Choked up again?

Yesterday, my students started their exhibitions. This is a time where the high school students have 30 minutes to present their learning for the semester in front of family, friends, and teachers. They make an agenda, they prepare their projects, they bring artifacts to demonstrate the work they have been doing. I was so proud of my students yesterday. Many of them performed using their musical talents. The way these students can articulate what they are learning and *why* has grown so much over the last year!

But, one I was particularly proud of is a girl who was adopted from Haiti two years ago. She has now been in my Advisory since last September. When she first started her English was still very limited and she could not talk at all about her learning. She was always a fun, sweet girl, however, yesterday, at her exhibition, she spoke with such eloquence and poise. She talked about the books she had read, and she performed her clogging dance. She talked about her writing and the improvement she has seen in her own work.

My children think nothing of me getting choked up as I am reading parts of books to them. They just say, "Mom's crying again." or "Mom, why did *that* make you cry?" I was explaining this to my students yesterday and several said their mom did the same thing!

So, it should have come as no surprise to them when after Gladys's exhibition I was talking about how proud I was of her that I got a little teary. Gladys says to me in front of everyone (in her beautiful Haitian accent) "Are you crying, Mindy?" The students thought this was hilarious since I had told them only a couple of hours before that I get choked up a lot. I tried to tell them that I just had something in my eye, but they didn't buy it!!

I love celebrating the progress of my students, and sometimes gently pushing when they need a little nudge. Yesterday, the exhibitions were very validating. One girl said she liked me because I make her work when she doesn't want to. :-) One girl has started coming to my house occasionally to work. There are some days that I wonder why I am doing my job, but yesterday, I remembered!!