Last week I was at a meeting with a mix of principals (elementary, middle, and high school). We usually don't meet together. One of the middle school principals mentioned that he decided to keep track of the number of conversations he has every day. He did this for a whole week. He averaged about 30 conversations a day. Seems like a low number to me. Seems like all I do all day is talk. Some conversations are seconds and some can last up to a half hour. I'm sure today I had at least 50 conversations. I especially enjoy my playground conversations with kids...NOT!!!! (Well, mostly NOT!!!) It seems that when I'm on the playground, the kids en masse run up to me to tell me who pushed them, called them a name, looked at them funny, won't let them play basketball with them, touched their backpack, took their pencil, who in their class has been naughty, who their teacher yelled at, who didn't do their homework, etc... Of course I try to solve all their problems and concerns. I should be very happy that they trust me enough to bring me their problems. I just wish we could do something more to lessen the number of problems.

Treasure Moment Report: Yesterday I was hanging out with Mrs. K at the benches (another treasure moment) when one of her afterschool students came up to us and out of the blue starting acting out animals and asked us to guess what animal he was. It was such a cute and delightful moment. For that brief moment all the stress and weight of the day was gone. I just wanted to grab him and hug him and tell him thank you for making me smile.