Into the Colors

Today one of the three kindergarten teachers was walking her students through the hallways, showing them around the building. I'm on the total opposite side, so we rarely see the little ones on our end. I love them. For weeks they wear these felt apple-shaped nametags that seem to curl like a wilted peel as the days wither on. They struggle to line up after recess. They push each other quite frequently and someone is always crying.

So here comes these four adorable little girls. Hair perfect. Shoes without any scuffs on them, jeans with a crease. The teacher walks them over to the double doored exit, explains to them what it beyond the door and to never open it. And here I jump in and say, "Cause there's a huge dragon waiting to get you!"

No one screamed, thank goodness.

That's been my first few days of school. It's that slow walk through a new, well-lit hallway. I know why teachers always freak out over kids keeping their hands off the walls, cause that's all I want to do. I want to spread my arms wide and run down one, jump into the colors of the construction papered cork boards. They are seas of fruit-of-the-loom colors, reds, oranges, yellows.

There's a newness to every year, and it's not like I never had a certain expectation or a rote feeling of teacher-ness. Many years ago, I would stand outside of my old school, crying on the steps that led down the front like some regal courthouse scene in a movie, crying as if I'd lost a friend. In the middle of the ghetto, crying.

Over the last few years I haven't cried as much. I used to tell myself that when I stop, then I'll stop teaching. That's my sign. But I also feel more accomplished as the years grow. (Lately, a veteran teacher is being misrepresented as a burden on a broke retirement system. I don't quite get that and perhaps that's for a future blog) Maybe I cried because work was what I lived for, what I thought defined me. What would I do all summer when I had nothing to prove, no ability to show off? At home I had to be a husband, and later, a new father. That terrified me more than a roomful of unruly kids.

My first year, a kid ran out of the building and home to his uncle's house. I thought for sure I was fired. Later that year before November, I screamed at a tandem of boys who were taking advantage of a kid from Africa who knew no English (I ran into this kid a few years back. He was playing soccer for a high school down the road and spoke very good English.) When we all came back from the weekend, those bully kids both moved and I lied that I had "kicked them out." This teacher means business!

But I loved my first year. So much drama, screaming, laughing, bombing horridly and helping. I remember holding a kids' hands and telling him they weren't for fighting. God knew I was the man for the job, I just didn't trust him to know.

Many of my students have grown and my first year group just graduated and entered college. They too are walking through the academic halls of their respective colleges like new kindergarten kids. Some of them didn't make it there, maybe they've faced their dragon too early. Others haven't reached beyond their comfort zones. The background of their facebook pictures show a maturity their desk drawings never showed. I hope they jump into the colors that await them. I'm crying just thinking about them.

Seemingly Gyrating

Not everyone loves their jobs. Undoubtedly over the last several years, and especially lately, I've begun to notice this fact. You can tell the ones that do. It's the cashier at Wal-Mart who is striking up a conversation during Black Friday with a line of impatient people awaiting her. It's the salesman that knows how to direct a conversation to where your answer will never be "no". It's also in the dance of a sign-flipper on a street corner, seemingly gyrating to no song in particular, offering no more than a free month's rent or 10 dollars of an oil change.

For a teacher, loving your job means a lot of things. Keeping yourself educated, willing to change, cooperation, calling parents when you really don't want to and grading papers until midnight. It's all of those things, and none of them in particular. I love my job.

Recently I attended a Leadership Conference of principals and teaching teams derived from each school building in my district. It was an opportunity to create a vision statement to drive the year's educators towards a common goal.

I sometimes think we are fighting a losing battle on so many fronts. One of the speakers was Bill Daggett, the guru of why every teacher in America either dreads or cheers when they hear the phrase "Rigor and Relevance". At one portion of his speech, he concluded we were the crazy ones. We sign up for committees, we dive in with new instructional strategies and we create our own environment by how we live. He explained the "rest" of the teaching field is comprised of the cynical and the defiant. The cynical teacher has heard it all before but won't buy in unless someone else tries it first. They are the reluctant kid on the diving board ladder, only hoisting himself upwards because everyone else was doing it. Diving in, they know water will get in their nose. The defiant teacher is the person, who for whatever reason, wont buy into any proposal. They will do anything to sabotage the system, and sometimes they even take the reluctant kid down with them.

The more and more I spoke to my friends about this, it became evident to me that everyone is like this to a certain extent when it comes to our jobs. There are the small percentage that love their career and profession. They provoke change in their environments, don't have to be told to be there early or to stay late. Sometimes, even, they allow the job to define them! There's the rank and file person just punching a clock as well. They will complain if others around them do or will praise of that's the vibe of the office. Most of the time they do just enough. The last percentage is growing. They are the ones who call in sick, they roll their eyes in meetings, show up late, complain. They are the cancers.

A series in church recently hit home on the topic of living the American Dream. We've gone from the Protestant work ethic to entitlements and TGIF. We tie in job status with life status. We work for the weekend and the vacation, nothing in between. Do I work for God or the school district? Who do you work for?

This past year I've taken this approach a bit too gung ho. I spoke up too much in the lounge and not enough in staff meetings. I judged others first and closed doors to those I felt weren't up to my standard. I debate with my colleagues about the changes I see coming to disrupt our teachers' union and end up alienating the very people I need to collaborate with. The lawmakers want us privatized. They want 100 percent results with a never-ending amount of variables. Diane Ravitch, a blogger for Education Week, recently brought her twitter followers into our world of No Child Left Behind standards. Would a mayor demand their police force to enact a 100% crime free city and fire the police when it doesn't happen? What if the military were supposed to enforce a world where we lived 100% free from terrorist? If not, anyone could become a NAVY Seal with little or no training. I see the bad teacher down the hall passing out packets and never using her technology and wonder if we should burn the whole system down just to fire one teacher per building. What's it worth to a company to scrape the cancer from its midst?

For the ones that love their jobs, no union would probably not be that much different to what they are already doing. We already are teaching 30 kids in a cramped classroom. We already are creating learning communities within their buildings to benefit the needs of the children first. No politician can take that away. Somehow, just maybe, God can give me the better words to say to bring others along with me.

No Floaties

My daughter just returned from her Puerto Rico mission trip. This is her second trip in the span of about four months. This past week we sensed her not being around a bit more than her past trip to Alabama. My son cried when we sent her off at the airport, and more than once one of the little ones slept in her vacant bed. I tried not to notice too much but my best intentions sometimes have the opposite effect.

My little one reached a milestone of her own. A few weeks ago, she began swimming on her own without the help of her body float. Nothing in the paragon of a life-changing mission trip, but one small step into a more independent world. In her world, it's the "no floatie" era. Instead of clinging to me in the pool and directing me to stand in certain areas to catch her as she belly flops her way to me, she pretty much uses me now as a temporary buoy towards her next destination. I'm no longer needed as her life line, except for the few times water fills her nose.

When we took our eldest to the airport, we watched as the teenagers and college age kids prepared to embark. One set of kids, two sisters and a brother, were without their parents. Not unusual but of course I pointed it out to my wife. (The eldest is 24, the middle one a sophomore in college). Look at them, I wondered, they're so independent they don't even need their parents to help them. Here we are with mine, we're right beside her, telling her when the check-in lady asks, "Have you been in possession of your bags?" make sure to say yes! The middle daughter of the three we were watching works at a local coffee shop. I caught her on her very first day, wide-eyed and frustrated enough to find that placing a lid on a large coffee was a daunting task. After briefly talking about having first job jitters, she replied, "My dad cut me off now that I'm in college." Who even uses the phrase "cuts me off"? It sounds like she stepped out of a Great Gatsby-esque novel.

I grew somewhat envious. Who are these brave parents? Who "cuts off" their kids to find jobs on their own? Who sends off their kids to the airport without a wave or goodbye (now, I'm being biased here, maybe they were dropped off)? Were these parents of envy or parents of scorn?

From the beginning it's been a tug and pull relationship with my eldest daughter. I know God is preparing me for what lies ahead, when she is fully entrenched in college and living on her own, married, with a family to take care of. There have been preparations for this moment before. As a fifth and sixth grader, we began to share much of her time with her many several friends, and we haven't really looked back. We just ate dinner with one of her softball teammates. It's a minute gripe, sharing time, but over the course of years you wonder where all the time has gone. School functions, softball, church, we've watched our daughter transform into this amazing young woman. Her trip to Puerto Rico pretty much summed up her life with us. She found herself in some minor scrapes, fell into a bed of sea urchins, was stung by a jellyfish and probably almost drowned. She also cliff dived, read devotions on the beach, and fell in love. She had the life of a movie. She also had her life, without my intervention. She's swimming without her floatie.

My little one still needs me. She clings to me in bed and warrants a but wiping every trip to the bathroom. She sometimes gets her arms tangled in the straps of her blouse and she always needs me to pour her a cup of chocolate milk. But this is where I have it all wrong. My eldest needs me too, just in a different way. She doesn't need me for study help or coaching. She does value me as an observer, someone who will challenge her decisions and to help her when her back tire gets flat. I'm in the realization that Lisa has never been mine to begin with--she's God's. I've just been put here to nurture her growth. The same is with my little one. I should be happy she's jumping into her pool of life, never once looking back at the dad who just wants to swim with her.