Update

Two things:

1. I am going to be the drum instructor for the local high school's Marching Band: JF Webb. I'm completely stoked. JTOH (my school) has a TON of marching snare drum sticks, I think because they are bigger and thus easier for little kids to grip. THUS I have a vast supply of sticks to practice with. w00t w00t. Now only if I had my practice pad. Moooom! :)

2. In order to have my children behave, I use sticker charts. The sticker chart is just a 1/4 page of paper that is all dressed up, but the important part is the 16 squares. Each child must get 16 stickers before they are allowed to go to the treasure chest. The children LOVE this. I had a 5th grader tell me: "Mr. Raeeder, (Thats what Roeder sounds like with a NC accent), 5th graders don't get enough stickers!" I was like: SCORE! But anyway, the point of this is that my Kindergartners and my Pre-Ks don't care for the chart, or really the treasure chest. What they want are the stickers! So I put little tiny stickers on their hands. They leave my class boasting "I have four stickers!!!!" while the naughty ones sulk covering their hands because their empty hands betray their poor behavior.

Today my Kindergartners lined up like PROS so I promised them all an extra sticker on the way out the door. As I got to one little boy, whose birthday it is today, he grabs my right hand and pulls it towards him, putting one of his own stickers on my hand. He looks up at me through huge coke-bottle glasses that magnify his eyes twice over and smiles with his semi-toothless grin. "Thank you for being so nice to us," is all he says, following the warming statement with one of his signature smiles. "Thank you" was all I could manage, getting emotional about this child's open act of selflessness.

Jesus talks of the love and faith of a child. I witnessed a child's love many times today: One boy ties another one's shoe. Who cares if they are different ages, heights, or colors? A 5 year old girl slips on the stairs and hits her head on a pole. Her classmates are genuinely concerned, as are the 5th graders who saw her come into the cafeteria with me to get ice. And then the little boy who gives me a sticker.

I love my job.