Loving the Little Things

Friday was National Love Letter Day.  In honor of this little-known day of importance, we had all of our classes write love letters for their bellringer activity.  We received a wide variety of responses to this prompt.  I read an excellent love letter to frozen yogurt, which I totally appreciated due to my own obsession with Red Mango.  I also read a break-up love letter to homework that made me laugh out loud.  On a more serious note, I read a beautiful love letter written be a girl to a person she hasn't met yet--a letter to her hopes for her life in the future.  Somewhere in between these two extremes on the love letter spectrum, there were two love letters addressed to me.  I thought I'd share them with you.

The first letter I received was co-written by four of my 8th grade students.  It reads:

Dear Ms. Herring, 
It's National Love Letter Day, and we just wanted to tell you we love you as our teacher.  You help us with things we don't understand, and we love how you are always in a good mood, and how you are always smiling.  We love you.


I also received a letter from my 6th period gift-giver, who is referenced in an earlier post.  It says:

Dear Ms. Herring, 
Hey. What's up?  Are you having a good day?  I am.  I hope you are, too.  As soon as you said to write a love letter, I immediately thought of you.  That's not just because you said it.  It was because the word "love" makes me think of you (and Jesus).  When I think of "love," I think of things that make me smile, and you make me smile.  Plus, you're pretty.  


Have you ever heard of the book Lizard Music?  I just saw it in the bookshelf.  Judging by the back, it sounds hilarious.  


Well, I got to go.  Bye.


Reading these, and all of the kids' letters, made me smile.  What I learned was this:  It really is about the little things in life.  I read love letters on Friday to moms, dads, siblings, middle school crushes, Oreos, pets, tacos.....I could go on and on.  The common thread that tied all of these loves together was happiness.  We love the people and things in our lives that bring a smile to our faces.  I could write my National Love Letter day letter to teaching.  As cheesy as it may sound, I love what I do everyday.  It makes me smile.  It's hard to find a job that truly does fulfill you--a job that makes the early mornings and the late nights and the long days worth it.  But teaching really is worth all of that for me.  It makes me happy and, above all, the randomness of middle school never ceases to make me laugh.  I guess we'll see what funny situation this week holds...it never fails that my school week starts with something blog-worthy...