publishing party!

so yesterday, for the first time ever, we went to school on a friday. my team showed up bright & early at 8am (really, 7:30 since we like to be on time which means early to everything) to be a part of the school wide publishing party.

usually on fridays we have training via LDD (leadership development days) or physical service. yesterday, we got special permission to meet up at our service sites later in the day in order to participate in the publishing party. honestly, i think it was an amazing decision from site leadership to give us the opportunity to be at our school for an event that clearly held a lot of significance for our students.

for the past few weeks, all of the students at our school have been working on publishing some personal narrative writing pieces. that meant for us, typing up stories, conferencing one-on-one and getting students to flesh out the details of their narratives. on thursday afternoon, i found myself in a chatoic grade 1 lab classroom where i also worked with two students on putting their book together, four pictures and four sentences (captions) so that they could present them to their parents on friday morning. it was just the referesher i needed.

my students were surprised to see me on friday and the excitement didn't wear off at all, per usual. friday morning when i walked into my classroom i was bombarded by kids wanting me to help them draw their cover pages. i figured, why not? they told me what they wanted and i drew block letters. because my drawing skills don't go much beyond that.

the time came to share their stories and even though i'd had the chance to work on the stories individually with my kids, it was excellent to hear them read the stories outloud. we had an audience of 1 (a dad that came a little late) and a lot of support from each other. most of the stories were about the world's most loving mother or father. one of my kids, whose father recently passed away, wrote about his father and how he had taught him how to take care of his mother when he was gone. it touched me. inside. a lot. another kid had written "my mother is the mom foster kids dream of" in his original narrative, but that line (my favorite) had gotten edited by the teacher. earlier in the week another student had asked me how to spell e-roma, like the smell of things. and i had to make him look it up in the dictionary so he would believe that it was aroma. my mentees had great narratives about their families, with lots of details.

there was so much LOVE in that room i wanted to burst. sometimes they are so mean to each other, but the love they felt for their parents and relatives is so very real that i am so happy i was there to share the publishing party experience because i felt like i was able to learn a little bit more about each of them.