Blackbird

discovering how a glacier is made
Ms Simon's first grade class getting instructions on the days activities
Ms. Simon with the class at the Nature Nurture class/ Cranbrook
This week has been an emotional one to say the least. In my last post I wrote about Cranbrook and our field trip and the very next afternoon ,I found out that Mimi's first grade teacher had passed away suddenly.
My first thought was of Mimi and how she was going to react to the news. I decided to hold off for a day and figure out how I was going to explain this.

I was trying to process it. Ms Simon and I had a very sad and strange conversation in the car on the way home from Cranbrook.

We talked about the busy end of the school year and how taxed the children were with all of the testing. She talked about how much the educational system had changed since she had started and she didn't feel it was for the better.

My dear friend Beth came over to visit me that evening and I told her about the conversation and how sad and tired Ms. Simon seemed.
The next day we got the call that she had died.
Terry and I sat down with Mimi and simply explained that Ms Simon passed away, not knowing what her response would be.

Mimi kept asking over and over, "for real? for real?". There were no tears, just an exit from the room.
She went to be alone and and put it all together on her own terms. After all, Ms Simon was just in our car coming home from the field trip two days before.
The next morning Mimi rose early and set about to make a card to say goodbye to her teacher. She was in her room with the door shut and when she emerged she had a card that expressed how she was feeling inside. The card read"I am sorry that this had to happen to you Ms. Simon",
The inside of the card was filled with all of the different things that Ms Simon had taught her over the year.
Terry and I quietly cried a bit.

I reminded Mimi of Ms Simon's passion for birds(her memorial fund is to the Audubon Society). Mimi and I talked about little Tiffany blue egg shell she had found outside of the nest outside of our living room window and that Ms Simon would have loved to have seen our new baby robins that were born the very day after Ms Simon passed away.

At school conferences during the year, Ms Simon would often say how she loved teaching that age group because they came in little chicks and left with their wings to be real students.
She was the teacher in our school that produced strong readers and Ms Simon would often talk to me of the leaps and bounds Mimi made in her reading skills in a very short time.

Ms Simon was a veteran teacher, so she wasn't the warmest fuzziest teacher in the world , but very organized and able to handle a rambunctious group of twenty, six year old children.She really imparted on them the gift of realizing their own independence and self reliance.

I remember on more that one occasion getting a little bit of a scolding for coming into school to help Mimi with her winter gear and get her into the classroom in a timely fashion. "She has to do it herself" Ms Simon would say with a stern look that made me hang my head low.

The day before we were to return to school, our principal had sent out a mass email, regarding the kids first day back without their teacher.The request was that the children be dropped off as usual, keeping their routine.

After all, that is what Ms Simon would have wanted.

I pulled up this morning and got out of the car to take Mimi's hand to walk up to the building. I saw a crowd of parents in line with their kids, trying to figure out how to help them. I asked Mimi if she wanted me to walk her into class.

Mimi quietly said "No","I do this myself", and off she went. Wings intact.