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.

Thoughts on Newtown, CT

The last lockdown drill we had at school was announced earlier in the week on a memo.  As usual, I read "lockdown" but never confirmed the date in my lesson plans or reminders.  The drill, like so many others, never registered much recognition.  This past week we had a fire drill during a time when my students were in Music class.  I was working on my week's lesson plans.  All I wanted to do was close the door and continue working.  Let the invisible flames of disobedience consume me.

A Level 1 is free allows free movement within the building but with doors locked.  Typically these are designated for emergencies outside of school, perhaps even outside of our vicinity.  The drill is practiced, life resumes.  A level 2 is to lock doors, cover the windows and does not allow for free movement.  Perhaps a shooting or some disturbance in the area has caused the lockdown.  Once we had a shooter who ran through the playground.  Another threw a gun under a modular trailer.  Typically some fight spills into the streets after the high school kids are dismissed, cops are called and we continue to teach.  This drill was a Level 3.

Level 3 lockdowns are more serious in nature.  Lights off, doors locked, kids in a huddle--quiet.  Teaching fourth and fifth graders the last several years, the kids typically rush to their favorite spot in a cubby, they laugh and snicker until the high-heeled footsteps of the principal enters the room, threatens to take away their recess as I give them the I-told-you-so look.  It's the same with most drills.  Tornado drills are something else.  All the kids worry about is bending over showing their undies and they make farting noises until we yell at them.  On the day I disregarded the memo, my principal unlocks my door, steps in with safety and security (the district "heavies") and gives me a polite reprimand about being a level 3.  At the time I was still teaching and the kids were working.

I doubt in the upcoming weeks I will take a lockdown drill less seriously after the events this weekend at Sandy Hook ES.

Two weeks ago, a member of our Life Group, who is also a teacher, said his high school was conducting a mock-lockdown in which students were actually going to enter rooms.  Sadly, these are the kinds of things schools do now, perhaps not always, but once a month is enough.  How do you reenact the events of Columbine?  Why would anyone want to?

Amid the outpouring of grief around America, I've been consumed with my own thoughts on the matter this weekend.  Upon first glance, the day reminded me of my first year teaching.  The same year 9/11 occurred.  The lasting memory of that school day was walking through the halls (on another lockdown) and seeing kids watching cartoons--oblivious to the events--just innocently ignorant.

When my wife told me of the events over the room phone, I didn't tell my fifth graders.  I did not even look up info on the computer.  Perhaps my desensitization caused an otherwise "again?" response but nothing more.  Telling the kids was out of the question.  Most of them have a naive understanding of the world around them.  Arguments have ensued in class ranging from topics as diverse as Halloween=devil worship, goth=devil worship, Osama bin Laden was hired by the government to terrorize us with death planes,  and so on.  We've almost finished reading The Giver, a beautiful young adult novel about a controlling society.  The discussion this past week was euthanasia.  I tried finding an appropriate video to argue both sides of the issue.  Is it suicide?  Murder?  We read together in chapter 19 the moment the main character's father injects a baby with a lethal dose to "release" it, thereby extinguishing a young life and keeping the balance of the community in tact.  Chilling.

The terror of the chapter subsided (one of my girls who had read ahead asked to leave the room.  She officially hates the novel.)  and we continued the day.  Now a new terror, a real terror, entered their lives when they set foot into their houses on Friday.

My room is literally the last room on the left of a Y-wing designed building.  I keep thinking that if something horrific were to befall our school, I'm exiting with my kids stage left and running to the junior high.  Get them to safety.  I think I would storm the shooter like the Sandy Hook principal.  Who knows?  For years I was frightened of my own shadow.  Now I feel more defiant.  No one knows for sure.  Who would want that decision?

Stories like teacher Victoria Soto who was gunned down just after telling the shooter her kids were in the gym, inspire the type of heroism within me.  There were many other heroes that day too--and devils.

Facebook has been rife with memorials and opinions.  The best ones have nothing to do with guns and everything to do with trying to understand the motives.  We can blame more than guns (more on that in a moment).  Video games, divorce, the lack of prayer in schools, violent movies and now even autism.
People have blamed God.  I'm not going to defend God here.  He has a Bible for that and He doesn't need my limited understanding to defend the events of the world--the evil or the appraised.

And I wont defend guns either.  Some of my friends have used the incident for their own political rants.  God Bless America one reads, then lists the amount of deaths attributed to guns in America compared to other countries.  Another post tells how arming a teacher would have eliminated the threat almost immediately.  I know teachers that barely read emails (or memos), burn their popcorn in the microwave and can't operate a Smartboard.  Arming them is the issue?  Oh yes, cause that's what a teacher needs to have strapped around their belts during parent-teacher conferences.  Perhaps the gun would come in handy to begin wind sprints.

I respect people with legal guns.  I have many friends with handguns and rifles for hunting.  None of them are posting insensitive posts about the right to bear arms or impeaching Obama.  I've begun to think that less guns, like less abortions or less prisoners dying from lethal injections and less wars, would be a great idea.  Why are there semi-automatic clips even available?  Even the shooter in question Friday had access to 5 guns.  5?  I don't think I've even seen 5 guns that weren't attached to a cop's belt in m life.  Even with gun laws, gun control, how are you going to get the remaining guns off the streets when we can't even eliminate drugs.

The most gut-wrenching of all was looking into the eyes of my own son during another one of his tantrums.  While he hasn't been diagnosed with nothing more than ADHD, if he continues to curse when he is angry or kick the walls in his room when he is punished, how long will it be before he's labeled something else?  Is it more counseling?  Perhaps it's nothing more than a "boy" thing.  Then I read this article--I Am Adam Lanza's Mom.     I'm not the only parent with a son who snaps.  While his words and actions aren't as extreme, how many times can these events happen before we all take a look at our kids and wonder how we're raising them, and what we allow them to have access to.

My son's major flareups lately have been related to electronics--his iPod.  A seemingly innocent device used for music and games.  But for him, he can lose hours playing games.  Not violent ones, but disconnected nonetheless.  How disconnected was this kid who killed children?

There's other gut-checks to come.  The next one is Monday when my kids come in with their questions and misconceptions.  All I want to do is hug them and tell them it will be okay.  But it's not okay.  Not this time.

The Routine of Beauty

It comes to no surprise I don't quite understand women.  This goes for little girls like my youngest daughter, young adults the age of my oldest daughter, or even the students in my class. I'm reminded of the phenomenon described as girls behavior every Monday when I take Milly (my youngest) to dancing class.  

Let me set the scene.  Imagine walking into a dance studio which is more like a large apartment building where 2 rooms are designated for dancing, one for the office (where on any given night, three or four mom-owners fold clothes, jabber and eat their dinners as patrons walk by), and one a waiting room.  In the waiting room there are 3 neon green sofas, with one of them being a love seat.  Although the sofas could sit about 8 people altogether comfortably, there is usually only one person at each sofa.  The rest of the seats are piled with laptop cords, discarded jackets, shoes, kids in diapers who trampoline the cushions and the awkwardness of having to sit in a plush seat next to someone you really don't know.  As a man, and one of the few males ever in the place (I'm not counting the hipster guy who sits next to his pregnant girlfriend who always seems to be genuinely amused when random children walk by handing him their toys), it is especially awkward sitting next to any mom.  Not that I don't want to talk to anyone, it's just that the look of me, all 300 pounds of me, the seriousness of myself coming off from school (where I have already been in a crowded room full of kids for 8 hours) of what it must seem as I converse (and when I converse I converse, all talk with my hands kind of guy), act charming, nod my head in that almost condescending you-know-what-I-mean-because-we're-both-parents-kind-of-way way.

So typically I walk in with Milly with some kind of book, papers to grade and my headphones to drown out the noise.  In any place there are 90% women, like say a Panera, the place is loud.  Not even really kid loud, because there are plenty of them, but just the type of talk that women do when they are trying to one-up one another.

Oh, my daughter does that too.  
That's all my husband does nowadays.  
Well, at my school....


By the time Milly twirls herself to class, the room is overrun with several little girls stretching, running around the sofas, and planning their routine before their class starts.  Girls are either amazingly self-promoting divas or they have so little self-esteem that they must make sure everyone in the room looks at them.  Perhaps it's the culture as well on display.  How many girls watch X-Factor and American Idol and hope that all their twirls and bends will magically enhance their popularity?

There has been a liberal agenda of late, before the election especially, titled the "war on women."  And anytime some old Republican answers a question about abortion or defunding Planned Parenthood, news organizations like the Huffington Post blare headlines about how men are trying to wrangle women back into the stone ages.  (Ironically, Jay-Z was performing for Obama before the election.  What does he think of women?  He pours champagne on them and calls them "hoes")  But to me, the real war is with women amongst themselves.  Does anyone realize the magnitude of insults and bullying that goes on among fifth grade girls?  What about junior high girls (and this goes way beyond bullying girls who are homosexual)?  What about adult women?  For every 100 commercials that promote sex and women's curves, there might be one special on the View about loving the large woman, or being yourself where the audience (who are always moms with nice hairdos like the ones who nod approvingly in Milly's dance class) claps and cries and vows to change the culture.  Then they go out and order salads and diet cokes because they have to fit in the smaller sized jeans for a party on Saturday.

I shouldn't put the burden entirely on the culture.  In truth, the culture is defined by us, the consumers, and are primarily organized by the men who own them.  Husbands like me are to blame as well.  We rescue the beauty, we win her heart only to revert to pornography, our no-women-allowed activities and not helping out at home.  I'm to blame too.  I say nothing here that I haven't done before, or that I'm noticing to change.

In the book Boys Adrift, Dr. Sax details the criminally large amount of single guys who have this failure to launch.  They are stuck in adolescence--their video games, their porn, their joblessness.  They are outnumbered almost 4-1 in american colleges.  We sure have closed the gender gap, but has this been at the disadvantage of young men?  The boys today shirk from responsibility, from manhood and from a woman who is demanding (and this is not demanding in a nagging sense, but demanding as a wanted and valued member of a home) more of them.  These are the type of young men seeking the companionship of my oldest daughter in college.  These are the young men who have not been taught to open doors, or to ask a father for permission to date.  They have not been taught simply because many men have twisted the responsibility of what being a man is in exchange for something quicker and less demanding.  Why work on a marriage when the pretty girl on the computer gives you anything you want for free?

Take this statement from another book:  Every woman needs to know that she is exquisite, and exotic and chosen.  Is this why Eve was tempted in the garden?  Is this why she was tempted first, because she wanted control of her surroundings?  Did she long for Adam to pay attention to her instead of plowing the fields?  Again, back to fathers.  The same fathers who have wounded their young sons can also do irreparable harm to their daughters as well.  Not having a father is just as worse to an impressionable young girl.  Or what about the abusive father, the uncles who went a little to far during the holiday over-night?  Or the fathers who loved their daughters with silence.

So we now have a world full of broken men and women all trying to outwit and determine what the other one wants.  Women can sure arouse our masculinity, but no matter how much or how many we pour our lives into, nothing can ever fulfill the emptiness of a broken heart.

Back to my little girls at home.

Dance class is about over.  Just before the next round of classes begin, another onslaught of girls enters to stretch, dance and text.  Almost all of them are thin, petite or gymnastic-tiny.  Again, in our world, only the beautiful can dance.  I stand to look at my daughter through the parent-view two-way mirror.  When she twirls she rotates an extra 90 degrees too much.  She bends too low at times, falls over when she should keep her balance.  I love every bit of her awkward dances, the routine of her beauty.  She's the only one I want to dance with.  The one for which I'm willing to fight.

Fortune Cookie Aspirations

Who doesn't like fortune cookies?  In my long history of devouring 2 plates at Chinese buffets and inhaling a fortune cookie afterward is one of my hungerous highlights.  They have even evolved over time.  When I was a kid they simply had a saying.  Now, they have lucky numbers, lucky months and word of the days in Chinese.   

When people use fortune cookie phrases in daily conversation, it's the kind of cookie you need not unwrap.  Sometimes it's annoying to hear a quip from an unknown author about how you should be more grateful, or thankful, or full of something.  Your parent says one and they sound so wise (or annoying) and when you say one you come across as enlightened (or a douche bag).

I told one of my daughter's coaches last year that she had a fortune cookie mentality when my daughter needed her the most.  Perhaps I was being a bit dramatic.  I was compressing her years of experience by taking one quote out of context.  Control the controllables was just not the one thing I wanted to hear as my daughter sat the bench.  I know she probably told my daughter many other things that season that I didn't hear.

Two years previous when a different coach said the phrase to my daughter at practice, the fortune cookie zen-like Control what you can control sounded like the best advice for a struggling hitter.  Get the umpire's erratic strike zone out of your mind--can't control it.  Get the idea out of your mind the pitcher is trying to walk you or hit you--can't control what she's throwing.  Stop thinking about who will be mad at you if you strike out--can't control it.

During a contentious staff meeting on Wednesday, the same phrase leaked back into my conscious--Control the controllables.  

And I made a list, like any good teacher would do.  A graphic organizer of things I can control and things I cannot.  Like my bosses decisions.  I cannot dictate any of those decisions just to suit me.  Or my student's attendance.  This past week with onyl 4 days of school to attend, there were a total of 8-10 different absences, at least 4 kids who left early and over 5 tardies.  I cannot control the lack of transportation, or the unwilling feet of a child walking to the school bus.

What I can control is my attitude.  I can control my reaction to the kids who misbehave, smack their lips or forget their homework.  I can control how I treat my colleagues, too.  Five years ago I left my old building in a flaming, bridge-destroying melee.  I felt there was a lack of leadership, a lack of passion in my fellow hallmates, appreciation for the man sitting in room 16 who was undoubtedly the reason the school was still operational.  Five years later, the school still stands.  My friends have moved on, the principal has since left, and the kids have graduated and transferred to the awkwardness of junior high.

This year has come with an onslaught of challenges.  35 kids in the beginning of the year.  Two grades.  Coaching 2 different sports.  An entire new curriculum to comb through and decipher.  I began to build walls around me.  The kids in room 160 would have the best education I could give them.  I would single handedly solve all their ills and inspire a film director someplace to document that success to the silver screen.  I needed someone at that moment to unravel my own fortune cookie aspirations to remind me what was important.

Silence and humility eventually won.  Keeping silent is never something I handle easily.  Saying sorry is something I'm working on.  I admit my faults to a certain degree.  In a room full of people, I act just like my students.  I shrug my shoulders and roll my eyes.  One on one, I can be sincere.  A true man can be sincere, should be.  Hypocrite, I am thee!

So after erasing and switching categories of my graphic organizer I came to the conclusion that I am in control more than I think.  I'm a humanist by no means.  God will place obstacles and people along the way to teach me something about myself.  I don't always ask Him what lesson I am supposed to learn along the way, simply because I haven't trained myself to do so.

The cool thing about God's training program?  It has a lifetime warranty.

Red Rubber Ball

There was this moment, I think it was my 4th or 5th grade year, when I felt what it was like to be made fun of.  I had not remembered up until this point.  My kindergarten memory is one of carpet squares and naps.  First and second get mixed in together.  I had 2 different schools and about the only thing I have fondness for is my grandmother's apartment complex and walking to school.  But third is when kids became mean.  And I did too.

 Walking in line from lunch, I kicked a confessed "booger eater" in the shin.  I had to hold my lunch tray above my head during lunch.  We had "put down" contests at lunch, too.  We worked on perfecting the "your momma is so fat" jokes and our intention was to make other kids cry.  No one made fun of me much in third, simply because I became the bully, the loudmouth and the jokester.

In 4th and 5th, I moved to another school.  I was the last one picked in class for games, the one who always seemed in trouble, the one who had something to prove.  One of my first activities at recess was bopping a kid in the eye with a pine cone--not a great first impression.  I made friends, the wrong ones.  I translated Michael Jackson's Thriller album lyrics into pornographic fantasies.  (In the meantime, I was writing short stories about a fictional GI Joe team who kicked communist butt.)  I had friends but I lived on the fringe.  This became more evident by the lack of skill I presented in kickball.

So I did something about it.  I kicked the one kickball we had against the brick wall we had at my house.  Catching it and kicking it, over and over.  I had my other fringe friend Kevin Hebert meet me, roll the ball my way and kicked it high into the air.  All the adventure a boy could muster hinged on the flight of that red rubber ball.

It was the one time I remember when I fought  for something.  The bully who fought for his line among the pack.  No more getting picked last.  No more making fun of this guy.

Afterwards, the wages of my self-reliance led to a mountain of problems.  I didn't fight again.  I argued, yes, but I never fought.  I argued with my mom over who to spend my time with  Surely not that girl?  I argued with my step-father over the path he had taken with Jesus.  We're talking about you, right?  I argued with a Wal-Mart employee over an unassembled grill I purchased.  I even cursed.  Wearing my school t-shirt.

None of them made me feel like a man.  At the time it did, I'm sure.  The rush of saying the f word in a public setting (it's not just for white people to say anymore, my mind told me) will do that.  Fighting for the right to be a jackass is easy, I learned.  Anyone can do that.

This past week, I have been delivering one message to my fifth graders.  Doing well, making good grades, being here in attendance is hard.  Failing is easy.  Throwing a temper tantrum is easy.  Not doing homework, making excuses and losing your papers is always easy.  But work is called work for a reason.  Do you want an easy life?  Or one you're proud of because you stepped up?

And the lessons continue.  Especially for me.

A quote from my men's study:  Let the world feel the weight of you and let them handle it.

After the foul-mouthed kid grew up, he found outlets for his cravings.  Pornography made it easy to stay at home and fail at relationships.  Why make a girl happy when this one on the computer screen, in this glossy magazine, does it for nothing.  I ate everything in sight simply because everyone expected me to eat.  I dropped out of school because that's what minorities do anyway, right?

I had to learn to fight.

For my students.  For my kids.  I want to fight battles that other people probably don't want me to enlist for.  Saying the one line in a staff meeting that raises eyebrows ignites those flames.  Getting fired up about a kid's effort and capacity to learn instead of the usual you-annoy-me cathedral is music in my room. " When I'm done teaching, I'm sweating," a professor at college once told me.  And he sure looked the part.  As a future teacher, I wanted that passion.  Ray Rotella was one of the first men I met along the way.  God placed him in my path before I even knew God was pursuing me.  Ray and I never even talked about Jesus or God, but he was there in that part of my life for a reason.  Have passion!

So I'm fighting.  Joining the battle.  I just finished writing notes after dinner for the men's study.  I'm enlisting men into battle like some Tio Sam.  I want warriors.  I want wounded men who are ready for purpose.  I want to love my wife like when we first met.  And you know what happens when you fight for your loved one?  The passion returns.  Oh yes.

And now I know what Kevin Hebert must have felt awaiting the return of the red rubber ball.  Is it ever going to return?  Not today, my friend.  Not today.