We Are Beginning to Rebuild

I know many of your were watching Hurricane Harvey unfold on your newstations-I too had the news on 24/7, but I was also watching it unfold in our backyard. Luckily, by Tuesday of this week we were getting some relief and it has been sunshine and cloudless skies ever since. I am grateful for many things, but mostly that we did not have to evacuate and we never lost electricity.

There are many makeshift shelters set up around the city-high schools, mosques, even a furniture store chain. I went to volunteer today and no surprise, the teacher in me kicked in. I had brought a bunch of books to pass out to the children there and ended up in a little circle doing our own read-aloud. Isn't amazing how books can help us heal! Their eyes just lit up when I told them they could keep the books.

We don't go back to school for another week. Our school was very lucky-only a handful of classrooms and our library were affected. I contacted my students that attended the Meet-and-Greet before school began through Seesaw and so far everyone is doing well. We are putting together a plan to help our school families that have been affected by flood waters.

The generous spirit of the nation has just undone me! There is a boy in Philly selling lemonade to raise funds for us. There are multiple Google pages for principals around the country to adopt other principals. There's a Facebook group called the Hurricane Harvey Book Club where people are reading stories to each other. The kids in the shelter can be read to even with no books. Ting and Ling author Grace Lin even read her book. Friends from back east were messaging me to check on me daily. One of my Facebook friends-she is actually the sister to a friend from high school-I don't even know her well at all offered her home to Ruby and I if we needed to leave. You know how much those kinds of gestures can warm one's heart.

If you would like to help Donorschoose has set up a fund to help Texas teachers: https://www.donorschoose.org/hurricane-harvey

If you know me at all you know my pride and joy is my dog Ruby. She has brutal anxiety when it comes to storms but was actually pretty good through all this. My heart goes out watching all the animal rescues-I don't know what I would have done if we had to evacuate because she's a 70 pound German Shepherd. Anyway, her favorite thing in the world to do is to sit in the front yard, soak up the sun and watch the world go by. We have been making up for our lost time this week!

 

Thank you so much for your kind thoughts and prayers. We are Texas Strong and will be okay! :)