filling the bucket

This year, at my school, we are using a new philosophy to improve teacher morale. We are "filling each other's buckets". It is the concept that we all have a proverbial bucket that when filled with drops of encouragement will sustain our self esteem and therefore make us better teachers. IT IS A LOAD OF CRAP.
ahem...until you get a drop or two in yours. I didn't know the power of a random compliment. But yesterday, my bucket was filled. Not by a peer, but by a student.
I was asking my (5th grade!) students if 22 was an odd or even number. Almost all of them said odd, except for one boy in the back that kept saying "even", even while the others where emphatically shouting "odd". I asked him why he thought the number was "even". This boy happened to have been one of my very first students 4 years ago when I taught 1st grade. His answer was amazing. "Well, in first grade you taught me to ignore all the numbers but the last one, and the last one is 2, making it even".
You can not understand how this overflowed my bucket in so many ways. Number #1, I HATE MATH. So, I couldn't fathom that I could have taught this student something in Math that stuck. #2, I couldn't remember actually teaching that, but I could totally imagine myself saying to ignore all the numbers except the last one, because I HATE NUMBERS, so the more you ignore, the better. and #3, He said "When I was in first grade, YOU TAUGHT ME". He didn't have a vague memory of learning it in the first grade, he remembered ME TEACHING HIM! This is the biggest compliment that I can get...that I taught something and that it was retained...it's priceless.

So, contrary to what my friend Michelle so eloquently said that perhaps there was a "hole" in my bucket, mine fills up quite nicely and it feels really good.