Sometimes, in a teacher’s life, something happens that turns out to be a very valuable and completely unplanned lesson. I could tell you many such lessons that happened over the last 10 years (when I started at my current school board). However, most would be irrelevant to this blog, so I will talk about what happened a couple of weeks ago.
I have mentioned that I am working with a class of fifth and sixth graders, and that a reading period is always something that I do.
That time was no different and as always, they read and so do I.
The difference is that at some point, in my book (A Queen of Ruin, by K.F. Breene), something happened to one of my favourite characters. Something that had me tearing up for a whole five minutes while finishing the chapter until one of the kids noticed my tears.
“Oh, Madame Caroline, are you crying?” she said. Madame Caroline… let out a sob!
Cue half the class getting up and coming to hug me while I was trying to control my tears, before explaining what happened in the book (to find out, you must read it because I don’t give spoilers, and my always spoiler free review doesn’t give it away either).
In the end, it turned into the most unexpected unplanned lesson I’ve ever given a class: sometimes you get so much into a book that something that happens to a character or several characters will get to you to the point that you will cry. They knew about the laughter, since we all have moments when something we read makes us laugh. This time, they learnt that sometimes, you get emotional and you cry. And that when the writing is good, you get to feel like the characters are like an extended family or a group of dear friends, even though they are fictional.
An invaluable lesson for any budding reader.
Caro's Reads 
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