Paisley Pencils and Poptarts

       What's with that title? Sometimes life - both in and out the classroom - is the perfect set of Vera Bradley paisley pencils....exquisite and chic and notable of elite middle school perfection. Most of the time, though, it reeks of reality and the strategy for survival that those Poptarts in the midst of beautiful, busy chaos can become. Within each are the stories that make this job worth writing.
       Regardless of the classroom, a variety of backgrounds are bound to show up at the door. Just the other day, a student reported to me that another in the room had stolen his pencil....your basic yellow, not quite so paisley-perfect kind. The accused chimed in to let me know that he simply wouldn't steal a pencil, but if I wanted to ask about the Poptarts he tried to steal from the cafeteria on a daily basis, he wouldn't even be willing to try to deny. Honesty. That child shows up each morning just hoping for a full stomach and a way to draw his peers' attention from the pant legs his Poptart-induced growth spurt has caused to lurk well above his shoes. He sits in the same row with some of the paisley pencil club...those who have been on vacations and shopping sprees and who wouldn't even eat breakfast in the cafeteria, much less try to steal it. Yes, kids come from a variety of backgrounds, and we get the awesome task of leveling the playing field by focusing on character instead of cost and on value rooted in much more than the balance on a lunch account or the name scribed on a paisley pencil.