The Best Valentine's Day

I want to tell you about the best Valentine's Day I ever had.

It was three years ago, during my first student teaching placement at a rural school near a place called "Big Woods". My mentor teacher had taken an extended leave and a long-term sub had just come in.

Her name was Mrs. Love.

I am not joking.

Anyway, on that Valentine's Day we had a two-hour delay and a dance party in the afternoon.

I was given candy by kids who I had been sure hated my guts. The children thought it was HILARIOUS that they had a Ms. Love and a Mrs. Love as their teachers in Valentines Day--who just HAPPENED to be wearing the same shirt (Seriously. It was an accident). I got to dance to Kidz Bop with a bunch of sugared-up ten-year-olds. And it was a breath of fresh air in the middle of what was a very, VERY hard seven weeks.

I'll explain the situation a little more. 

The fall before student teaching, all of the teaching candidates were given a form for requesting the types of placements we went into. Being the glutton for punishment that I am, I asked for rural and urban schools.

Rural I asked for, and rural I got. I was put in a fourth grade classroom with Ms. Bible, who everyone was saying would be a great mentor teacher, at a little school behind Lookout Mountain. The typical pre-service teacher, I was all jitters and butterflies about student teaching. Seven weeks in the same classroom? A whole TWO WEEKS of COMPLETE takeover? How on earth would I get kids to listen to ME?

Then Ms. Bible had to take a sudden extended leave because of personal circumstances.

During, you know, the first week of my placement.

COOL.

(It wasn't her fault, and we still communicated a lot, and she was still really great. I was just suddenly very independent.)

I'd be lying if I said I did a stellar job. I was completely exhausted all the time, my management wasn't a disaster--but wasn't great, either--the room was a mess, my lessons were too complicated, and I didn't know what I was doing a lot of the time. The kids came from impoverished homes and had some issues at school that I'd never dealt with before, and I spent a lot of time crying over them.

In the end, I had at least five weeks of complete takeover.

But, you know what? I had never loved a group of children like I loved those kids. The end of the placement was heartbreaking, and I went back to visit them twice before the year was over.

Sometimes, I still miss them.

My next placement was in an urban kindergarten class, but I spent a lot of it wishing I was back with my fourth graders.

Why?

Those children changed me. I may not have impacted them much during the seven weeks we spent together, but they have forever impacted the way I love kids in my classes. The lessons I learned from them early in my teaching career carried over into China and Mongolia, and are still reaching into the lives of my current students.

Anyway.

Valentine's Day this year--my first year as a regular classroom teacher.

(well, technically the last day before Winter Break was two days before Valentine's Day)

It was exhausting and not nearly as fun as my student teaching Valentine's Day, BUT.

A student came into my room at 7:35, beaming, with a gift for me.

My classes were interrupted with the delivery of chocolate roses and a singing gram, ordered by another student.

I gave the kids Minion Valentines and chocolate cookies and got plenty of hugs in return.
Then we had an early dismissal due to snow, so they all went into squirrel-on-pixie-stix mode.

I don't have anything hugely deep or theological to say about all of this--just that Valentine's Day now makes me miss my old fourth graders. And they help me remember that sometimes the people we want to influence end up influencing us much more than we expected.