The Starfish

Last night was the athletics banquet at school. I simply love seeing the kids dressed up - they almost look human :) I joke, I joke. We had a nice meal and some laughs, handed out some awards and parted ways by 7:00 p.m. A success in my books. I have only one (YES ONE!) more teaching day left of school. The rest will be filled with supervision, marking and catch up... and I can't wait! This challenging year has taken a toll on me but even more so my students. I have simply not improved as a teacher as much as I would have liked. I guess I should repeat what I say to my students to myself sometimes: "life is hard and then you die". Oh wait, I say that when they are complaining..... "Live and learn". That's the one I use when they don't do as well as they would like. One of my delightful swim team managers made me this re-purposed notebook as a gift. She came to raid my recycle bin earlier in the day promising to show me what she made out of it at a later. It's so cute! It has the story of "the starfish" on the front. It's the one about the old man throwing starfish into the ocean one at a time and then a young man comes by and asks him why he bothers when it won't make a difference (the old man's efforts are futile in the young man's opinion). The old man replies, as he throws another starfish in, that he made a difference "to that one". Awww. So nice! And with a nice little personal message inside to boot! You know, as much as the kids are getting to me these days I truly do love my job and them.... it's when they are all together that the problems start ;)