Thursday Therapy: The Bad and the Good

I am writing this with a heavy heart. Are you familiar with the book Me on the Map? A child talks about where she is in the world starting with her room and going all the way to the world and back. My life feels that way now. My pastor had surgery today. West, Texas is only 1 hour north of us. I feel a sense of community with Boston even though I've never been there. It's spring. Patience is short, there's a sense of urgency with state assessments next week, and students are dealing with a lot for their little lives. Some students are oblivious, others are sensitive, and some are inappropriate.

So it was a wonderful surprise to find this in my mailbox from our school's PTA:

Don't I have a wonderful PTA? I don't know how they did it, but every classroom teacher got a certificate. That's in a K-5th school with 6 teachers per grade level. I have never had anything like this. I walked into the book fair and asked the PTA President if $50 was correct. She laughed and said yes. I still hesitated and she laughed again and told me to go pick out books. It was this afternoon before I finally put my name in the books. Seems to good to be true, but that's my awesome PTA!

Here is what I got:

I hope they are good picks! I can always use fairytales, farm books, Laura Numeroff books, and Old Lady books. I'm very grateful to our PTA for this gesture and am looking forward to putting these into my library!