Yesterday was quite a day.

 

First, on a tough note, we received word that our district’s educational ad hoc committee will be recommending to the board that we explore the idea of whole grade sharing.  I’m not sure how I feel about this, because on one hand, while we are a small district, we’ve put out some great students. In the 13 years I’ve been here, I’ve had former students enter the into fields which require some outstanding academic skills.  I’m proud to say I played a tiny part of that.  However, I also know my daughter, a high school freshman, will not have a course offering that gives her a wide selection of classes, especially those on a higher level. We’ll see how this all plays out, but I do hope we look at things reasonably and if things seemed rushed, that we don’t simply plow through to make a small portion of the population happy.

 

However, that’s not the reason for this blog.  Yesterday I surprised a co-worker with a copy of The Book Whisperer (which you must read if you are at all involved in literacy!).  She’d borrowed my copy several months ago, and has been very apologetic about not getting it back to me.  So as I was ordering books off of Amazon one night, it struck me how easy that would be just to pay that forward, and get her a copy. So yesterday, I went down to her room, and asked if I could get my copy back.  Sure enough, she had it and again apologized for keeping it so long.  My reply was simply, “well, you can certainly keep this one as long as you want”, as I handed her the copy.  The look on her face was priceless, and exactly the reason why I did this.  We’d just read, Have You Filled a Bucket Today, and it fit so perfectly.

 

BUT, much to my surprise, later that day the secretary called me down saying I had a small package.  Well, I didn’t think our book orders had come in since I’ve not yet ordered them (oops!), so down I went.  It was an order from Amazon, and the strange thing, it was in care of “AnIowaTeacher”, my Twitter name. Hmmmmm? So I opened it, and it was three Roald Dahl books: Fantastic Mr. Fox, Matilda, and The BFG.  The gift note said:

“I grew up in Iowa and loved Roald Dahl. I hope that your students enjoy these books.”
Wow.  This speaks to the power of paying things forward, because I certainly didn’t know this was coming, but can certainly see doing this to some of my friends online!  What a great idea!  It also speaks the to the power that we have online with each other.  Amazing isn’t it??

 

I’ve all ready put out on Twitter a request for this person to contact me because I can’t seem to find his name on my list, but in any case, if he’s reading this, thank you.  That was a gesture that was totally unexpected, and yes, it certainly filled my bucket.

 

The good that surrounds us and is there when we need it most astounds me at times.  Find that good, and share it with someone today.