Spinning

I remember visiting my wife's second grade classroom some morning after work (and on a side note, I also remember going through a side door, open and unlocked.  Not so any more.).  I was walking through the aisles and the kids were looking back at me, smiling and waving and asking me several questions.  It was my Indiana Jones from the Last Crusade moment.  C-3PO among the Ewoks.  That was the day the seed was planted.  I was ignorant of the fact then, only in that I felt secure in the notion that I could do the one thing all teachers do--walk up and down an aisle, turn papers your direction to read an answer and smile back when needed.

Of course, that's not all we do.  Today I had 7 kids plus my own daughter in the room as they ate lunch, spoke over each other, carried themselves by piggyback and spun on rolling chairs.  They write letters like the one below.



Sometimes they draw pictures and characterize me as the "best teacher ever."  Those awards typically fade by year's end, but they are better than an Oscar.

And sometimes they write other notes.  Like the one I found on my desk.  I'm not going to show you a picture, however, if I had the balls to do so, I guess I would.  If the good pictures get me "likes" on Facebook, why not the negative?

And like most notes you don't want to read, the truthful ones, they tend to hide and get shuffled among the traffic of the table.  This week my work table had been consumed by a grade book, about 6 different piles of papers and tests to grade, unsharpened pencils, two clipboards, a jumbo paper clip, a bell, a bag of clay, The Hunger Games, literature essays on To Kill A Mockingbird and reminder notes 10 deep.  Among that rubble was a note from a student, an apology of sorts, after being sent to PEAK (our version of detention).

The paper had been pushed around for at least a week.  On any other day I would have thrown it away.  I even wrote a note on one of the folds.

Mr. Cordova, I know you think I'm dumb.  I wish I was smarter.

Mr. Cordova, I hate my life.

Mr. Cordova, I know you like (a high performing student) more, but I'm just dumb.

I hate school.

Looking at those specific lines, extracted as such, remind me of some twisted poem of disapproval.  How could the same person teacher who believed in the young man above, so be a part of making a girl feel so unloved?  When did her feeling manifest?  Was it a look, a sigh, an eye roll?  Was it a denied question, when I raised my voice or when I dismissed a request?

This past week I've lost two students, again, girls, to online charter schools.  Both were victims of bullying and a pestering and prevalent system that caters to the troubled and does little for those that walk the narrow path.  Teachers spend so much time dousing fires, filling out paperwork and jumbling data that the ones we want to protect the most get neglected.  I struggle with the shy ones, boys and girls, the wallflower, the awkward kid who is too afraid to ask.  Sometimes a kid comes out of their shell within the comfort of the year.  Other times, their voice gets lost among the loud ones, the ones that are more consistent.  As a man, how do I relate to being a young girl with selected friends and a unique array of gifts and interests?  Any man can relate to the cutie pie, the smart, over-achiever and the needy one, that girl who doesn't have a father figure.  But the other?

And during those weeks I've also welcomed two new students.  One is acclimating herself well into the room dynamic.  The other one?  Silent as stone.  I'm sure it is already evident the one I favor.

Tomorrow we continue a science experiment on centripetal force.  We've been making spinning tops, a lesson in inquiry and procedure.  I've enjoyed watching them succeed and fail and manipulate materials for a desired affect.  All week I've heard my name over and over.

Time me.  I'm ready.  Look, Mr. C.

They still want my attention and I spin.

Pulling a Moses

Back into the groove of 2013.  Already in two days of school, my class has a combined 8 absences and 5 tardies.  Among some of the explanations have been from getting tonsils out to accidental head wounds that occur when leaped upon by a Great Dane when playing video games.  I've had one kid move from school to further their education in front of a computer.  Two new ones replaced her several days later.  We made pendulums last week as a way to show potential and kinetic energy.  Counting the back-n-forth swings over 100 times, I figured I would be hypnotized by the end of the school day.


My own kids are a reflection of my stress.  Milly now wants nothing to do with school.  She has cried about her stomach for weeks, and like dutiful, tough love parents, we blew her off.  Anxiety from her sister going to college.  Well, come to find out she had some bowel issues.  Poor girl still doesn't want to go to school.  We ask questions, she just shakes her head and wants to go home.  We've been bribing her during lunch to go out and play, otherwise she hangs out in our rooms.  Our family has work to do.  Your job is to go to school, young lady.  Her response through red-cheeked sighs is an emphatic "No."  For the first ten minutes of recess she sat bundled up on a cold bench as her little friends tried to persuade her to play.

Cruz is a nervous wreck.  He plays Minecraft like a kid whose life depends on completing missions, killing "creepers" and building houses of brick and mortar.  He screams at the slightest provocation.  He's grumpy.  When he's doing a chore, it's as if he's being asked to make clay bricks for Pharoah's pyramid.  In a bit of irony, he landed the part of an Israelite in the church play.  If he's play-whipped into slavery by some 9-year old kid dressed like an Egyptian, he may pull a Moses.

I tell anyone who will listen that I'm "good."  Where did the joy go?  I have it when I pray.  I have it when I read.  I feel it when my wife hugs me.  I read it when I open a devotion, or an email from a friend.  I feel it in the connections God has chosen for my life.  Then why don't I feel it the moment I get downstairs?  Or the moment I arrive at school?  Why doesn't it regain it's luster when work is over?

I tutor a 5th grader weekly, for about a few months now.  Motivation is the primary key to unlocking his future.  I always tell him that he won't be able to simply "turn it on" at a moment's notice.  I even tell my own students that when they act like the Lakers, playing crappy basketball during the regular season so they can really play ball in the playoffs doesn't work.  Where's the effort?  I've beginning to ask myself the same questions.

Today was a day of notice.  One man's life awaits the footsteps of a hospice nurse.  His fleeting moments are a reminder to the walking.  A student's apology letter, better than the diatribe I unloaded on her a week ago. Better than placing them on an arbitrary spot to stand at recess.  A hearing with a group of teachers, arbitrators and administration.  Tense forehead lines and the quivering cheeks of a colleague.  A teacher who wouldn't feel comfortable sending their kid to our school.  My school.  The one Milly attends.  That face of hers again, the anxiety of a child.

Forgiveness too.  I think sometimes that forgiveness has to be "big things," like divorce for instance.  I don't think my father will forgive his second wife, probably not my mother either, for divorcing him.  Regardless of his role, he's felt wronged.  Or perhaps forgiveness should be reserved for a bigger incident; a crime.  Do you forgive only a murderer or a rapist?  Or do you think forgiveness is about smaller issues.  Like decisions made that affect you.  Or perhaps there's forgiveness in simply not calling someone.  Miscommunication, a disagreement.

The only person who knows the answers is me.  Only I determine what enters my heart and resides there.  God wants in, he surely does.  My pastor tonight, on the topic of a drug abuser, said that he couldn't get off dope because a small part of the man wanted to get high, liked it.  That's sin, right?  We fight to keep something in our hearts instead of letting God in.  Because we like it.  That small part that tethers us to the world.

The tether that needs to be cut like an umbilical chord.

Mirror Images

I don't think I've ever kept a New Year's resolution.  Half of the ones I've made I cannot even remember.  I've tackled weight issues before (and typically the winter months I've had pretty good success), doing better in school or working on my attitude of some sort.  And like the beginning of this blog has told you before, God became the central part of everything.  Even when I tried to escape making situations through my God-lens, it backfires.  Even when I make my own decisions, the good ones at least, I have to remind myself of the initial blessing.  No decisions are really my own, at least not the good ones.  I believe that the Holy Spirit is so resolute and strong within each and any one of us, that when fed simply demands to be acknowledged.  Anything good is not of man.  As for the bad?  Most of the bad can be traced back to bad decisions, lustful decisions, impulses, greed and sin.  Perhaps it is too simplified for those reading.  Sometimes it seems so simple even to me.  I try and make God in the image of what I want and try to wrap his power into my own thinking.  What do I know?

I gave up resolutions a few years ago, mostly because it felt like something the world wants you to involve yourself in.  Especially in terms of marketing materials no one really needs.  After the bombardment of Christmas ads (and before that, the election), the month of January begins the onslaught of dietary, fitness, "new-you" ads.  I was watching "Bowling for Columbine" (no gun talk this blog!) and there's a good scene when Micheal Moore interviews Marilyn Manson.  Of all people, especially to the average Christian man, Marilyn Manson is the poster child of scary-devil-man who haunts the suburbs in search of wary teens to deliver his message of Satan.  Regardless of what I feel about the music and showmanship, he goes into a spiel about how companies keep people in fear and a want of consumption.  Fear drives you to medications, drugs, a gun purchase, that home in a gated community.  Consumption not only derives from greed, but from the messages we learn from the ads.

You wont get laid, random teenage kid, because of all your zits.  You need Oxy-Clean.

You sure could ease your work blues away by swigging a Corona.

You possibly will be the worst parent ever if your kid doesn't have unlimited texting!

In the spring, once the fade of broken resolutions pasts have been forgotten, the Lenten season comes around.  Again, the worldly images of want, greed and fear creep into our consciousness again.  While a practicing Catholic in my youth, giving up something for Lent was another thing to blow off.  I never quite understood what giving up soda, french fries, ice cream or the movies had to do with being a Catholic.  As I grew older, I learned that we give something up to get closer to God.  That made more sense, but why were people giving up something else?  This attitude eventually gave me a holier than thou complex that always rears its head on days like today.  I begin to question other's decisions when I should really be focused on my own.

New Year's resolutions do have religious backgrounds, back to the time of the Babylonians.  I'm sure the people then, and eventually the Judeo-Christian people who came later, focused on prosperity that was somehow out of reach in the previous year (which is why anyone would eat sauerkraut I guess) .  I've been reading a slew of Facebook posts about how 2013 would be "different", enhanced somehow by a conscious attempt to tread a new path.  Eventually the vigilance subsides and the new year sounds much like the previous.

So about 6 years ago, my Lenten "resolutions" became more of promises.  Items, possessions or habits that were keeping me from God's purpose and plan.  At first I told everyone I knew, only to slam open the God-talk, that pious attitude I didn't think I possessed.  Later, I kept them to myself.  Looking back on the ones I've made, broken and remade, they sound almost trivial.

My first was a purging of the music I listened to.  All the hip-hop, sex rap and street shooting prophets were deleted.  That was easy enough.  If I was a Christian, why would I want to listen to rap music that glorifies possessions, promiscuity and thyself?  The next year I gave up horror movies after 2 movies in particular churned my stomach at their violence.  If I was a Christian, why would I want to see simulated death onscreen that was something akin to porn?  One year I gave up adult films, failed, and retried.  Currently, I've been on a 4 month non-adult film marathon.  This time, the commitment seems authentic and I have the Holy Spirit to thank.

This year, the resolution is r-rated comedies.  The last few I've seen were funny in stints, but overall they were films I felt offended everything I was supposed to be standing against.  Drug use, promiscuity, nudity, using the Lord's name in vain, mocking Jesus--all were present and persistent.

There have been other commitments   Several years back, there was a push to add something to your life instead of giving something away (ironically, this was probably began by a company in order to sell more product).  Some are more personal, like the Courageous challenge I've been reading up on.  My mother purchased the resolution months ago and it went unsigned not because I didn't feel like I was ever going to be man enough, but because I wanted to take it seriously.  Telling God what you're going to do is much different than telling a friend.  No one goes to work hoping to sabotage their day, fight with a co-worker or fail their bosses.  No one begins their day thinking when they'll have a fight with their spouse or yell at their kids.  Again, the Holy Spirit resides in everyone that pulls, nags and pesters you to the everlasting truth.  Even in our best, we can still mess that up too.

I wont look back on the negatives.  I'm thankful for the events and new people God has connected me to.  My eldest went to college and my youngest learned to bathe herself.  I work in the greatest profession alive.  Loved ones died and loved ones still suffer.  But one thing remains.  Our attitude towards these events eventually shapes the perceptions of people around us.  These perceptions and biases become mirrors of sorts.  We see the image of what others see, with all the faults and flaws, the failures and guilt.  That image can define us, if we let the fear hang on.  So, dear reader, take a chance and look upon yourself not with the eyes of the world but with God's.  While we can't move mountains or create the heavens, we can envision our lives lived to its potential.  God's mirror has nothing on Snow White.  Just ask.