Beautiful

Today at school one of the secretaries asked me if I would substitute for PE during my prep time. I said yes because I always say yes because I love getting that extra 32 dollars in my bank account. Anyway, it was 6th grade PE and a lot of my students were in the class I supervised. All girls. After they finally came out of the locker room (Jeez, how much time can they spend in there?) they all lunged for basketballs. I had my little timer so I had them race each other to see how quickly they could run a yellow line on the blacktop. They liked it but we got bored of that.

So several of my students and I crowded in to play half-court basketball. Cortny and Shanice were captains, and though Cortny loves to torture me on a daily basis, I got picked first for her team. So for 30 minutes we played basketball. No lessons, no worksheets, no vocabulary, no grades. Just pure fun. The day was gorgeous. The sky was bright blue with huge, billowing white clouds overhead. The kids were in high spirits because the gray weather had finally shifted. The girls were lovely and kind and pathetically grateful for attention. And Cortny seemed very happy with me because I made the first two points of the game. Of course, our team won.

There weren't any fights on the playground, no one cursed, no one said they were gonna call their mama. I loved it. I love my kids, I love my school, I love my job. I don't think a happier place existed in the world this afternoon.