I walked into classroom 209 this week and stood for a moment to take it all in. A carefully chosen color scheme. Learning centers. Plants. Playful lamps to offset the glare of overhead fluorescent lighting. A fish tank. A growing chart. Posters. Classroom jobs. Student mailboxes. Family photos. Pillows piled on a rug for comfortable reading.

How wonderful, I imagined, to be a third grader. How wonderful to have Ms. Klope as your teacher.

I thought momentarily about those years when the floor in Ms. Klope’s childhood bedroom was piled with discarded clothing because she was too absorbed in teenage issues to care that climbing into bed meant scaling foothills of jeans.

I thought about the day she told her granddad, a retired teacher, coach and school administrator, that she had decided to major in elementary education and minor in Spanish.

I recalled the phone call, informing me that she was one of 34 applicants for a teaching position at a school that primarily serves the children of migrant workers. “Don’t hold your breath. I’ve just graduated and I’m competing against experienced teachers,” she had said.

I didn’t hold my breath; I prayed.

Which brings us to today; the start of her second year teaching youngsters with jet black hair and beautiful brown faces. Boldly written on the walls that surround the entrance to classroom 209 are these words, lifted off the pages of Bob Shea’s best-selling children’s book “Big Plans:”

“I’ve got big plans! Big plans I say! And now the world will know of my big plans!”

I thought quite a lot about these words as I worked the die-cut machine that punched out each letter. And I thrilled with the moments I sat on the floor next to my daughter, arranging and stapling each word, revealing the theme of the year for this third grade class of hers.

Big plans. It’s a theme that resounds with us all. We carry planners. We text dinner plans to our friends. We plan for our futures by funneling money into 401Ks. We plan when we feel energetic. Hopeful. Optimistic. When we catch a vision for something that is enticing and intriguing. We dare to believe we have big plans or dare to invent them.

It’s a gift my daughter will give her youngsters this school year, even though they live in a gang-filled neighborhood. Even though many of them struggle to understand a world that speaks two languages and they must somehow make sense of both. Even though their parents are bone tired every night after coming off the fields and wonder how they will ever make ends meet without government assistance.

Without answers to these complex issues, I’m left to lean on my faith and the promise God has for us in the book of Jeremiah: “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord, “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”

I’ll pray for Ms. Klope and her fellow third grade team members because they have sacred work to do for a precious group of children who deserve nothing less.

Reach Joan Bay Klope at faithfulliving@hotmail.com.