Five Minute Friday: Belong

Last week, my Cousin, introduced me to Five Minute Friday on Lisa-Jo Baker's blog. I made my way over to Lisa-Jo's blog and thought, I could can do that. It'll be fun, right? Right???

Each week, Lisa-Jo posts a prompt to which you write for 5 minutes, raw, true, real, unedited, like going-out-in-public-with-no-make-up-on writing.

So, here I am. In all my glory, participating in my very first Five Minute Friday writing adventure. This week's topic, Belong.

If one had asked me what the idea of "belong" meant in January, I would have said it was to be a part of something or to be with people where you feel like you're at home. It is to be valued for who and what you are unconditionally.

The morning of February 3, 2013 demonstrated just how powerful the sense of belonging is. For at 3:17 the morning, my beloved school home burst in to flames and burned to the ground.

Charred.

Collapsed.

Rubble.

Smoke.

Ash.

Community, gone.

It was astounding to stand across the street and watch as the community flocked to the sidewalk to support one another. For we all belonged in one way or another to the burning school before us. It was surreal. Watching the place I've spent so much time over the past 5 years being destroyed before my eyes.

When I go the news that morning, immediately I wanted to be with my colleagues. I wanted to be with my people. I needed to be with them.

Before the fire, I would have said the school belonged to us. After to the fire, I think it is more true to say that we belonged to the school. You see, 3 days after our school burned to the ground, all 490+ students and 50 staff members were placed in 5 different schools in our district. My grade level was one of the lucky ones as we were placed at a school with another grade level, so we had 7 classes total at the host school. In a paled comparison to what we had before, we struggled to help one another feel like we belonged.

Each teacher, student and staff member took a part of our school to our host sites. We valiantly worked to maintain our sense of belonging as a community. It wasn't easy. In fact, it was down right hard.

I was one of the lucky teachers. All 24 of my students were able to remain with me. We all belonged together. I will never forget our first morning back together. The teachers all went to ride the buses with our students to the host schools. As I stood on the sidewalk looking for familiar faces in the sea of confused and worried kids, I spotted 4 of my boys. Their eyes locked on me as they broke into a full run and threw themselves into my arms.

We were together again. We would be fine. We belonged.