History was made today

I walk back into my classroom today after everyone has left for the buses and find 71 junior high kids (3 boys!) sitting on my floor in a circle. My room is big and wonderful but these kids are crammed in from wall to wall and Junior High girls are loud, especially at the end of school when they're with all their friends in a small space and my huge room suddenly feels very small. Then they all turned and just looked at me.

Today was the comeback of the Friendship Bracelet Club. To give you some perspective- last year at our call out meeting we had 27 girls and ended with about 18 regular attendees. I loved meeting every Thursday and those girls were a huge part of my year. Today the sign-up list had 88 names and 71 kids came today. The ones that were missing are still in season for cross country or volleyball or finishing baby-sitting jobs and will joining us when they can.

So part of me is flipping out excited because 71 kids want to be in the FBC and that's awesome and we're going to have so much fun and talk about real things and make new friends and of course make really beautiful friendship bracelets. But part of me is flipping out because that's 71 kids and I'm only 1 person and how in the world do I handle that?

Good thing I've been a camp counselor forever so I can switch into that energetic mode for this many people, basically like leading Pathfinder Pow-wow. Thank goodness I've been a CILT counselor forever so I could coach my 11 returning girls on adopting a small group of new girls and making them feel welcome and cutting string for each of them and teaching them how to make a diagonal stripe on a hardcore. I was so impressed with those girls as they took on their "leader" role. They loved being in charge and helping the new kids have fun.

They all repeated the FBC Creed which includes lines like, "I promise to give away all the friendship bracelets I make because they're friendship bracelets and not yourself bracelets, I promise not to work on bracelets in class, I promise to be nice because if I'm not nice I might be asked to leave." I love creeds. Then the bracelet making began. I was able to walk around to interact with the different groups and they were awesome. These girls, yes the boys too, were making impressive 6 string diagonal stripes.

For 75 minutes today we made history- a friendship bracelet club that is bigger than our school football team. We were 71 TSwift-singing, new people-meeting, 4-knot-tying, circle-talking, name-learning, loud-laughing, and patiently-helping kind of friends.