random acts of kindness

It's been a frustrating week.

It's hard to maintain a positive attitude when things keep getting broken or stolen.  It's getting expensive to replace hard cover books and most recently, my personal laminator.  I understand that accidents happen, but I'd just love if my students listened more when I told them not touch things and gave explicit instructions.  It's not a secret that teachers are underpaid and the cost of supplies is rising :(

However, I'm trying really hard to focus on the small, positive moments.

We had an awesome training by our counselor on 3 words.  We had to pick 3 words and mine were "appreciate the positive".  That's what I'm trying to do!

(Those of you at my school site, I promise I am trying...even though I may be grumpy...)

So here is my positive note:

One of my students was out last week because he had a family vacation in Washington.  I appreciate the family scheduling the trip around our weird fall break (staff developoment and Nevada day) so the student only missed one day of school--and a field trip day at that.  

This student is in RTI, very quiet, frequently wiggly and needs a lot of reminders to be on task.  I'm inclusion and have been for years, so I'm used to this behavior.  Heck, I'm not able to sit still for more than twenty minutes without trying to multi-task, so I can't hold it against them.

He was back on Monday and surprised me with this magnet:

It's a little hard to tell from the picture, but my awesome magnet is mostly pink and sparkly :)

Clearly he understands my preferences in life!  If only it was polka dotted...