~and I bet they will be too~

About the first of April,  after the shock of not returning to school any longer to finish out the year had started sinking in,  I began to look at school through a whole new window.  I started to examine my own attitudes and reflect upon things in a different and certainly more profound way.  The experience of not being able to be with my 5th grade students in person any longer taught me at least a couple of lessons that I, their teacher, needed to learn.  

 It was a sobering experience to say the very least.

 Do you know what my very first awakening was?  I figured out after more than 4 decades in the classroom that straight as an arrow lines going quietly down the hallway were not all as important as we once thought them to be.  Keep in mind that I'm not an advocate for running down the hallways and stringing ourselves out from here to tomorrow by any means.  I'm just saying that the truth is "kids are kids" and even grownups don't go down the hallways in a straight line all the time.  So what if a random child does step over the side a couple of tile squares from time to time?

 Just a thought.
For what it's worth.
Lesson #2 was the painful awareness of how quiet the kitchen of my house was as I sat at my desk on one side of the computer screen and checked in daily with my students and their families.  I remembered all the times in the past 40 years when I had reminded kids to keep the classroom quiet, to stop talking all the time, and the recesses that started late because someone just couldn't stop talking.  You cannot imagine what I would have given to be able to hear their voices and the laughter that was found within the four walls of the place we had called "home" for 7 hours a day.  Once as I was checking in on a student and helping her with math as she worked on it from her home computer, I asked her if she could imagine what I missed most about not seeing her each day.  

 She knew exactly what I was referring to and replied back to me,
"Mrs. Renfro, I bet you miss my talking all the time, right?"
And that sweet young lady could not have been more correct.
I DID so miss the sound of her voice.
I even apologized for always getting onto her about it and we both laughed together.

In a couple of weeks more it will be time to Return to Learn as they are calling our return to school this year in the great state of Oklahoma.  None of us, either here in the community of Newkirk or anywhere on the globe for that matter, know how it will all turn out.  Plans are in place everywhere in each school district and all one can hope is that we can manage to stay together as long as we possibly and safely can.  These are things that are totally out of our control and the best we can do is just that.

Our best.

As for me, I'm going to devote less of my energies on how straight our line is as my students go down the hallways and how quiet our classroom is as we go about our day.  I plan to concentrate more on the thing  that should always matter the most, and that would be building strong and viable relationships with my students, their families, and my teaching colleagues within the Newkirk Public School system.  I think I'll be happier that way.

And I bet they will be too!


~the classroom community bulletin board in our 4th grade room at Newkirk Elementary~

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