Glitter

That word, glitter, brings many teachers to tears. Use it once in a classroom on a small project and you will find glitter everywhere in your classroom until the school is gone. Literally everywhere and forever! I am not even kidding! Teachers know this is true. We go home with glitter in our hair and on our clothes just from walking by a classroom where glitter was used years ago. I know! I haven't used glitter in my current classroom ever. Yet, I have glitter on my hands at least once a week and I have absolutely no idea where it came from. I hate glitter.

Today, my husband and I were driving home through the frigid snow covered Wyoming roads between Casper and Gillette. For the first hour, all I could think of was how cold it was (-15 wind chill) and how recess duty was going to be awful when we go back on Wednesday. I thought about how ugly and plain the landscape had been only a couple months ago, brown and dry. But then, something caught my eye. Something beautiful. I couldn't stop staring. I even took pictures but they didn't do it justice. The snow was sparkling. And not sparkling like a little: it was shining like a blanket of diamonds. I was mesmerized! I even lost my breath for awhile because of the beauty I was seeing. I continued to stare at the snow until the shimmering stopped. I realized that the snow had been glittering.

I couldn't believe that I had been enchanted by glitter! It is usually the bane of my existence. Yet, there I was staring out my window in awe. Then, I started thinking about life as a teacher. We have so many things that we detest and don't want to deal with. We look out at the world and see so much ugliness and negativity that we loose ourselves at times and become melancholy. Our passion dwindles with every new mandate and difficult student we deal with. How can we change that?

I challenge you (and myself) to find the glitter. Yep, I said it: FIND THE GLITTER! Look at the students in your classroom. Who is sparkling? Who needs you to sparkle for them? How can we shimmer in our classrooms and schools and districts so that we can find the beauty of teaching again? How can we radiate a glow of love and respect to people who want to being us down and say that education is not important? That is my goal for the rest of this school year: To be the glitter in a dark and gloomy time of education. I hope you will join me in covering our students and our classrooms in glitter!