The Spirit touched them.

I love my kids.  Despite the things I say or how, collectively, I want to sometimes push their head against a wall, I do love them.  They're adorable and all they want is a little love and I'm happy to give it to them.  90% of the time they do a great job in class.  However, when they leave class, it's a totally different story.  Without the intense structure that Nikki has created in our classroom, they only do a good job about 10% of the time.  Which is why, every Wednesday afternoon, I dread both dropping them off to music and picking them up.  This Wednesday, Nikki and I were finishing up planning and she went to go make a copy and pick up the kids.  I cleaned up all my stuff and then went down to meet her.  So we're all downstairs and she's inside the music room, lining kids up and I'm outside in the hall because the music door is always locked.  Nikki and the kids finally come out and I walk them down the hall, per usual, and we stop at the big blue pillars.  Also, per usual.  It's at this point that I look down my line and notice one of my girls is crying.  I didn't make a huge deal about it because it's not completely out of the ordinary for her to cry at school and I figured if she was upset about something she would tell me.


So we move on.  Then we make our next stop by the art room and when I look down the line this time I see that not only is my original weeper still going strong, but I have FOUR more students in various states of sadness--from silent tears, to full on sobs with contorted faces.  So at this point I'm wondering what the h happened in music, so I walk back towards Nikki who is talking to another teacher briefly and in a whisper I say "What the hell happened in music today?"  I assumed, with all the tears, there must have been some sort of massive fight or meanness.  The real answer is oh-so-much better though.  Nikki said, "Oh, they were listening to gospel music for black history month.  They've been touched by the Spirit."  It was hilarious.  The big mix of students who were crying--shy girls, popular girls, mean girls, athletic boys, girly boys--was so funny to watch.  No one was exempt.  The Spirit touched them all.