I'm rich!

At 2:00 pm each day, I send a fourth of my students to after school activities, a third of the remaining students to parent pickup and drop the rest off at their buses to go home. The ones who stay after school have this adorable habit of bouncing back into my room at every available moment between 2:00 pm and whenever they go home (or I do...or do I? Sometimes I feel like I should just set up a cot next to my desk and call it a day). 

Yesterday, M bounced in and asked, "Ms. M, are you rich?" I wasn't quite sure how to answer, which was fine, because she answered for me. "Yep, you're rich," she said, "because you have markers, and notebooks, and pencils, and folders, and books, and cubes, and paper from the school." Wow, man. I didn't realize how valuable notebooks and folders were to a little person. 

I can honestly say, though, that every so often, at least once a day, I stop and look around the room. There are kids writing, kids reading, kids counting and drawing, telling stories, laughing at stories, and playing together, hugging me and hanging on my arm and showing me their loose tooth again, and I truly do feel rich. The abundance of love from my little people each day makes me feel like a millionaire.