Toward the end of a busy yesterday at school, leaving a staff leadership team meeting and heading back to my principal’s office with a long unfinished list in my head, I noticed a child knocking frantically on the nurse’s office door surrounded by a group of four or five giggling companions.

I then heard an adult voice stage-whisper “run!”– something unheard of in the halls of school.

The children slipped silently around the corner, hands over mouths, eyes twinkling, May baskets destined for other teachers in their hands. Smiling to myself, I entered my office to find a small May basket on my desk with two small handmade cards. “Happy Spring” and “Happy May Day” they said. The group of children scurrying around the school this afternoon were some of those who receive the most specialized educational services and who I sometimes see for behavioral issues, but this day their brilliant teacher had given them a gleeful, impish project full of purpose and meaning: They were delivering the message of the surprise of spring to the entire school and with it, possibilities of new life and learning.

P.S. What put a particular smile in my heart this May Day, was that the teacher who had engineered all of this happiness had been sitting in our staff leadership meeting the whole time her students and paraprofessional were pulling off  their surprise!

Do you have a May Day tradition at your school that helps you remember and celebrate spring in a child-centered way?