Sunday, September 22, 2013

Praying Mantis

 
    It has not even been a month since school started but it seems like I cannot remember life before that.  It has consumed me this year, more than others, probably because of the move across town and many other reasons.
    Friday afternoon I had to leave school to drive directly to a Cross Country Meet that our school was hosting.  It was a beautiful afternoon, but I was tired and my feet hurt.  I would have liked nothing more than to go home and put my feet up and relax on the porch.
  We got our instructions and headed over to our assigned posts.  I was to point the runners to a specific destination when they ran out of the woods.
  I was beginning to enjoy all the different shades of green of the woods when I saw two of my students and their younger siblings making their way across the field.  They had found a praying mantis and they were coming to show me their find.
   This...this is what makes it all worthwhile.  Their delighted faces, flushed red with exertion and excitement, the fact that it was after school, but they wanted to make the connection.  They knew I would be interested and I was.
   The praying mantis will become a symbol of this for me: to remember one of the reasons I do this and what makes it so rewarding.

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