of the week was to write about someone you admire, one of those boys wrote that he admired me for teaching him music and for always making his mornings better. What got me was that he added the little detail of me making his morning better. Until that moment, I’d not considered my 5th grade boy conversations overly important. But evidently, they are.

 

Friends, I have accidentally created a bunch of little monsters:

 

Little love monsters.

 

It’s one of the greatest privileges I can think for a person to have.

 

To all of you, especially teachers, who daily create and influence little love monsters, too: Thank you.

 

Thank you for giving love and receiving love and teaching others to love in such a way that differences are accepted and quirks embraced and personalities nurtured exactly as they are.  

 

Amen.