Mostly Thinking about the Past + Comment about PT

This is the time of the year when I am really sad that I am not teaching.** I used to love meeting all the new-to-me seventh graders and talking to them. I really tried not to say the same things to them every year but I admit I almost always did! This was my "trust" speech.

• You are all new in my classroom so I am going to talk briefly to you about trust. I know very little about you and so you are starting out in my room as people whom I trust completely. And you will continue in that way the whole year you are with me unless I learn something about you that damages my trust in you. If you lie or cheat or steal or bully and I find out about it, the trust I had in you is damaged. You may tell me you are sorry and that you will never do it again and I will believe you–the first time, anyway. But trust is like this pencil holder on my desk. It started its life here in school as a cup I put my tea or coffee in. Then, one day I knocked it to the floor and it broke. Like the trust I had in you, it will never be the same again. I glued it back together and it has a useful existence, but I can’t rely on it to hold hot tea or coffee any more…

During the last few years of the 25-ish years I spent in that school, I taught the children of people who had been my students when they were in the seventh grade. Almost always at least one parent would call me or send me an email telling me his or her kid had talked about how I had told them about the coffee mug on my desk!

** I get over this feeling pretty quickly because I actually LOVE being retired…

“That which we persist in doing becomes easier. It is not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

PT:This morning, in addition to the regular leg lifts, I lay on my front and lifted each straight leg up behind me. NOT as easy as it sounds! I managed ten lifts on each side only by doing five and taking a break before the second five.