When you fall, you must get up.

I have been holding off on writing about this because I hadn't completely recovered from it.  Two weeks ago on a Monday night twenty-five Berry 6th grade students, Darren Goodman, Darren's photographer, Darren's parents and I met for a glass painting session.  I had planned it a month in advance, sending out permission slips, preparing supplies and collecting permission slips.  The kids came after school and painted glass Tears of Joy that Darren made in his studio and brought to our school.  This is a project that the students have been working on with Darren that will be donated to Cincinnati Children's Hospital.  As the students finished each piece we hung the tears on a wire strung across the ceiling in the front of the art room.
The students painted until 6 o'clock that evening and after they finished painting Darren treated us all to LaRosa's pizza!

The next day I taught half the day and had a substitute coming for the afternoon because I was going to the dentist that afternoon.  After my last morning class the sub came in and I was getting ready to leave, doing some last minute clean-up and getting the room ready for the sub.  I had two large glass tears laying on a table in the front of my room and I wanted to get them out of the way.  I picked up the first one and held it up to hang it on the wire.  As soon as it touched the wire the entire wire came down and all of the tears that were hanging on it fell. The wire gave out from the weight of all of the glass pieces hanging on it.  Most of them shattered.  Unbelievably, there were a few that made it in one piece.

I felt sick.

I couldn't believe what just happened.  Fifteen to twenty pieces of glass art work had just fell and shattered all over the art room floor.

The incident was awful.

 I AM SO GLAD IT DIDN'T HAPPEN WHEN A CLASS WAS IN THE ROOM! No one was hurt, thank goodness!

I called Darren and shared the bad news and the next morning shared the news with the students.  They were resilient, of course.

We have survived our "fall" and gotten back up on our feet and used this really bad thing to make us stronger.

Darren has already made more tears and the kids came to the art room during two of my plan times and painted them.

The tears are all finished and ready for Darren to take them.  The two tears that were sitting on the table in the front of the room made it and almost all of the 6th graders in the whole school have signed their name on one and written a feeling/emotion word on the other.

In addition to the tears that the students have painted, Darren has created around seven tears that are inspired by the paper tears students made.  Here are five: