Lessons I have learned this week

            This week my school held a Project Unify Christmas Challenge Wreath Contest. Each first period was asked to create a homemade wreath that promoted unity and acceptance. Promoting our belief that all students are unique and special.

            The Martha Stewart Wannabe in me decided to let each student in my first period class decorate a gingerbread man and then make a wreath from the gingerbread men for our door showing our differences and similarities and unified together on our wreath. The idea was awesome. I was excited. My students were excited as well.

            Baking the cookies was the easiest part. I baked them myself because it takes so long to let 21 students bake a cookie in a one kitchen classroom.

            The next task was allowing each student to decorate their own cookie. The kids were excited and we had lots of different looking cookies-which was what we were hoping for.

            Next I cut a ring from cardboard and after the cookie decorations dried, I hot glued cookies to the ring. This took time and many many glue sticks to complete.

            We were pleased with the final product. I asked some of my artistic first period students to cover my door with green bulletin board paper. Of course this task was a challenge when students began cutting around the door knob and window, so the results were less than perfect-which was perfect for our theme”unique”.

            We decided to embrace our challenge and placed bandaids on the imperfect door patches and continued our theme. We wrote “We’re not perfect but we are all special” and each student wrote their name on the door. We were proud of our wreath.

            We did not win, but we had fun and we have a neat door to remind us that we worked together and made something we are proud of-not perfect-not a winner, but as special as each student the door represented!

I was reminded this week of how important it is to hold our tongue and control our temper when we get upset with someone we love. This is the time of year when it is easy to become stressed or overwhelmed by our to do lists......

This week I saw someone I love more than words could express hurt by unnecessary words that I know were not meant. BUT they were said and they hurt. Words cannot be undone. When they leave our mouths they go into the atmosphere and what I have found, unfortunately from experience, is that they never completely die. They are always lurking behind the corner, under the couch, or in the cabinets and they return. Long after we have forgotten what we said and forgiven our friend, they are still out there waiting for a chance to strike. Satan knows he can use them so he stores them up and opens that can of hurt, anger, jealousy or disgust and he will use it whenever and wherever he can! Let's rob him of some of that ammunition this year and learn to hold our tongues!