The smell of fresh crayons

 The Smell of Fresh Crayons

I walked into a local store the other day to a barrage of school supplies. When you’ve been a teacher almost half of your life and a student of some sort all your life, the smell of fresh crayons and the colorful notebooks lining the store shelves feel like something akin to Christmas. 

My husband would disagree. 

But I loved school. I loved it so much I spent most of my life as either a student, a teacher, or a professor in a college preparing teachers to serve. When each of my daughters started school, I was thrilled. I knew what an exciting adventure was ahead of them. 

While I was in college, I taught preschool part-time. 

I did my student teaching shortly after my second daughter was born (Thank you Kathie Fuller for being our “nanny” of sorts.)

When we moved to Ohio, I signed up to substitute teach. It was the best way to get to know the community and determine where we would purchase a house. One of my first jobs as a substitute was at my daughter’s school. I would serve that day as the librarian. 

I was excited because it was the day Allison’s kindergarten class came to the library. She was already on the school bus when I got the call. I wondered how she might react when she walked into the library. 

She was pretty cool. She looked at me with a shy smile and took her place on the story rug with her fellow students. I read the story the librarian left for me using my best teacher voice. The kindergarten teacher told the children to thank me, I could hear Allison’s sweet voice among the others offering a singsong “Thank you, Mrs. Waters.”

I landed a teaching position that fall with the school of my choice. I spent the next nineteen years there and loved it. Especially in the fall with the children bringing in those new back packs, notebooks, and fresh boxes of crayons. Yep, I love the smell of fresh crayons.

Next month, my third novel, Corners and Straight Edges, releases. Here’s a teaser:

First grade teacher Katharine Gilmore feels stuck in the middle. As the middle child in her family, it seems it’s always been that way. Now she’s in the middle of her teaching career and in the midst of a sticky situation with one of her students. Six-year-old Ellie is also stuck in the middle. Ellie is in the middle of a custody battle. When Ellie goes missing, one of her parents storms the school sending everyone into an unthinkable lock-down situation.