For the next couple weeks I will be posting the Gratitude Journal prompts that are being given to my students and my response post.

One happy memory for the first half of the school year… Maybe about a month into the school year I was about to have a huge roster change/dump into one of my classes as an adjustment because of “vacant teaching positions.” Over ten students were going to be dropped into an already dysfunctional class and I vented to a coworker that I didn’t know what I was going to do. The unwelcome change would have pushed the roster well past forty students (which is already at least ten too many…). She asked which period and then offered to take the students for a class that was low on students. Then within the next hour we went over the roster and negotiated which students would go and which would stay… I didn’t know that was a possibility. Made my day, hell, that made my year. It might seem like an odd “happy memory” to get rid of students, but the point was that, prior to my coworker coming to my rescue, I felt helpless and somewhat taken-advantage-of by the roster change. She made me feel like I had some say in my class roster. That made all the difference in the world. I’ve gotten so used to making do, it’s nice to have some say and not feel like I have to suck it up all the time. Yay.