Celebrations: The one where I celebrate teaching

Ruth Ayres, over at Ruth Ayres Writes started a new meme called Celebrations.  I love this idea and, each week, I will try to join the Saturday Celebrations blogging community.  

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Today, I am celebrating being a teacher (in general) and being a teacher librarian (specifically).  I think I have the best job in the world, in the best profession in the world. It is a gift to learn with, from, and beside children. 

Years can have hard months, months can have hard days, and days can have hard hard moments.  But on days that involve children, those hard moments are made soft, or at least softened.  This happens not because the children are idyllic, but because children are hopeful, inquisitive, earnest, challenging, excited, and authentic. My students place me in time where I am forced to live in our present and not in any other moment. My students help ground me. 

I spent this week rolling out the Mock Caldecott Unit. Wow.  If I needed any uplifting, I found it in my students' reactions to this unit.  I could barely wrest the Mock Caldecott books out of their hands at the end of class.  

I keep telling the authors and illustrators that I meet that I have the best job in the world, I get to be at that place where readers and stories come together. Yeah. it's awesome and it is most definitely worth celebrating.