What Do You Say?

I debated on whether or not I should post anything this morning. Some people have posted that today is a blogger's day of silence for the honor and remembrance of the Connecticut victims - others have said it's tomorrow.  I've decided that I'm going to participate tomorrow.  All you will see on this blog tomorrow is this badge...

It was tough for me to go to sleep last night.  I laid there and thought about some of the questions I may get this morning.  Will the kids want to know why it happened?  Will they want to know if it's going to happen to them?  How to do I make them feel safe?

So many questions.

And then I realized that the answers won't come in form of words...they will come in the form of my actions.  We will continue to live our lives.  We will honor those precious children and heroic teachers by enjoying each and every day.  I will hug them a little tighter, and love them even more - if that's even possible.

I can honor them by not spending our last three days of school before Christmas break being sad.  I can make it fun.  I can be happy.  I can make those children happy.  We can laugh, and play, and be merry.

And we can not be scared.

During the moment of silence at school this morning, I know where my thoughts will be.  I know who they'll be with.  They will be the thoughts I've had since Friday, and will probably have for many, many weeks to come.  They will be with those precious angels.  They will be with those wonderful teachers.  They will be with my own children...all 21 of them counting my biological and non-biological children.

Our nation is grieving.  And rightly so.  But for the sake of the wonderful children that will step in to my classroom this morning, they won't be greeted with a sad face...they'll be greeted with my normal smile, my normal embrace, and my normal excitement about the day's events.

If the questions come, I'll answer them the best way that I know how.  Because something occurred to me last night, while having a tough time falling asleep.   There is no preparation for a tragedy of this magnitude.  There is no script provided in text books or school contracts or handbooks.  This one comes directly from the source of what made me become a teacher in the first place - my heart.  It is with love and passion that I followed my heart to fulfill my lifelong dream - and that was with the understanding that there'd be good times and bad.  My heart knows what to do - what to say.  And I trust it.  For it gives me the strength and courage to do everything in my power to love those children as if they were my own.

And that's something I do everyday...without even thinking about it.