Grandma?!

There are days when I feel entirely too young to be a teacher. There are also days when I feel much older than I really am. My students tend to aid in the "feeling old" process with their frequent slips of the tongue - calling me "Mommy." Although I am old enough to be the mother of one of these precious children, I definately don't think that I am old enough to be so. But when one child slips up and says "mommy" instead of "Ms. Salmond" my mind gets very confused about my age. Two days ago one of my students actually called me "grandma." I almost had a mental breakdown! (no, not really).

I attended a conference over Christmas break that was very prayer and worship oriented. I attended the same conference last year. It was at this conference that God called me to work in St. Louis. I didn't want to, but a year later here I am. So I wondered what big things were in store for this conference. Much of what I got was personal, but I did get some revelation as to how to pray for one of my students that has a lot of academic problems. I have prayed for him a lot over the past two weeks since hearing what God had to say about this boy. Basically, I saw this picture of his mind being veiled. Nothing could enter or leave it. My main prayer for him is that the veil would be released...broken...forever. Before Christmas break, this child had trouble even identifying his own name (which all of the students can do). Our first day back in class we played an alphabet game during which he correctly named THREE letters of the alphabet. Today he sat, worked on, and completed a 25 piece puzzle ALL BY HIMSELF. Both of these are rather large feats for him. I am excited and pleased to see how quickly the Lord is unveiling his mind and working to restore it. What a blessing to be able to see it!

It finally snowed in St. Louis while I was in the city. It snowed all morning long. My students kept running to the window to behold the white world outside. We took a break after snack time, bundled up, and went out into the cold to do some exploring. It was great! The littlest things strike up joy and amazement within my students which is exactly what you could see on their faces and hear in their words as we felt the snow, build tiny snowballs, and tried to catch snowflakes in our mouths.

My students were also introduced to the magnifying glass today. This too was "amazing" to them. Thomas insisted upon using it to examine my eye about every 10 minutes throughout the morning, and even managed to wack me pretty hard-I'm surprised I don't have a bruised eye socket. Wouldn't that be quite the story to tell?

John told me today that he couldn't rest (during rest time) because "Reggie White, the football player died." One word for that. Strange.