field trips

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Meet Blessing

As you would expect, being a teacher is full of joy.  You might guess that teachers love the opportunity to learn with precious children each day, and we do.  How about staying young because you are surrounded by wonder each day?  Yes!

However, some of the blessings of teaching are surprising, and that is why you see teachers smile more than the ordinary citizen.  For example, have you ever had a cow named after you?  Yesterday on our trip to Billings Farm, I got to meet “my” bovine friend for the first time, Billings Reagan’s Blessing.  When she was born, Regan named her for me, and it an honor I will treasure my whole life long.

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(A little cow trivia:  Regan taught us that cows are named with three names.  The first tells where they are born (Billings).  The middle one is for the sire, the father’s name (Reagan).  The last one you get to choose, but it starts with the mother’s first initial, which for Blessing was Bryant.  We all made up our own cow names while we were walking along by the barn yesterday.)

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Anticipation

Once August 1st rolls by, it seems like my brain is in school overdrive.  All of the July brainstorms start to hurricane together.  Every flat surface around me is papered with sticky notes of school ideas.  (One of my teacher friends keeps a sharpie in her car console for jotting her irresistible brainstorms on the side of her windshield while she drives!)  My laptop has dozens of bookmarked articles.  You can’t even guess what you might find in the trunk of my car–index cards, white board markers, birdhouses, rocks for the fountain, or new read-alouds.

Hopefully, once the school year starts, my students will see the resulting rainbow.

Today my dear parents did what they have done every year since the fall of 1984.  Whatever crazy thing I need for back to school, my family has supported, year after year.  One year it might be helping me to sew curtains.  Another year painting the Reading Castle.  This year, one of their many contributions was to explore the Tunbridge Fair grounds with me as I prepare our first field trip of the year to Agriculture Day at the Tunbridge World’s Fair.

(Side note:  Wherever I go, I get a thrill out of learning something new.  While we were there today, we checked out the 38th annual Lippitt Morgan Horse Show.  Lippitt Morgans are all related to Justin Morgan’s stallion “Figure” from Randolph, Vermont, a horse you probably remember meeting when you read Justin Morgan Had a Horse by Marguerite Henry.)

I hope my students are as breathless with new year anticipation as I am.  Great year coming!