The first
week back is almost over – one day left. For some reason this week after
Christmas break is as exhausting to me as the first week of school. My body
wants to sleep in, curl up with a book, and graze on sweets all day long. Instead,
we’re back at it; jumping into a new unit on non-fiction; holding Skype visits
and guest speakers; reading, reading, and reading.
Today the
students entered the room after playing on the playground before the bell rang.
One of my students, who is a bit of a daredevil and tends to be injury prone,
came up to show me his elbow. We’ve joked all year that I don’t want a
concussion or front teeth knocked out during fifth grade. Not on my watch. J His elbow was bleeding. I looked
at him, raised an eyebrow, asked what happened. Basketball, it seems, is a
dangerous sport. He looked at me, grinned, and said that there were more
scrapes where this came from. I asked where. Yep, sure did. What was I thinking? His grin widened and he said,
“On my butt.” I looked at him, at his friend who is like Velcro to his side,
and hooted with laughter. Told him he was on his own with those injuries.
And the day took off from there. It seemed one experience led to another and laughter over took. Raced my students on the playground to the door (we were freezing after checking out something outside.) Tongue-tied during read aloud to the point I made no sense. Comparing war stories with a colleague after school. Singing with a student and realizing we were both singing The Duck Song. Laughter filled my day.
Coming
home Liam and I compared happy dances in the kitchen. A dear friend called and
a five-minute conversation stretched to over an hour. As I cradled the phone by
my ear, lying prone on my bed, laughing so hard that my stomach ached and tears
streamed down my face, I realized that I felt lighter. (No thanks to the batch
of cookies I just baked.) Laughter really is the best medicine. I think
tomorrow I am going to show my students the last twenty seconds of this video
and we’ll see what their happy dance is. Nope, not on any standards I know of,
but I have a feeling we will all be better off as a result.
