Happy Birthday Mr. Guymon

Sarah's 3rd grade class

I have been so impressed with Sarah Kate's 3rd grade teacher. When she found out she had a boy teacher she was heartbroken, but in the many months since that 'dreadful' day she has discovered that boy teachers aren't nearly as bad as they may seem. I'm sure the other two 3rd grade teachers are good teachers, but I feel so fortunate that she got Mr. Guymon. He's a first year teacher, straight out of college, and he has that 'I'm going to save the world one kid at a time' type of mentality going. He's done some amazing things and he really seems to be trying hard (as opposed to Ben's first year teacher who doesn't seem to be trying very much at all, but that's for another post.) Sarah found out that Mr. Guymon's birthday was on January 20th and she really wanted to give him something. I toyed with the idea of letting her give him a candy bar, but didn't want her to be the only kid giving him something (you know, in case the others wanted a reason to tease her.) So I thought up this great plan of creating a candy letter for him.

I spent a few minutes with the kids on the 19th, letting them know what we were going to do, getting idea's of which candy bars to use and how to use them, and taking a picture of them with Mr. Guymon. That night we bought all the candy bars we needed, made a copy of the picture and attached it to the signed paper which ready "Happy Birthday Mr. Guymon! World's Best Teacher!" and sat then down to create our masterpiece. With a lot of help from Kenny and a little help from Sarah we came up with a great little note. I actually had a lot of fun doing this. I was surprised at how much fun it was. I guess I'm missing that creative side of me that has gone away with the addition of all my children.

The poster we made for Mr. Guymon. It reads:

Mr. Guymon,

How do you change a bunch of Nerds into a Symphony of learners? It'll Take 5 months with the greatest 3rd grade teacher ever. We've learned that Whatchamacallit in the sky is the Milky Way and that Big Red star is actually Mars. Even through the Mounds of Snickers, we can see we Skor(ed) a great teacher and we're Extra lucky to be your Peeps. We think you're worth 100 Grand.

Happy Birthday from the kids in Room 9

The following day the little kids and I took the poster and signed piece of paper to school and presented it to Mr. Guymon. He thought the gift was great and actually laughed at part of the letter (can you guess which part?). I know it wasn't much, but the kids loved it and he seemed to like it so that's good. I knew the kids would be jealous of Mr. Guymon with all those candy bars and so I gave each of the kids 2 mini candy bars. I figure if they get treats on kids birthdays it's only fair that they get treats on Mr. Guymon's birthday.