MY Sixth Graders

Let me tell you a little about MY sixth graders. They are an amazing group of kids that I help teach on the weekends, and I love them all (well, okay, most of them) to death. They listen to me, even though I’m not exactly an adult. That is amazing, in and of itself.

The club that we’re part of goes camping a couple times a year, and last year (when they were, MY fifth graders) we camped at the beach. Aside from the obvious challenges involved in keeping the tents from filling up with sand, it was an exciting weekend. We took hikes in the dunes/woods, climbed some really tall dunes and ran down them (I successfully hurt myself doing that. I limped for the rest of the weekend >.<), and some of us even got to walk along the beach.

Getting to the beach was a complete mistake, of course. I had a group of six kids that I was taking on a walk, supposedly an hour long walk. We took a couple wrong turns (I’m not too familiar with those dunes, despite the fact that they’re 20 min. away from my house), decided not to turn around, and found ourselves at the beach when we were supposed to be back at camp. Thanks to the wonderful invention of cell phones though, we were able to call back to camp and let them know we would be late. We didn’t get into too much trouble... (heh, I got in more trouble than the kids, because I was supposed to be the responsible one! It’s hard to be responsible when you barely know where you’re going...)

Recently, we were working on classwork (stuff they have to finish to move up to the next level) and they had to participate in a skit on the life of, Esther, Jonah, Daniel, or someone else that I can’t remember. I was taking one group, and someone else was taking the other group, so we were each supposed to have about 10-12 kids. Then I heard the following:

“I claim StarLit!” It was a boy’s voice. If it had been a girl, I would’ve known that it was my cousin, and completely expected.

“Who said that?” I looked at the kids closest to me.

A quiet boy raised his hand, and then a whole row of six kids added that they wanted me as well. These were kids that I had worked with all last year, and they liked me well enough to want me to lead them again (even though I got them lost that once, yep, same kids ^_^).

It’s such a warm fuzzy feeling to be wanted. I seriously felt like I was floating for the rest of that day. These were kids that I liked, and trusted, and they liked and trusted me as well.

Just thinking of it now makes me happy ツ

--Star Lit