Tell a Story. Make Some Light.

Just as assuredly as M&M's are the best pizza topping (seriously, why has Domino's not realized this?!), one of the greatest stories ever written is Kate DiCamillo's The Tale of Despereaux. (For those of you who have not yet had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with the unlikely mouse hero with the unusual name, I suggest that you calmly and carefully close your computer and walk -- no, run! -- to your local library. Or, if you happen to cross me on the street and if you pinky swear that you will not dog ear any of its pages or read it while eating spaghetti and engaging in a lively debate or drinking chocolate milk while laughing at an inside joke, and that you will return it as swiftly as possible, I might be willing to lend you my copy. In any case, trust me. You won't be able to put it down.)

Perhaps my favorite line from the story is spoken by a jailer named Gregory, whose life is both literally and metaphorically confined to darkness while guarding a pitch black maze of a dungeon. Thirsting for light, when the mouse on a mission stumbles into Gregory at the beginning of his adventure, the jailer begs Despereaux to shine just a bit of light into his life of darkness. He sorrowfully says, 

“Stories are light. 

Light is precious in a world so dark. 

Begin at the beginning. 

Tell...a story. 

Make some light.”

Yes, a big reason why I chose to start a blog was to help me organize my teaching ideas for my classroom and to chronicle my journey as a first year teacher. As a first year teacher, I can promise you I'll make mistakes, land myself in awkward situations, get paid in frustration, come home with a cute quote from one of my students, have nightmares about report cards, and maybe, just maybe, survive until June. 

As my Facebook friends will be happy to learn, another, smaller reason why I chose to start a blog is so that I don't ambush my poor friends and family on Facebook with my seemingly trivial spaziness (both my spidey sense and the red squiggly lines on my screen have alerted me that this is not an actual word, but upon further reflection, an already existing word simply does not convey the meaning and connotation I wish to convey; oh wait, spazy-ness...nope, I give up) over the latest chevron classroom accessory on Teachers Pay Teachers or my thoughts on the glue sponge vs glue bottle debate and so on. (However, I realize that I may already be too late on this one. Whoops.) 

In my opinion, one of the best reasons for creating something like a blog is to tell a story and make some light. I hope that this is what I will accomplish with this blog; that even if it is just the swift spark of a lightning bug, I hope to create some precious light in a world otherwise so dark.