Family Jewels

I do not want to write this. Confessing it to myself resulted in cold sweats and a punch in the gut, but sharing it with others is mortifying. Bear with me. And please give me grace, an ironic request indeed. Stay with me as to why.

My son was wronged. Kicked in the family jewels in the locker room kind of wronged. It is possible that there was provocation, but I thought there was some sort of guy code that prohibited such violence. I was wrong. But then, middle school rules aren’t always real life rules, as anyone who has survived middle school, taught middle school, put a kid through middle school, or simply driven by a middle school can attest.

When it comes to confrontation, I’m actually fairly composed, so I was calm and rational when I contacted the school. I mean it; I really was. I requested that action be taken, and it was, but not to my liking. I didn’t necessarily think a public hanging was imperative, but a possible mild public shaming would have made me feel better. Detention or suspension would have pacified me. But the stern “talking to” did not. Being an educator and a mom makes it harder to criticize the discipline choices of the administration, though, because teachers know there are three sides to every story, so my teacher “voice of reason” had to override the mama bear “voice of revenge.” Thus I chose to silently submit to the outcome, trusting that the educators that I admire and respect handled it the right way, but I confess that I was not happy.

My frustration only intensified when my son enlightened me as to his role in the outcome. Apparently, he suggested to the perpetrator that they work it out. Work it out?? How could he possibly allow someone to demoralize him like that and then turn around and reestablish their friendship so quickly? My husband and I were so frustrated at how willing he was to forgive; we perceived his response to be too soft, too pushover-y. Why won’t he stand up for himself? Is he going to be this passive forever? Doesn’t he know that this will only happen again unless he fights back?

My son offered forgiveness and reconciliation and I was mad.

Isn’t it funny how the worldly response is rarely the heavenly response? I don’t think it’s any coincidence that God led me to the book of Matthew shortly thereafter.

You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

I proclaim my faith in all circles of life. I have my devotion to my God tattooed on my body. I have a bible study and a prayer group and a perfect attendance record at church and a stack of journals full of prayers, and yet I stubbornly pursed my lips and furrowed my brow at the thought of lifting up this perpetrator in prayer. While I was stomping my feet at my son’s seemingly passive approach to the conflict, he was loving his enemy.  Ouch.

Despite my deep understanding of grace and forgiveness, I fail epically. And often. I purposefully withheld prayers for the offender. I prayed my heart out for the offended, mind you, but childishly and defiantly refused to pray for he who wounded my son’s body and spirit. Outright refused.

It took me four days to see it. If I’m being honest, I didn’t “see” it so much as God put it right in front of me. When I recovered from the gut punch, I asked myself some hard questions: Do I sometimes think that only nice people deserve my prayers? Do I treat our salvation and relationship with Christ as an exclusive club that only nice people are invited to? Sure, I want to extend to everyone an invitation to church, and I long for everyone to know the Jesus that I know. But is refusing to pray for someone who wronged my son a form of exclusivity? In my mind, is Jesus only for those who know how to treat others and be nice?

Countless times in my life I have extended kindness and grace to mean people. It’s just that…. Well, he’s my son. I get all weird when you mess with my kid. It took me four days to realize that my kid doesn’t need protecting, except maybe from me.

I’m grateful for the realization, despite how much it hurt my pride. Following the realization was action. So I hit my knees, asking for forgiveness. And then I prayed for the perp. Praying for that young man was an act of total surrender, and not one that I gleefully entered into. But it was - is - exactly what Jesus calls me to do.

And then, as all life lessons are structured to do, this one began to seep into other corners of my life. Cue more shame.

My student Abraham* is mean. Specifically, he’s mean to me. Name-calling (And I’m not talking “poophead” names. I’m talking explicit lyric rapper names.) mean. Defiantly disrespectful mean. Wads up the paper when I hand it to him mean. And to my knowledge, my great offense is that I continue to encourage him to engage.

And so, I began to assess my strong desire for justice as it relates to my classroom:

Do I have students who can light my fuse with a glance? 

Are there particular students in whom I’ve given up hope? 

And here’s the hard one…. Do I take pleasure in punishment? Does marking red X’s across his paper give me a sense of joy? Is there contentment in the child’s failing grade or an office referral? A peaceful sense of justice?

I can answer yes to every question. And I’m the adult. Worse, I’m the Christian.

Teachers are basically surrounded by the three types of students: the eager, kind and willing, the indifferent, and the defiant. And I confess that I often treated them as such. And then the words from the gospel of Matthew echo again in my heart:

If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.

And so I will pray.

“Father, forgive me of my trespasses…” God, I’m sorry for the thoughts of revenge and anger and bitterness I have had toward students who did not behave as I wanted them to behave. I understand that I will never understand the source of their anger or misbehavior, and I repent of the times that I have held their defiance against them.

“As I forgive those who trespass against me…” God, help me to forgive kids when they hurt my feelings or when they anger me. Remind me every minute of every day that extending them forgiveness and grace is the best gift I can give them. Help me to remember that, regardless of their age, these students are babies, growing up in a tough world, where forgiveness and kindness and love are not always present. Help me to be those things in Your name.

“and lead me not into temptation...” Tomorrow I will get angry and judgmental again. Save me from me. I confess that the earthly side of me is weak and shallow and, quite frankly, very sensitive. God, don’t let me be tempted to fight back. And protect me from my own temptation to ignore, lash out, or retaliate.

“But deliver me from evil.” I know that Satan winces when I pray for those who persecute me. I know that he will do whatever it takes to put me back on the road to bitterness. Therefore, protect me from the lies that Satan is whispering. Speak loudly and boldly, Lord, your truth. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt kids. And I don’t want to hurt your Kingdom plans.

Amen.

Forgive me, Father, For I Have Sinned

How long has it been since you read To Kill a Mockingbird? So dadgum good. One of my favorite scenes was Scout’s first day of school. Miss Caroline was the new teacher, and for the first day of school she wore high-heeled pumps and a red-and-white-striped dress. Scout said her crimson fingernail polish coordinated with her auburn hair and pink cheeks. According to Scout, “she looked and smelled like a peppermint drop.” Straight out of college, Miss Caroline was sure she had all the answers for teaching those sweet babies how to read.

Miss Caroline began the day by reading us a story about cats…. she seemed unaware that the ragged, denim-shirted and floursack-skirted first grade, most of whom had chopped cotton and fed hogs from the time they were able to walk, were immune to imaginative literature. Miss Caroline came to the end of the story and said, “Oh, my, wasn’t that nice?”

After reading the class a quaint story about cats, she began printing letters on the board. Much to her dismay, most of the children already knew the alphabet since most of them were in the first grade for the second or third time. The day progressively declined as Miss Caroline got into an argument with the school bully, who refused to sit down.

'Burris, go home. If you don’t I’ll call the principal,” she said. “I’ll have to report this, anyway.’

The boy snorted and slouched leisurely to the door.

Safely out of range, he turned and shouted: ‘Report and be damned to ye! Ain’t no snot-nosed slut of a school teacher ever born c’n make me do nothin!”

He waited until he was sure she was crying, then he shuffled out of the building.

How did Harper Lee so accurately capture that first day? The truth in those fictional pages. Literary honey on my tongue. I feel like every day of my first year of teaching had at least a little touch of Miss Caroline’s shattered hopes for perfection. She dressed the part, studied the part, hoped for the part. But what she hoped for versus what she experienced were, well…. spot on. And every day since - every year since - I have functioned under the assumption that I will eventually get it just right.

But here’s the thing about striving for perfection - it can be our greatest enemy.  

“Satan does not tempt us to do wrong things; he tempts us in order to make us lose what God has put into us by regeneration, [namely] the possibility of being valuable to God.”1

Satan uses both good things and bad things to pull us away from God’s purpose for our lives. Example: Teachers are often tempted to “vent” about a particular child, complaining about things that are completely out of the teacher’s, and often the child’s, control. That’s a bad thing. This we know. But Satan uses good things to pull us away from God’s plan for our ministry lives as well. Example: Teachers often want to have the best data results. In and of itself, a great motive. But often Satan uses that good thing to draw us further from our God-given purpose.

Confession time: When value-added came to our district, I became a totally different teacher. A little clarification as to what value-added is:

“Value-added measures, or growth measures, are used to estimate or quantify how much of a positive (or negative) effect individual teachers have on student learning during the course of a given school year. To produce the estimates, value-added measures typically use sophisticated statistical algorithms and standardized-test results, combined with other information about students, to determine a “value-added score” for a teacher. School administrators may then use the score, usually in combination with classroom observations and other information about a teacher, to make decisions about tenure, compensation, or employment. Student growth measures are a related—but distinct—method of using student test scores to quantify academic achievement and growth, and they may also be used in the evaluation of teacher job performance.

...Value-added measures consider the test-score trajectory of the students in a given teacher’s class, at the time they arrived in the class, while also controlling for non-teacher factors, to determine whether the teacher caused the trajectory to increase, decrease, or stay the same. 2

Based on the standardized testing results, every teacher receives one of three ratings at the end of each school year - red, meaning the teacher’s students performed below the expected growth requirement, yellow meaning the teacher’s students did not perform at expected level but they’re darn close, and green, meaning you took those kids beyond expected growth level and you’re a rock star. (That’s the abridged version.) And since, unlike previous evaluation systems, this one takes into account student ability, previous knowledge, and growth projections, this is basically, a no-excuses results platform.

When value-added hit my district, I was elated. There was finally a fair and accurate mark of who was the better teacher, and I bought in. My goal, at any cost, was to be the most green value-added teacher in my department.

People! Tell me that you see how potentially, foreseeably, statistically possible it is to allow that to define you. It shouldn’t, but tell me that you don’t feel like it defines you. I’m that girl that knew I did a good job, worked my tail off, got good test results back, and I still held my breath come value-added time because value-added DEFINED. ME.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.

So picture if you will, that first week of classes after learning about the adoption of value-added in my district. Here’s me looking at my lesson plans: “Okay, that activity gives the kids an opportunity to talk through their own opinions and responses to the reading, but we don’t have time to talk. We just need to write. Scratch it. And that three minutes in the middle of class where we transition from one activity to the next so they don’t get bored - yeah, scratch that too. We don’t have time. We need to hit standard 10.4B harder. So I will add this homework to this lesson to give them more opportunity because we aren’t going to get to it in class. And why are we reading this piece on culture? The standardized test won’t cover that. I don’t have time to expose my kids to this piece just for the sake of broadening their perspective. Scratch.” Two solid years of that business right there.

The previous seventeen years I spent confident in my ability to manage a combination of state standards along with exposure to higher level thinking, activities to engage and mature the children’s minds, and empower the kids to see and share and hope. And then, BAM! Just like that, I changed. In true “hindsight is 20/20” form, I can look back now and see that my students’ test results did not waiver in the before and after of value-added. I see that in black and white. What did change was how I saw children. Instead of these beautiful beings who entered my room with emotional and educational deficits combined with personal fears and joy and a longing to be accepted, I saw them strictly as test-takers who needed to receive the information in order to regurgitate the facts come test day so that I - I - could be green value added.

Value-added can, as an isolated measurement, be a good thing. But It can also be used as the perfect tool for Satan to whisper lies into our - my -  well-meaning heads. I am so ashamed to say that I spent two full years focused fully on being value-added. I neglected needs. I missed opportunities to love kids. Sure, I bought a needy kid a backpack, and I hugged kids when they seemed to need an extra dose of love. I was still kind and encouraging, but my eye was on the prize. And not in the Philippians 3:14 way.3 The devil made me do it.

For you, it may not be value-added. It could be reading levels, AP scores, common core standards, sweepstakes qualifications, or win/loss records. But if at any moment our hearts and minds are on numbers and not on kids, we are losing.

So let’s revisit the words of Oswald Chambers - the ones that jolted me into a new awareness.

“Satan does not tempt us to do wrong things; he tempts us in order to make us lose what God has put into us by regeneration, [namely] the possibility of being valuable to God.”

What has God put into us by regeneration? A heart for loving His babies, first and foremost. Compassion. Patience. And humility. So if we are falling prey to Satan's games of tempting us with our own ambition, it is quite possible that we are losing our God assignment.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.





1 My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers
2 Glossary of Education Reform
3 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:14)

Fearless Audacity

My kids were seven and nine. Dance on Tuesdays and Thursdays, church on Wednesdays, and baseball six days a week. (What’s that about anyway?) Every day looked the same - I dropped them off at school at 7:20 AM, squealed into my parking spot at 7:50, and prepped for fifteen minutes. The first bell rang and I was off to the races, teaching class after class, rolling in like the waves on the shore. Crashing into rocks more often than rolling on the shore, actually. Lesson plans were always ahead of actual plans. The to-be-graded tray was piling up as parents were drumming their fingers via email. “When will you be updating grades? Soon, I hope.” The tone was never subtle. Or forgiving. And when the last bell rang, I would scramble to make copies and tutor and grade, only to rush out the door at 5:00 PM to pick my kids up at after-school care before they were the last kid remaining. Because to be the last kid there meant I was failing, or so my kids said (never with their words, but always with their faces). And then drive-thru dinner on the way to church/baseball/dance followed by a barrage of demands on the way home. “You guys get your homework finished as soon as we get home. I’ll fix your lunches. What do you need from the store? Quickly get in the shower when you’re finished. Stop arguing over the front seat. Don’t forget to brush your teeth! Good grief, it’s already 8:30. You guys should be in bed. Go, go, go! Hurry up so you can get to sleep.”

And then as I crawled in bed, my prayer would go something like this: Lord, please allow me the opportunity to be a good mom to my kids. And please give me the strength and endurance to be an excellent teacher. Show me ways that I can love others and do more for Your kingdom. Amen.

And God’s all up there like, “You’re joking, right?”

It’s as though we can totally buy into this God who created man from dust and woman from man, but He’s not equipped to manage our lesson plans. He can make the blind man see, but He isn’t available to heal my anxiety. He can sculpt the Colorado Rockies, but He is too busy to calm my classroom.

Author Julia Cameron1 talks about how we tend to underestimate Him.

One of the chief barriers to accepting God’s generosity is our limited notion of what we are in fact able to accomplish. Remembering that God is our source, we are in the spiritual position of having an unlimited bank account. Most of us never consider how powerful the creator really is. Instead we draw very limited amounts of the power available to us. We decide how powerful God is for us. We unconsciously set a limit on how much God can give us or help us.

To put it into practical scenarios, you can’t figure out how to manage the behavior in third period. You ask a peer. You Google articles. You suck it up and take it. But do you ask for God to calm the metaphorical seas?

You have a troubled student and you just can’t even. You try discipline. You try love. You try ignoring him. But do you ask God to just handle it for you?

You are feeling some resentment toward your ________ (feel free to fill in the blank here). You gripe to your spouse (unless the blank is your spouse). You chalk it up to creative differences. You put on that not-so-poker face smile and just deal. But do you ask for God to intervene? Resolve?

You need help knowing whether or not you should cull out some family activities. You seek the advice of older friends. You read Facebook articles on how to manage family schedules. But do you beg God to give you an answer and then sit still long enough to hear it? (Ouch.)

How reckless are your prayers? Are you asking, with fearless audacity, for every single thing that you want? And need?

Here’s a good exercise for you. (And I give you permission to do this during your next staff development. You’re not listening anyway.) At the top of a blank piece of paper, write I WISH…. And then make a quick, uncensored, brave, wild, imaginative list of things that you wish. They’re wishes, for Pete’s sake. Get crazy. Get real. Get honest. Get real honest. The only one who’s blocking out God’s all-consuming power is you.

And then turn the wishes into prayers.

Fair warning: If you ask, you have to be willing to receive. And it may not look like what you thought it would look like. But I can assure you, it will be better. It says that in the Bible somewhere. I'm sure of it. 2

1 The Artist’s Way

2 Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Ephesians 3:20

Lies. Lies. Lies.

I have to jump through every single hoop to be valuable and worthy.

I’m not as good of a teacher as....

I am failing.

I need to do more.

No one appreciates me.

I’m not cut out for this.

No one sees my hard work and dedication.

I can’t do all of this.

How many of these statements have you spoken in the last six weeks? How often do you chant these things in your head? How many of these things do you believe?

Listen, Linda.¹ These. Are. Lies. And they can come from so many places. It’s easiest to blame the lies on others - rigid campus leadership, snarky staff members, critical parents, disinterested or malicious students. And let's get real: they sometimes do. Other times, however, the lies come from within. You want to be the best and do the best, so you’ve convinced yourself that to accomplish that, you must be all things to all people at all times. Lies.

Brace yourself for this next one. I’m gettin’ real. These lies come from the evil one. He loooooves the oppression that is presently sitting on the chest of public education. He rejoices in our exhaustion, our feelings of unworthiness, our anxiety, and our fears. He is owning us right now and he’s using laws, mandates, expectations, self-criticism, and doubt to keep it coming. Do you really want to give him that power?

So now let’s speak some truths.

You are exactly what these kids need at this very moment. Not a competitive or artificial version of you. There will be funnier teachers and more creative teachers. There will most definitely be cooler teachers. And there will be easier and harder and meaner and kinder. 

You. Do. You. 

Because whether or not you’re willing to receive this truth, I’m going to hit you with it… You are exactly what your kids need at this very moment.

Kids and parents and peers and administrators do appreciate you. They don’t take the time to say it, probably because they’re just as overworked and overwhelmed as you are. They feel so stifled by the infinite amount of work that they have that they haven’t a chance to breathe and notice anyone else’s – your – outstanding job. It’s not you. In fact, they feel you. They are you.

Not only are you cut out for this, you are fearfully and wonderfully made for this. You did not misread that yearning in your heart to bless kids. You do not misunderstand your own gifts. That yearning to love and bless kids and the beautiful gifts that you possess to do just that were placed there by the One who created you. Yes, the yearnings and the gifts are swallowed up by outside oppression – test scores, poverty, evaluations, expectations, discipline, critics – but they are there. And they’re not going anywhere. You just have to rediscover them. And that happens when you cut yourself some flippin' slack. Seriously. Hear me. YOU. ARE. ENOUGH.

The only truth in all of those statements is that you can’t do it all. That is actually true. So stop. Stop comparing yourself to other teachers. Stop checking every bloody box demanded of you by the powers that be. Don't grade that one stack of papers. Shoot, don't assign that one stack of papers. Spend a conference period walking the perimeter of your campus praying. (It's fall, people. You should get outside anyway.) Scratch ten of the forty questions on a test. Read one less piece of literature. (And if these suggestions make your cringe, then I am really talking to you.) Cutting yourself some slack does not make you a failure. It makes you sane.

The oppression, the evil one, the self-doubt, the lies - very real. So the question is, how are you going to manage them?

¹ If you are not familiar with the “Listen, Linda” reference, for the love of all things holy, please watch this. You’re welcome.  Listen Linda on YouTube  

Learning from Elias

Elias was a young boy in the foster system, taken away from his mother and placed into three temporary foster homes before settling in, at the age of three, with his foster-to-adopt family. Mrs. Cook, Elias’ preschool teacher, met the foster family at Open House before school began. Elias entered the room with bright eyes. He’d never seen so many colors and shapes and puzzles and play areas all in one place. He went straight for the play kitchen without so much as an acknowledgement of Mrs. Cook. Despite Mrs. Cook’s attempts to introduce herself, Elias maintained full focus on the play kitchen, a behavior that didn’t seem too foreign to the seasoned teacher.

Elias’ foster parents seated themselves around the table with Elias’ teacher, eager to establish a strong parent/teacher relationship before the school year began. Background information on the boy was exchanged; the foster parents deeply yearned for the success of this new venture. Fostering Elias wasn’t easy, and they were nervous but optimistic about the school year. As the conference wrapped up, Elias’ foster mom stepped over to Elias and said with a smile, “All finished here for today. Time to pick up the toys!”

“You pick ‘em up, ho,” Elias retorted.

Mrs. Cook was taken aback. Elias is three, and Elias knows the word “ho.” Knows how to use it in a sentence, she thought. But what stunned her even more than the accurate use of “ho” was the foster mother’s reaction. She bent down, scooped up the plastic pots and pans, and returned them to the play kitchen. Elias, all the while, looked on with indifference. What kind of parent does that?! I would have busted that boy’s butt right there, Mrs. Cook thought, but thankfully didn’t say. After Elias was given the opportunity to watch his foster mother do his job, his foster father picked him up and they exited the room.

“Please pardon my son. I know that his behavior is unacceptable, but we are working on it.” Working on it how?! You just did absolutely nothing. “We know that you have class rules and expectations for behavior, but what we have found is that Elias responds best to affirmation and encouragement. Punishment seems to categorize us as another person in his life who uses abuse and mistreatment. Instead of opening old wounds, we choose to celebrate his good choices with love and more great options. For example, if he picks up his toys, which he obviously didn’t do today, he gets our cheers. Mrs. Cook, I know this may seem orthodox, but we would rather Elias be obedient not because he’s afraid of the consequences but because his obedience leads to growth and joy. It’s a process, and it’s really hard. But we believe in the system, and we hope you can help us along the way.”

As the foster mom departed, Mrs. Cook slipped back into the chair. We would rather Elias be obedient not because he’s afraid of the consequences but because his obedience leads to growth and joy.

At the end of the first month, Elias walked into the room, placed his lunch in the cubby, and proceeded to his seat. His foster dad bent down, looked him in the eye, and said, “That was great! I am so proud of you!! You’re going to have a great day.” He hugged Elias, gave him a wink, tossed his hair, and left him in Mrs. Cook’s care.

These foster parents got it well before the professional in the room.

• Ho - that was all he knew. Some of our babies come to us with little to no concept of appropriate behavior because they have not seen appropriate behavior. Sadly, for many children, school can be one of the only places where order and respect exist.
• Our natural response to misbehavior is discipline, but it’s not always the best approach. The Proverb “Spare the rod; spoil the child” is a teacher favorite. But discipline can potentially cause kids to associate school with fear and failure.
• Being a teacher of faith means exercising consistency, love, and patience. What a taxing job it is to maintain a level of consistency, love, and patience to roomful of children each and every day. More taxing, I dare say, than we can manage wholly on our own. As teachers of faith, that must come only with constant prayer and dependence upon God’s strength.

And on a completely related note, God, too, would much rather us be obedient to Him out of a place of love and faith, not a place of fear. The more we listen and obey, the more our obedience leads to growth and joy.

You Can't Do It

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. (James 1:2-3)

Dude. You are racking up the perseverance. Am I right? Are you feeling the tsunami of perseverance wash over you as you face trials of many kinds right now?

I’m not really one to make jokes using scripture – well, yes I am – but this is no joke. The two weeks before school starts are, in my book, the “trials of many kinds” to which Paul is referring. That veteran teacher who, in a meeting of 140 people, raises her hand in response to the “If there aren’t any more questions, we will let you go for the day” only to ask when the A/C is going to be turned on in room 208. Trials. The announcement that the 800 stacks of pads that you have fully stocked in your desk – office referrals, nurse’s passes, library passes – will be tossed and replaced with new ones. Oh goodie! Trials. The six hours a day of sitting in a plastic chair in the cafeteria watching really bad Powerpoint presentations. Trials. Oh, and then the team building exercises. Lord have mercy on my sour attitude soul, but those are trials. And the poor administrators who are equally as beat down by the requisite rules and obligatory presentation of said rules. They too want to just see the kids and get going. It’s what we all want, but instead we are racking up the perseverance.

It’s not that I hate team building or updates to the system or questions (I am a teacher after all, and “there’s no such thing as a dumb question”). I just hate the way my mind is working while enduring the meetings and the questions. I just want to work in my room. I have a checklist of checklists going. I’m so excited to get started that I can’t stand to sit. And I’m full of hope that this year is going to be the best year yet. And I’m even more confident that I, yes I, can do it! I can, with my own strength (and just the right amount of checklists) DO. THIS.

I frequently field the question, “Why expo markers?” as people read my blog. (Amusingly, no one asks, “Why wine?”) And my reply is always the same: I need three things to successfully navigate a school year – Jesus, wine, and expo markers. And in that order.

I think heaven will be full of new school supplies. Am I right? Sharpened pencils and fresh notebooks – oh the glory! For me, the ultimate school supply is the expo marker package. So many colors. Such bold ink. It’s a new, fresh start every year, and I love a fresh start.

But this is what happens. I take my favorite one – purple – and I make the most beautiful strokes on the clean whiteboard. It’s art for me to display my “essential question” in bold, brilliant expo. And that purple holds out for weeks. It really does. But occasionally between class periods, I forget to put the cap on. Or I use so much ink on the first three weeks that it starts to fade. Six weeks in, sometimes sooner, and I’m angrily chunking the marker in the trash, mad that my favorite color is gone. Mad that I spent twenty bucks on that package and we have a man down. Realistically, that marker isn’t made to go forever, but I’m mad that it didn’t. Logical? No. Honest? For sure.

As teachers, keepers of these precious, young souls, we are called to exude love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control every single day. (Gal. 5:22-23) All of those? Daily? Get real. We want to shout out to God, “But have you seen my classroom?! My responsibilities? My kids?!” And God patiently and calmly replies, “Yes, I have.”  And then He says this:

God’s grace. God’s power. And not – hard for us doers to hear – our own.  As for us, we use up all of our caffeine-inspired joy before second period. We expend all of our patience on little Lacy. We get overwhelmed by the stack of papers to be graded. And then, exasperated, we angrily throw in the towel because we can’t do it all. Sometimes, we get distracted by the demands and we forget to put the cap back on, metaphorically speaking, of course. If we don’t care for ourselves properly - resting, re-energizing, refocusing our true purpose - we burn out too. All too quickly. And that’s okay. For in our weakness, His power is made perfect. In fact, I would be so bold as to say that He’s glad when our energy and enthusiasm wain. That’s when we finally let Him join us in our work.

When Paul receives the promise that God’s grace and power are his to claim, Paul responds with this:

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10)

Point of clarification: Delight in weakness, insults, persecutions doesn’t mean complaining. And it doesn’t mean using them as an excuse. It means own the weakness. Say, “I can’t do this.” We love it when, after watching our student bang his forehead and tap his pencil and wallow in anguish, he finally says, “Can you help me? This is really hard.” When we own the weakness and ask for help, that’s where the real progress begins.  

So I encourage you to join me. We can start off this year with 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 as our anchor. When we finally admit that we can’t do it all, we’re on the right track, so we might as well start now. Let's move over. Let's let Him do more. We can’t do it all, but together with Christ, we can do more than we ever imagined. He promises that:

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to HIS power that is at work within us (Ephesians 3:20).

Dear Trump Jr., I Respectfully Disagree

Donald Trump Jr. proudly bashes American schools

At the recent Republican convention, Donald Trump Jr. made his, and presumably his father's, stance on public education quite clear. He proclaimed: 

The other party gave us public schools that far too often fail our students, especially those who have no options. Growing up, my siblings and I we were truly fortunate to have choices and options that others don’t have. We want all Americans to have those same opportunities. 

Our schools used to be an elevator to the middle class. Now they’re stalled on the ground floor. They’re like Soviet-era department stores that are run for the benefit of the clerks and not the customers, for the teachers and the administrators and not the students. You know why other countries do better on K through 12? They let parents choose where to send their own children to school.  

That’s called competition. It’s called the free market. And it’s what the other party fears.  

They fear it because they’re more concerned about protecting the jobs of tenured teachers than serving the students in desperate need of a good education.  

We have all learned to walk. Many of us have taught another to walk as well. We stand before a young one and hold her hand. We model the behavior and patiently practice the act of walking, sometimes for weeks. Sometimes only for a couple of days. And there are those prodigious walkers who, one day, bolt up and begin to run. For some children, the process of learning to walk is slow and tedious. For others, natural and fluid. But eventually, most all of us learn to walk. But picture with me, if you will, what motivates a child who is, as far as we know, most content sitting and being carried and cuddled, motivated to walk. For my daughter, there were a few factors.

She fully and completely trusted her dad and me, so when we encouraged her to take those steps, she had full faith that we would not be leading her astray. She wasn't born with that trust. We earned that trust through eleven months of being present, exhibiting love, and establishing consistency. She knew that we had no other motive than that which was good.

We coaxed her. We would stand nearby, holding out our hands and using our loving voices to prod her along. We used not fear, nor demands, nor punishment, nor shame. We used love. Thus when the time came, she was learning to walk because she trusted us. And she was ready.

Then my son came, and his journey to walk was motivated by love and encouragement, but it was also motivated by a desire to be like his big sister. So he had a role model that he loved and trusted to push him along.

Some learn to walk at the age of nine months. Some, fifteen months. And most every child somewhere in between. But what if there was a standard expectation for when a child was expected to walk? What should we do if that loving, encouraging, best-interest-in-mind parent failed at the timeline? Well then, we fire them. Clearly. We take their children away and we give them to a set of parents who will do it better. "That's called competition. It's called the free market."

Public education is not perfect. In fact, it is flawed. And it is flawed not because it's a poorly run business where we aren't firing poor educators. It's flawed because we lived in a flawed world where we are working specifically and directly with people. Little people. Little people who are learning to navigate this big, hard, scary world. And while I strongly agree that salesmen who don't sell should be fired, and servicemen who don't service should be fired, I find it hard to support the notion that teachers – those people who are called to educate the young minds of our nation – be fired because they couldn’t get 100% of their clients to quota.

No president in the history of the United States has been able to solve the issues of poverty, nutrition, unemployment, national security, mental health, crime, drugs, and incarceration yet because no human can accomplish such a feat. Yet any given teacher in any public school in any state in our nation can attest to the fact that we have a classroom full of kids who fight those battles day in and day out. Without hesitation I can witness to a classroom where I have students who do not eat between Friday at lunch and Monday at lunch because their free meal at school is all they ever eat. I can assure you that I have a kid whose parent is unemployed, due to disability, ineptitude, or laziness. I can assure you that I have a student whose father or mother is deployed and serving our nation to protect our national security. I can assure you that I have a student whose parent is serving as a fireman or a police officer, and that student fears the worst. And the worst comes from the crime and drugs and incarceration that other kids in that same classroom know all too well because their parent is incarcerated, doing drugs, selling drugs, mentally unstable, abusive, or absent. So in that classroom of 25 kids, Mr. Trump, you will pardon us if we didn’t adequately equip each and every child to solve for x.

I respect private schools like the one that Trump Jr. attended. And I deeply respect those parents who can send their children to those private schools. I think they serve a great purpose in this nation. But so does public school. And that purpose is to do the best we can with who we can while we can.

Public education is not a business. When I was a young, twenty-something Republican stepping into the field, I admit that I, along with the likes of Trump and Trump Jr., thought it was. I didn't understand why we didn't fire teachers who couldn't get all thirty kids to walk at the same speed and at the same time and for the same duration. And then I gained experience. And in the nineteen years since, thanks to my exposure to the inner-workings of the system, I can say with great confidence that no amount of reform that creates free-market education will fix our nation. What will reform our public schools is this: love. Encouraging, understanding, patient, coaxing, empathetic love. And no government sanction or Republican party candidate or his son can implement that. But God help our nation as we teachers remain steadfast in our mission to, despite all obstacles, teach.