Beekeeper

I want to relate something that moved me.

I have a lovely Year 8 class. They are of mixed abilities and, in my opinion, a perfect combination of personalities so that lessons are always productive and enjoyable. Even my students with special needs are making wonderful progress (and fairly regualrly we have a wonderful assistant, who's about to retire ). I really enjoy them and there's a genuine friendliness and innocence to them.

They have a great sense of humour too. For example, yesterday they were all busy chatting about girls as they waited to be let in. I remembered their school dance was the night before and realised what that was all about. So, in class I asked, "So, boys, where are we on girls these days, are they still yucky or nice?" Needless to say, the enthusiastically delivered verdict was "nice."

Then a boy arrived late and, as I opened the door to him, I said, "Oh the boys were just telling me how you were carving up the dance floor last night." Without missing a beat he plays along. Just behind him, another one, so I change it to, "The boys were telling me the girls wouldn't leave you alone last night," and again he goes with it. I love that!

Anyway, a quiet boy with little confidence and learning difficulties, was diagnosed with brain cancer about a month ago. They operated in Sydney and removed most of it but he developed serious infections and his organs began to shut down. To make it worse, his mum is a single mother of four and she has to pay for transport and, presumably, accommodation to stay with him in Sydney, 2 hours away. Apparently she's doing it tough so the school began running fund raisers and various years began competing to raise as much as they could in lots of different ways.

This morning I told the class that by the end of today we'd probably raise $5000 and how proud I was to belong to such a wonderful, warm community. The class was fairly free-form, with kids finishing digital stories they were making on their i-pads (highly entertaining!), getting them marked or reading a novel if they were finished, when M approached me quietly. He said, "Ma'am, we're going to raise $5100," and pulled $100 out of his pocket so the others couldn't see. He said that he had earned it and saved it to buy an i-pod but now he was going to donate it because, "L is my friend."

I told he was beautiful and to go back to his seat because he had made me cry. He smiled.

God I love these kids!