Love Note!

Yes, it's bad grammar, but when Mr. Fun leaves a note on the door into the house just above the keyhole, the last thing I'm thinking about doing is critiquing it or giving it a grade! Actually I stood there fumbling for my key and laughing. He has a unique, subtle way of disintegrating a heavy day.

He had watched me pack-up and roll out this morning with two essays and a quiz for each of the students in my four classes. He considered hiring a moving van to assist me in getting all that paperwork to the campus.

Between 8:00 and 11:30 I returned every one of those papers and the Scantrons while saying goodbye to all the students who have traversed the terrain of "Basic Writing" the past 16 weeks with me. The grand finale gathering is always an intensely meaningful moment; even though maturity and immaturity both make an appearance on this day.

The mature students in various and unique ways tell me "thank you" . . . some of them give me a look from deep inside their soul that speaks "gratitude;" for others, it is a "thumbs-up" just before they vanish through the doorway. Some just softly whisper the words "thank you." A few just boldly cross the line to bear-hug me.

Meanwhile, immaturity parades with sour-puss faces or stink-eye and silent accusations that their poor performance and failing grade wasn't their fault.

The most important behavior, though, is mine. I have to make a deliberate choice to take the high road, to breath deep, count to ten slowly, and remember that immaturity has the potential with time to transform to maturity, and then I purposely focus on the gratitude that lingers in the room after they've all made their final exit.

I know they have left that classroom with more knowledge, and hopefully skill, of the most powerful tool a student, a person, can own: the written word.

It's powerful even when used to write a love note and tape it above the keyhole!

Good night from Southern California,
Rosie (& Mr. Fun), Carol