For the past few weeks, I have seen many friends post the
many wonderful things they are thankful for.
It is amazing how truly blessed we are when we take a good look at the
things we have and stop focusing on the things we want. Part of me sees a horrible irony in that we
spend one day (or a month) being thankful and follow it up by a day (or
weekend) of greed. People push and shove
their way into stores to get the bargains, often at the expense of life or
limb. People are rude on the roads, in
store lines, and in parking lots. And
now, as if that were not bad enough, the stores have graciously allowed people
to start their streak of greed on-line, Thanksgiving Day.
While many of my friends posted their thanks daily, I
pondered every day about what I have to be thankful for. I have many things to be thankful for…enough
for every day and beyond. But, what I am
going to do is take the time state one thing I am thankful for and why. Then I am going to explain how I am going to
make the world a better place, for if we want to honor what we are thankful for things, we have to be willing to
give to those who don’t have that which we are grateful for .
I am thankful that my
children go to a school with a library.
Because my children have a library at school, the have
access to thousands of books every day.
The library gets more and more books every year through the support of
the Scholastic Book Fair, run by the PTO.
Their library has funding through school money. The purchasing of books is not a problem, but
rather, the place to put the books that they do have.
I teach at a school that has no library. My students are too poor to buy books. They have no money to take the metro to the
public library. How are these children
supposed to learn to read without books when the most important thing to do in becoming
a reader is to read? To get good at
anything, we must practice.
Because I want to be an agent of change, because I believe
so fully in the power of books in the hands of children, I am not going to
settle for thanksgiving, but rather engage in thanks”living”. I am going to try to find a way to put books
in the hands of my students. I would
like to find a way for them to have a library, even if it is small. Every school should have a library…EVEN IF it
is at risk of not getting the books back.
For children to become readers, they need books. They need books that engage, books with
characters like them, books that have the correct readability level. I will help them to get these things starting now. I want to make a difference. I want to live in Thanksliving.
