Blossom of Life

Blossom of Life

When my advisory students came to me for the first time at the beginning of 2011, I thought to myself what a diverse group.  Each student is a story in himself but Blossom was unique.  She would come to class tardy everyday because of her hip problem.   At this time, I had no idea of her hip until the last day of school.  We would wait until the end of advisory to turn the absence slip in because she would often come in with a tardy note.  Blossom, like her parents, tended to be very intelligent but a bit overweight.  I can only speculate that it was due to heredity and some of it from poor eating habit.

When Easter approached, our  7^th grade team decided to plan different activities for team building.   One of these was a bunny race.  The entire class wanted Kamisese because he was a good athlete and a fast runner.  Blossom said she wanted to do it and she had bunny ears on nearly every day.

The class grumbled but I told them it was only fair to let other people participate as Kamisese had already run for us in other events.   We also needed to show fairness to all our students.   As it turned out, all the students from every advisory had to line up behind their representative and do the Bunny Hop!   Put your left leg out put your left leg in, do the boogie- woogie and turn yourself about and that’s what it’s all about!  It was so totally unexpected and fun.

As the months progressed, students who wanted to participate in the spelling bee had to sign-up at our library.  They went through several sessions of elimination.  Eventually, two students were selected to represent our school but Blossom was not one of them.   She did have a lot of fun try nonetheless.

When the student lead conference began and it was her turn, both of her parents came to class with her.  She went through the formalities of introductions and proceeded to go through her GLO’s and showed her examples of her various class-works.  After the conference ended they were allowed to ask questions.  They asked me about the bus driver.   They said that Blossom’s driver was not waiting for the students to be seated before driving off.   Unfortunately, Blossom has a bad hip and the sudden movement causes her to fall.  This happened daily so I told them that it needed to be reported to our V. P.    I later saw them in the V. P.’s office.

I did not find out what transpired from that confrontation but I did meet them again at Mahalo night.  I went up to greet them and commented on how bright and sweet Blossom is.  She came to my class on the last day of school for students and gave me a gift and sang a song she had written for me. It was lovely.

The nice thing about Blossom is she does not care what the other kids say.  She dresses to please her and her and her friends go about their own daily business.

On the last day of school while they had a captive audience, she and her friends did a dance routine for the student body.   They did have fun and the audience enjoyed watching them.

Blossom is a late bloomer with the natural attributes to become a beauty when she grows up.  All she needs to learn is poise and some formal dressing hints.  Unfortunately, kids tend to be mean and critical at this age and it takes maturity and wisdom to learn to be more tolerant and accepting of others.

I, for one, feel very blessed to have had her in my advisory.   The origami set she gave me has given me the incentive to hone my origami skills.  

Fingers of spirits

An emerald in the rough

Inspirer of skills