My morning meeting, once we hit Wednesday usually becomes a ten minute talk of dreams and journeys and festive family activities. Because children do need to share their dreams, their sorrows and exciting stories. One of my students happened to be going to Disney with her cousins and was excited to tell me she was going to paint her nails. This erupted in a whole class carpet discussion about sparkles and color and proper color at that.

"You should do a black and red theme for Mickey Mouse"

"Green for Tinkerbell"

"I think it should be purple because there is a lot of purple in Disney"

After laughing a bit to myself as I realized that some of my boys now were also becoming quite invested in this nail-painting investigation, I stopped and said, "You know. For whatever reason, I constantly think about baby blue as the color of Disney, and I do think it is because of the castle and perhaps cinderella's blue dress." But I also think of blue as one of the most beautiful colors because it reminds me of a sunny day. And no doubt, you will experience the spirit of Disney wherever you walk on your journey. All of the students looked at me with these wide eyes. And one of my boys nodded his head so earnestly and said, "She's right you know."

Well this student walked in the next day beaming, hair braided and beautifully painted blue sparkled nails. There was a crowd around her desk as my entire class greeted her and looked at her nails one by one to investigate the color change. "Oh my..." one of my students said as he looked at her nails. And immedietely the song "Colour My World" by Chicago began playing in my head. And I began to think about how small whimsical discussions can create such a realization of our purpose in life-to Colour each other's World with kindness and pure understanding and a want to explore and influence each other's world by adding a splash of new color to the horizon. My class this year has this uncanny ability to truly care about the colour palette of the world and eachother. So invested are they to make sure every person feels a sense of worth, a sense of belonging and a new palette. 

As Walt said it best: "All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them." 

A huge thank you to my students this year who have created and shared and exchanged and mixed their colors to create a more beautiful world. Thank you for colouring mine.