Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Have you ever gone into a situation full of doubt and concern only to find out that you were specifically prepared for the task at hand? This pleasant surprise was mine to discover this past week. I was totally ready for teaching this fifth grade class and for Manitou Park Elementary and didn't even know it. I'm loving it!

I realize there are big differences between first graders and fifth. First off, they can read and are really capable of following directions and redirection if they are sliding towards poor choices. We've been building procedures and routines and it's been so successful because I only have to tell them once or twice and then they understand. AMAZING!

The ways they are the same is how they respond to praise and positive reinforcement. They are just like my first graders in the way that they will immediately sit up straight if I notice their neighbor doing it first. They like stickers still and they like hugs and as much lovin as they can get. And just like how tattling plagued my first graders it has an older sibling named rumor. Last week I was wondering why anyone wouldn't want to teach fifth grade, there seemed to be no glaring issues with this age group of kids. No snotty noses that need attention, no tugging on my sleeve accompanied with a squeeky Ms. Diamond? But, then the bomb fell and it started with those dropping tears of Callie. The culprit was a rumor about her picking her nose and wiping it on the carpet. So maybe I was wrong about the snot issue. These tears and similar incidences woke me up at 1:30 in the morning and left me sleepless as I tossed and turned around in my bed and my mind. How could this be solved? Then I realized this is a bigger issue that doesn't disappear with the passing onto middle school. Having received an email that included a bullet of a accusation myself earlier last week I began to process my way of resolving hurtful words.

This was the motivation of a great heart to heart and a solution of a new system. Now we have a drawer. A sacred and holy drawer that houses all their concerns, questions or thoughts. If it's really important they tell me that they would like for me to read it right away but I get to choose when I read it. So, today was our first day of operation and it went really well. Curtis did his pirate peg legged walk to the drawer, pouted out his lips and said "Ms. Diamond, I need you to read this immediately!" He dunked it like a basketball and with satisfaction closed the drawer. For me this was reassuring as it was one less little fire that I didn't have to tend to and instead I could give my attention to our visiting nutrition guest teacher and the long to-do list snaking through my head.

I started a pottery class yesterday. It will be every week for 6 weeks. I'm doing it with my friend Katy and we've both taken this course once before so this time it was major encouraging. Before I couldn't get the wheel and I would often get frustrated. I just rushed through projects in order to get my monies worth of clay and glaze. This resulted in a lot of crappy, lop sided products that sit on my families shelves or desk, or hidden in cupboards. This time I'm going to take it slow and have purpose behind each project. So far I've made a dish and hope to make a complete set, a bowl, a tiny bowl and a cup for pencils in my classroom. I'm excited to go next week as it's a good stress reliever as I slop around the wet clay and also create.

That was yesterday and today after school I drove the short distance to my friend Carols house. It's interesting how age doesn't always qualify a friend. At one point in my life all my friends were my age, never younger or older. Now some of my favorite people are decades wiser, she is 66 and I connect with her at a depth that is very rare. It's because we share our ultimate passion- intimacy with Jesus and a desire to walk as He did. She is very trained in dreams as she gets them all the time and over the years has fine tuned how to be responsible with them.

I left school four minutes late and on the way during the five minute drive I got a call wondering if I'd remembered. I reassured her I was on my way and would arrive in one minute. As I pulled up she opened the door and greeted me with the comment of "You were right." When I asked what she meant, she said "You said one minute and it was exactly that." I made a mental note to arrive exactly at four o'clock next Wednesday. When I arrived she had snack choices lined up on the counter when I arrived but we didn't let them distract us long as we dove into revelating and questioning a recent dream she had about Isaiah 48. Funny how God works, because I would never have guessed that the highlight of my week would be conversation with Carol Taylor in a blue house off Lawrence street.