Touching Lives

These are the moments that make it all worth it:

This morning at our school's weekly RtI (response to intervention) meeting our principal wanted to share something close to his heart. He had received a handwritten card from someone in the neighborhood around our school that read something like this:

"This morning I watched the older boys playing football before school and was very concerned because they appeared to be playing too rough with a little boy who had a walker. After watching for a few minutes I came to realize that they weren't playing rough, they were including him in the game. One of the boys tied a flag to his walker, they let him catch the ball and they even let him tackle them. I was so impressed and proud of the character these kids showed. Good job ______ Elementary School!"

Believe me when I say there was not a dry eye around the conference table.

But it gets even better.

After that we invited the father of one of our students in to discuss his daughter's progress and the academic interventions that have been done to help her succeed. At the end of the meeting he thanked us from the bottom of his heart for helping his little girl. He described how far she had come in the past few months since they had moved here and then he gave us a standing ovation. Really, I'm not kidding.

The tissue box made the rounds again. In fact I need one right now, I am tearing up just thinking about it.

As my husband so aptly stated, "You school people live for this stuff. This is going to keep you going for years."
Too true.