Hero

Today is a good day. As you may know, my students are writing a book. A biography actually, it will be published into a hard cover book and everything. I am very stressed out because although it is a wonderful opportunity for the students, the deadline is tomorrow and third graders don't understand deadlines. Anyway, there are about six "chapters" in their books. One chapter is "My Hero". I brought home the "hero" stories to edit tonight. I just read one (from one of the breaking and entering students none the less). It read, please note, this kids does not know the meaning of sucking up. He really tells it like he sees it- his mom being drunk when he gets home from school and everything. "My hero is Mrs. Fairfield. She is respectful, responsible and safe. She is respectful because she is nice and fair to us. Even when we are bad. She makes us be respectful by being nice to each other and she makes us responsible by making us do our homework at recess if we don't do it. She makes us be safe because she won't let us go outside without no coat on. The best thing about her is she comes to school every morning to teach us things, and help us learn. She wood get paid if we learned stuff or not, but she still makes us lern." I feel like I am going to cry. Why? Not because he spelled "would" or "learn" wrong, but because I won't be at school tomorrow morning. I have a meeting from 8:00- 9:40 at Longfellow. Maybe some of the kids do notice how hard I try. I need to not get so frustrated, or feel so hopeless. This child more than likely will get into serious trouble with the law in his lifetime, but for one year at least I was his hero- not some boxer, gangster, Hitler, or Lil' Wayne, but me. It's not really a big deal because, well they are 9-years-old, but it feels like a hard role to fill.
Thoughts that I think: I remembered today how Ethan would tell me last summer when it was raining, "It is raining because God is crying and God is crying because Grandpa said a naughty word." The next day it rained A LOT and Ethan said, "Wow! Grandpa must have said A LOT of naughty words!" I think instead of rain dances, they should just start swearing.