Reflecting on My First Four Years in the Classroom with Creatures I Loved Dearly (& a Mailing Reminds Me of All the Joy from Those Days)

I came home to a tightly wrapped package from D-Fli, a graduate of Brown School, 2001 and a student in my English classroom for four-straight years (also on my volleyball team coached with Laurie Wade). For years, packages of crafts, art, creative thinking, spirituality, and home were exchanged in room 301 as we sort of taught one another about working with adolescents (and being an adolescent) as I promoted young writers in preparation for college. It's been a long minute, but out of the blue, another of those packages arrived yesterday. 

A FROG bag. A note. And a series of stickers: frogs, dragonflies, and the embrace for equality and equity. Meggie did her senior research on emotional intelligence and, gosh darn it, she carries it with her today in her work in Alaska. There have been twists and turns in the journey along the way, but since she was a teenager, this man carrying a Frog backpack has been blessed to be part of her story (and so many of the others). Her love for doing well for humanity is something that was with her from the first day I met her. 

The pond. Phew. What a foundation it built on the corner of 1st and Muhammad Ali for over a decade: teachers, youth, guidance, mentoring, nurturing, sculpting, believing, and building. 

I'm not sure what today will bring - it could be a doozy or a reckoning towards the good - and I am taking her care package as an omen on what matters most: love, relationships, fighting the good fight, and the magical essence within us all.

Upstairs in shoeboxes, I have keepsakes of all the joy my students provided me for years and, although we've grown distant, moved about, built different lives, and departed the bluegrass state, there is nothing better than receiving a token of love from a kid you used to teach - a special one, with an enormous heart, and an absolute obsession with making this world a little kinder, gentler, and better for us all. 

This Frog will always be thankful to this particular Dragonfli. She, and so many of her peers, were some of the best things than have ever happened to me in my life. In fact, they fuel everything I do today.

This Friday, I am thankful...feeling blessed...and reminded about what is most important in the teaching profession: the connections we make, the sincerity, and the willingness to go above and beyond to celebrate those who bring light to each other. 

Here's to 2G's & a $1. They are my babies, forever (even if they now have babies of their own...big babies, too).