Building Community

As we end our school day for the last time in 2011, I watch the children get their coats and backpacks and line up to go home for their two week winter vacation.  I watch and can’t help but smile as I try to remember what September felt like. What lining up and eating lunch and meeting the “big kids” we’d be sharing a room with and even talking to each other, was like in our first month of school. Part of me feels like that wasn’t very long ago. How can it be winter break already? But it’s the other part of me that smiles. The other part of me that thinks, “Wow, we’ve changed a lot since September.” Building relationships, gaining comfort around new people, trusting your ideas will be valued and heard; all those things take time. We don’t expect a strong community to build overnight.  But we can watch and be amazed as we look back to the beginning and wonder, “How did that happen?”