A Bright Spot of Joy for My Class This Week

My first Family Literacy class began in November 2009. It has been my privilege to teach moms from diverse cultures over the past eleven years. Each year at least one of the moms in my class either has a baby or becomes pregnant and has the baby during summer break.

During this COVID year it seemed like even a new baby coming into the world would not happen. It is a joy the moms share in. They get excited for the mom who is expecting. We have baby showers for the expectant mom. But this year it seemed the streak of eleven years of at least one mom in my class having a baby was in jeopardy.

Two of the moms who join remotely are from Burma. Thursday morning one of them let us know the other is going to have a baby. She is due in July. The announcement was such a bright spot of joy in a difficult year.

The mood in the class, both in person and in Zoom, suddenly brightened as we clapped over the news. That along with the news that my city moved down to yellow on the COVID risk dial seemed to lift everyone up.

It would be wonderful to have the dial go down to green by May so we can have an in person baby shower. If not, we will do another one in Zoom. We did that last summer with the moms bringing a gift to me at the school. Then I delivered them to the expecting mom. The same day we had a Zoom meeting to watch her open her gifts.

So my streak of eleven years of at least one student having a baby in intact. 🙂

Thank you for reading. God Bless.