March Madness #4

Sometimes I say smart things. For example...

Preventing the summer slide starts on day one. 

Yeah, I made that up. I believe it too. I believe in giving my students daily reasons to fall in love with books, and that has everything to do with reading irresistible books everyday starting on day one.

Well, my class is heading into day 115, and I'm still playing matchmaker. March is a perfect month to fall in love with reading all over again.

So welcome to my fourth year of March Madness.  

I'm excited to say, "Meet your new favorite book," 16 different times during the next few weeks. I'm even more excited to watch these books repeatedly loved on and adored.

(If you'd like to know more about how March Madness works, please check out my other March Madness posts here on my blog.)

I Build Floats

You don't have to build the whole float.

This is what Maria Goff told me this morning as I read her book, Love Lives Here.

She doesn't know I teach first grade - that I basically build floats for a living.

She does know that float building is hard work.

When she describes the painstaking, time-consuming, but rewarding process of gluing one rose petal at a time to the floats of the Rose Parade, she is describing what I do on a daily basis.

Yes, I build floats.

I glue beautiful and delicate petals onto floats. I watch them transform and grow up right before my eyes.

Some floats are more time consuming than others, though. There are days when it seems like all my attention is demanded by a particular float or two or three.

I'm at times disappointed about the lack of progress I'm making. For every petal I manage to convince to stick, three others fall at my feet. 

And in my frustration, I can't quite seem to envision who some of these floats might become.

In fact, do they even want to be in our parade?

After devoting much of my attention to the few, it's easy to doubt whether the others will even be ready in time.

I feel the weight of this float-building job. I feel the responsibility, the burden, to prepare each one for this parade we're part of. I want to see each one on glorious display, ready to show their greatness to the world.

The truth is I might not ever see the parade. In fact, I probably won't.

I simply, in faith, in love, glue petal after petal after petal and trust they'll stick.

I build floats for a living.

But...

I don't have to build the whole float.