One Grateful Teacher: Celebrating the Ordinary...Which, it Turns Out, is Truly Extraordinary!

Thank you Ruth for inspiring me to always look for the celebrations in life!

Join us and share your celebrations!

There are weeks when writing a celebration post is so hard and I just want to skip it...and then there are weeks like this! This week wasn't extraordinary, in fact it was very ordinary and routine...but it was like a light was shining through the ordinary, to make it glow extraordinary.

Monday: I celebrate NO COMPUTERS at school. Nothing worked. It was like rewinding ten or fifteen years. No email. No internet. No promethean board. No nothing. It pushed me to think creatively and I LOVE the result! (I even pretended computers were still broken after they were fixed in the afternoon.)

Wednesday: I celebrate the last day of the graduate class I taught. The teachers in that class grew so much and I watched them push themselves out of their comfort zone as writers and support each other. Being able to witness that is such an incredible gift. I'll miss seeing them Wednesday nights! (I also celebrate getting some time back as it's been a very busy year!)

Thursday: I celebrate miracles and friends who love me well and kindness and generosity! Wednesday started out with some frustrations at work. My friend, Jessica, reminded me to just hang on! When I saw her later that day, she handed me a card. It made me smile because getting cards and letters is just about my favorite thing in the world...but that isn't even the best part. When I opened the card, she'd bought tickets for both of us to meet our new favorite author, Glennon Doyle Melton! We are going to hear her speak AND get to MEET her!!! And we are going together!!! Don't you just LOVE friends who know you and get you?!?! I am so blessed!

Glennon is the author of the blog Momastery. This past Thursday she had a 24 hour LOVE FLASH MOB Day. She asked people to tell stories of their HER-Os or their SHEROs. This past Thursday she asked people to donate to help all of these amazing women. No donation over $25. In 24 hours her foundation raised $259,245. MIRACLE!! To get to be a part of this takes my breath away! Glennon is one of my HER-Os and I get to meet her in a few weeks!!

Friday: Today some of my students take "the test". UGH! I usually dread this day, but today I decided to turn it around. We’ve been talking about genius hour and planning and slowing dipping our toes into this project, so I decided to give them a taste of it. I asked them to help with my genius hour project, redesigning the classroom. I wanted to observe them working together and problem solving and creating a comfortable environment.

I thought of some committees: books, desks, supplies, decorating, and furniture. Desks had two sub-committees, design and labor. I asked for additional suggestions and someone suggested a cleaning committee. Students created their own committees, made a plan, and carried out their plan...all without me! They needed to work together. I needed to GET OUT OF THE WAY! I have never seen anything like this! Three different groups of students worked for almost an hour on re-creating our classroom. Everywhere you look, you see evidence of my students!

Trying out their newly designed reading area!

It is really their classroom. My favorite comment of the day came from a boy who volunteered to be on the cleaning committee.

Our cleaning committee is washing the windows!

He came up to me at the end of the block, clearly tired and said, “Ms. Haseltine, custodians have hard jobs. I mean, REALLY HARD. They do this everyday in every classroom. Can you believe that?!?!” What did he learn? Compassion.

My clock hasn’t worked for months. I do have another clock, but apparently the broken clock has really bothered some of them. One boy insisted that he be the Clock Committee. I said, “OK.” He couldn’t fix the clock. He asked me what to do, and I gave him permission to join another committee or figure out what to do here. Did he give up? NO! He stayed and look what he made…

At the end of each class, they looked around the room in wonder. (Some returned at the end of the day!) They adore their space. They have ownership. They ripped down “my stuff” and created their own and I loved every second of it.