What's on Your Refrigerator?

I guess you could say my refrigerator is a kind of visual display of my life priorities. I'm not one to put useless things like coupons on there. The things that make it to my fridge door are important. The field trip permission slip that has to be signed...the phone chain for snow days...emergency numbers. But mostly, my large metal bulletin board shows off my family. I love to keep recent photos of my kids there. Right now there is a newspaper clipping showing Hillary receiving a check from a local company to the High School Band...she smiles brightly in her uniform. Next to that is another newspaper clipping of Parker and his 6th grade class assembling toys for needy children at Christmas. Every time I open the door, I smile at the snapshot of me and my husband, his arms wrapped around me, both of us smiling, that Hillary took after a ballgame one night.

I'm not the only one who posts things, though. Hillary will add a new poem she wrote...Parker contributes a snowflake cut out of notebook paper, and the one-point-perspective drawing he did in art. And because it's important to them, it's important to me. They know they are loved because I show them off.

I guess everyone needs to feel that way sometimes.

I have a little boy in my class who is in Special Ed classes for a big part of the day. He's not the sweet-hearted- blessing from God kind of special ed kid. He's the challenging- shaggy haired- peering through dirty glasses while holding up his too-big pants kind of kid. He's defiant and hyper and loudly says whatever comes into his head. But I pray for patience and modify what I can and try to make him feel like a valued part of our class. Every day, when he finishes his work - instead of putting it in his backpack like the rest of the students- he takes it up to my whiteboard and sticks it prominently in the middle with a magnet. Then he says, "Look Mrs. Temple, look Mrs. Temple, look what I did!" And I proclaim it beautiful and creative and I leave it there all day (sometimes writing around it if I really have to use the board!). After all, this may be his "refrigerator".