Tales of a Nomad

School starts (it has now been one week in now that I'm editing this) Monday, which really means a day of meetings, one day of dusting the cupboards and Wednesday we welcome the kids. Should be exciting this year. I feel that my mind hasn't been too much in the clouds (well, as it pertains to work that is) this summer, and reading books and concentrating with my wife, having those great talks about improving should be a great motivator.

The kids have been especially rambunctious. Cruz has been on a non-stop question barrage since Monday. We get into Wal-Mart today for some last minute room supplies, he asks me about color coded staples and when he's going to play in the Major Leagues (a running theme over the last several weeks), partly from X-Box MLK withdrawal (our game system showed the red ring of death recently), watching little league games on ESPN and the arrival of fall ball machine pitch.

Reycina was shipped off for a few days. She inadvertently wrote with dry erase maker on our newly 5-coated waxed floors at school (according to Lisa, she also likes to write on her dry erase board in the room, except with Lisa's mascara or lipstick, walking down the stairs looking like a drunken Cleopatra applying makeup) , which drew out naturally a verbal reprimand by the custodial staff's supervisor who probably had his eye-twitch when he noticed her handiwork. She came back today, talking even more and looking a year older.

But school is pretty good, all things considered. Financially, it is actually good to keep me in a building away from my wallet. Back to lunches and routines. This year, we are down 15 minutes from our cushy one hour lunch break, so there's no opportunity to eat out, which will be good for us in the long run.

School continues to challenge me and awakens me to a side of people that I would otherwise never have known. As a father myself and with a child in the building, I'm even more aware with how I'm supposed to talk to children (the "old" Mr. C sometimes will unleash itself on a unsuspecting elementary student), what I expect from parents and being patient with what kids deliver to me, in terms of their learning, work ethic and achievement.

Amazing how so many people can live on the Earth and everyone has a different opinion on what raising their child for school really is. What makes a parent choose a charter school, only to watch their kids fail and return? What makes a parent not bring the required paperwork from building to building, knowing that the school has a legal requirement to uphold a child's disability? I moved around almost every year when I was a kid. I know there were years I saw the principal more than the classroom, and other years that the teachers held on to every sarcastic musing and wondered when I was going to perform up to my ability. Never having been that "A" student, I relate to the hyper kid, the funny one, the all-out-boy. The baby boys and the quiet, wall-flower girls, those are the challenges. The learning disabled boy, raised on hip-hop, strife and bad teachers. One tells me recently, "I never got a 3 before (the equivalent of an A)" after his right answer. My young man, it's only the beginning.

Summer Madness

This coming Monday, I will return to work (sort of). I'll bring the kids into my room, breathe in the 5 coats of wax on my floors, struggle to find something for my two little ones to do and start unpacking drawers, sharpening pencils and fret over the first week of school. If the kids really knew that I'm just as scared they are going to revolt on the first day, I'd be working in the book warehouse.

This August also brings some self reflection time, some pertaining to the new year, what I want to do differently, looking over months long notes I wrote to myself in professional development seminars and idea forums, trying to construct some kind of meaning from them. I recall ideas driving, and swerve to place them on a sticky note on my phone, etch them into a notebook, stitch them into the very fibers of my shirt. I hear a good tune on the radio, all is lost.

Personally, it's also a time to reevaluate my goals, my past year, my imperfections and chest-thumping.

Perhaps it's because my birthday, perhaps it's my own conscious focus on my past failures and trying to somehow make amends for them. Three years ago, I gave my life to God. Having been someone who had no idea what that really meant, I've been striving for the right to proclaim it loud in the streets. To me, it's more than being a Republican, or a conservative, or having a value system, or whatever labels Christians get lumped in with. But the last three summers, I've done the exact opposite of what being a true believer would exercise.

So, here I am, doing yard work this last Thursday, at least attempting to do so with a stubborn weed eater that never stays on long enough to bend a weed stem. I threw a monumental tantrum, the kind that if caught on youtube, would have been one of those that would have generated hundred's of posts about "that crazy dude." On top of that, I end up crying myself to sleep about how blessed of a family I have at 3am after a round of card playing and sharing dinner jokes.

Needless to say, on the eve of my 36th birthday, losing patience with the dry erase board schedule that seems to be shrinking with available days, knowing that I was possibly more bummed out by not going to Texas like we had planned took more of an effect on me than I realized (as for that reason, what an unpublished bit of work that would become!), and that my loved ones are rooting for me to succeed. I used to think those in my inner circle were secretly wishing for my demise, to bring me down a notch, to show me just how fragile life can be by yanking the rug right out from underneath. Perhaps it was MY wishing that on others is why I have such a workable knowledge on that area. Oh, the life of a selfish man!

But teaching will arrive soon. In a song I heard at church, God has "potter's hands" because of how he shapes our lives, makes us whole and each of us, unique and gifted beyond belief. In a sense, I know he has shaped me, and is allowing me to build upon the foundation originally set by him, crafted with a future unseen by only him. How cool is that, that I am allowed to water the roots of a young mind? It surely is a kick in the head!

So, Happy Birthday to my new students, and to my loved ones. You have brought life into my mind and body, built onto my foundation, and have made me the man I have become.