~and this guy is coming along for the ride~

I have to come realize one very important thing.  
It is no fluke nor was it an accident that after 4 decades in the classroom, I was assigned a fifth grade class for the upcoming school year.

I've been teaching forever and a very long day.  Well over half of my experience has been with lower elementary kids in the first and second grade.  I have always felt most comfortable with them, in part because I'm still taller than they are.  My student teaching experience was with a combination class of 1st and 2nd graders in Yoder, Kansas.  Those 6 and 7-year olds broke me in back in the late '70s and the experience was one that I enjoyed.  It set me on the path towards my future in education.

But you know what?
I've never once taught 5th grade.  

I will always remember the day in mid-May when I got the phone call that my classroom for next year was one of the fifth grade sections at Liberty Elementary.  I actually was getting ready to drive into the cemetery at Haven to visit Sherry's grave and take some new flowers.  I pulled over to the side of the road to have a conversation with my new principal.  It would have been interesting to see the look on my face as I heard her welcome me to their school and the fifth grade.

After I got done visiting, I went on into the cemetery and drove right over to Sherry's spot.  I remember saying out loud,

"Sherry, we have got to talk!"

I sat down upon our headstone, on my side of course, and poured my heart out to her.  I relayed the message that I'd just been given a teaching assignment that I never once thought I would have.  I told her that I was going to miss not being able to call her on the phone or run a teaching thought by her as  I made my way through the school year.  I must have been there for 20 minutes as I thought out loud everything that was on my mind and in my heart.  I remembered what she told me in the final days of her life 2 years ago this summer, when I relayed to her my fear that I wouldn't be able to go on in the classroom without her being there to help me.

"Peggy, you will do just fine!"

The days that have passed since I first learned what I would be doing this year have been filled with planning like no other year has seen.   The very first thing I did was to download all the Oklahoma state standards so I could find out just what it is that fifth graders are supposed to know in order to be successful students.  I brought home all the reading and math curriculum, hitting the books as they say, all summer long.  I've been especially weary of what they would need to know in math.  As a charter member of the "I Hate Math Club" when I was a fifth grader at Haven Grade School over 50 years ago now, I knew it could be a challenge for me.  I worked through page after page of the student workbook as my old brain recalled things I'd been storing away for many years now.  

You know what the weird thing was?
It somehow all started to come back to me.
That might have been the miracle of the summer.

Now with about one month left before that first day of school in August, my fear and trepidation about this new assignment has eased up tremendously.  I'm looking at it as yet one more wonderful experience to remember in my teacher's heart.  Nothing that has ever happened to me, and there's been a bunch of stuff in 63 years, has ever been by accident or coincidence.  There has never been a random, leftover thing that God didn't know what to do with and so he gave it to me.  

There has been a real purpose to it all.

In every single school that I have been to and in every single class that I have taught since 1979, there has always been that one kid who stood out as someone who needed me to be there for them.  Some years it was a boy and other years it was a girl.  Sometimes it was both.  It usually didn't take long for me to figure out who it was that I had been sent for.  Often times it was apparent on that very first day of school.  

So a brand new year lies ahead of me and the nervousness that I felt after learning of my new assignment has gone away,  It has been replaced by the knowledge that I am exactly where God wants and needs me to be.  It will be different and I will for sure be learning right alongside of my students, always aiming to be a couple of steps ahead of them each day.  

My big sister Sherry was right all along.
With or without her, I am going to do just fine!

 And this guy is coming along for the ride!

Mike is my number one cheerleader in life and supports all of my endeavors in the classroom.

One young man in particular needed me when I taught in Colorado.  Every time I see this picture of kids crossing the bridge, I am reminded of it.

6 years ago this August, they were the class that saved me, a newlywed who was very lonely and homesick for my old life in Kansas.  I made it through my first year in Colorado because of them.  They were sent to help me!