So... The holiday season is now over and things are about to go back to "normal"... well, at least as normal as it gets around these parts o.O
For Christmas this year, my youngest gave me this stained glass candleholder made of grout and bits of broken blue glass...
He didn't make it himself (I know this because I was with him at Goodwill when I picked it up and commented on how cool it was... which was about 3 aisles before he told me "Mom, DON'T LOOK... I'll be right back!" and then took off running ^_^), but all the same, I love it just as if he did because of what it says about life and about me.
Allow me to explain.
Once upon a time, I was created as a beautiful, unblemished piece of art, without understanding of life or sin or failure. Granted, I had some structural flaws-- mainly health issues and a family background that would make life difficult for anyone-- but as far as I could see with my newborn eyes, I was perfect, lovely, and loveable.
http://supercleanpr.com
But then, life happened. Over time, I was bumped, dropped, knocked around, fractured, and crushed by circumstances. In response, I lashed out, cutting myself and others with the sharpened edges of my shattered innocence. My flawless surface began to show cracks where I had been hurt, dribbles of glue where people who loved me had tried to fix me, and scraps of cellophane tape where I had tried to heal myself. Bits and pieces of me were broken off and embedded in the hearts of those who tried in vain to understand me, just as pieces of them were left buried in me.
http://tektites.co.uk
As I began to see the power that I could have by hurting people, I became not a piece of art but a weapon, wielding my damaged pride like a knife and using my bloodied edges to slash at others before they could pierce me with their own. Yet the blood was not just theirs, but mine; for every wound I inflicted on them, I took two of my own. While the damage I did to those around me was spread out among dozens, the damage I did to myself landed only on me. Every cruel word I spoke, every bruise I left, every vicious tirade I inflicted echoed in my mind, and each word came back to haunt me as I realized that everything I said had been true... about me. I cut others so that I could forget that I had been cut myself.
Once I was an innocent; now I was a monster.
Once I was whole; now I was deformed.
Once I was beautiful; now I was broken.
My original form was lost, my once-shiny colors and designs covered by dirt and shattered by situations and choices. Like broken glass littering the midnight street, I had become ugly and useless, a cruel glittering of danger waiting only for the distracted feet of my next victim to tread upon me.
http://westoftheimagination.wordpress.com
But then...
God steps in.
And bit by bit, He begins to gather up the broken pieces of me. He cleans them off and sets them aside, separating them by color, shape, and size.
http://earofthewind.com/about
Some pieces He refines, rubbing off the sharp edges and rendering
them harmless; others He leaves sharp to be used as tools for His work.
Slowly, one by one, He takes each of the broken pieces and places them into a mold. At first, the design makes absolutely no sense to anyone but Him; in time, however, glimpses of the bigger picture become visible.
http://mosaicartsource.wordpress.com
I write these paragraphs in the present tense because I am still a work in progress; God isn't finished putting me together yet. I still have some sharp edges and many missing pieces; I still have great big gaping holes where the pieces of my soul aren't quite ready to be put back in yet. I still feel lost and broken sometimes, and every so often, I accidentally slice open the hands of those who reach out to touch me. I am flawed and I am broken, and I know that, until the day God puts the final piece of me together and I see Christ face to face, I will always be flawed and broken.
But...
If by my brokenness, other people will see that there is a God and that He is the one who saves me from myself, then it is worth the pain. If by my flaws, other people can see that God is real and that if He can love a person as messed up as I am, He can love them too, then it is worth it. If my struggles and my shortcomings and my failures-- and the hope I still have in spite of them-- can show people that no situation is hopeless, then they are all worthwhile. If my weakness shows God's strength to carry me, then by all means... bring it :-)
Day by day, piece by piece, reminder by reminder, God takes the broken pieces of my life and puts them together into something beautiful again. Not the same as I was before... that design has been crushed and obliterated beyond recognition, and will never, ever be made whole again. But all the same, the end result will be breathtakingly beautiful... and like my broken stained glass candleholder, I think I will love it all the more for the work that He has put into it :-D
And now, for the musical interlude part of the blog... Here is someone else's video for a song that perfectly captures what I'm trying to say here, only in a more poetical form :-) Lyrics are below for anyone who needs them...
"Art in Me" by Jars of Clay
Images on the sidewalk
Speak of dreams' descent
Washed away by storms to graves
Of cynical lament
Dirty canvases
To call my own
Protest limericks carved
By the old pay phone
And in Your picture book I'm
Trying hard to see
Turning endless pages
Of this tragedy
Sculpting every move
You compose a symphony
And You plead to everyone
See the art in Me
See the art in Me
See the art in Me.
Broken stained glass windows
The fragments ramble on
Tales of broken souls
An eternity's been won
As critics scorn the thoughts and works
Of mortal man
My eyes are drawn to You
In awe once again
And in Your picture book I'm
Trying hard to see
Turning endless pages
Of this tragedy
Sculpting every move
You compose a symphony
And You plead to everyone
See the art in Me
See the art in Me
See the art in Me.
And in Your picture book I'm
Trying hard to see
Turning endless pages
Of this tragedy
Sculpting every move
You compose a symphony
And You plead to everyone
See the art in Me
(See the art in me...)
See the art in Me
(See the art in me...)
See the art in Me
(See the art in me...)
Today I got to sub again at the school I did my final round of student teaching at last year. I got to see several of my students from last year, which was awesome; I also had a couple of the little siblings of some of my last year's students in the class I was actually teaching, which was cool but a little weird because apparently, if your older sibling had your teacher in previous years-- whether the teacher's a student teacher or a sub-- that automatically makes you a Second-Grade Rock Star, with all the rights and privileges accorded therein. ("Yeah… my sister Jennifer had her last year. Oh yeah, that's right… YAH BOI WORD UP YO-YOs!")
But anyway…
One of my regrets from blogging last year was that by the time I had time to blog more often, I had already finished my student teaching and I kind of thought it would be weird to spend time writing about the things a former student had said… even if they were absolutely hilarious at the time. However, every time I've subbed at this school, this one particular student has made a point of tracking me down wherever I've been just to talk to me… Which wouldn't make talking about the things he said last year any less weird EXCEPT THAT today, he came up with another brilliant declaration that reminded me just how much I loved having him in my classroom :-) And so today, I finally get to tell y'all about Rennie…
First of all, one of Rennie's parents works at the school. Which always made for really interesting threats on my part whenever Rennie decided that he didn't really feel like doing his work (which was pretty much daily for a significant portion of my student teaching assignment :-/) "Rennie… We're all going to lunch in about 45 minutes. Do you REALLY want me to walk into the staff room with big bald patches in my hair, an uncontrollable flailing of limbs, and my left eye twitching the Macarena while your dad is trying to eat his lunch? And when he asks me how my morning is going… WHAT DO YOU THINK I'M GOING TO TELL HIM?????" Coincidentally, by the end of the semester, Rennie's work habits and stick-to-it-ness had improved tremendously ^_^
Second, Rennie is probably off-the-charts gifted. He was one of the two kids in the class who had already tested into the TAG program, and the word around the school was (probably still is) that someday, he will do amazing things and we will all be staring in wonder at him on our TV screens, going "I was in his 2nd grade/4th grade/middle school PE/high school underwater basket weaving class… I have been in the presence of AWESOME." The only problem with this is that Rennie's also one of the younger students in his cohort, and when you combine that with the fact that he's a boy, what you get is awe-inspiring flashes of brilliance coupled with kicking/screaming/sitting-under-his-desk-and-banging-his-head-against-the-metal-legs temper tantrums. Apparently, it's incredibly frustrating to be a misunderstood genius trapped in a nine-year-old's body :-/
But of course, this odd combination of Steve Jobs and Honey-Boo-Boo does make for some… memorable conversations. Because you see, Rennie also has probably the most extensive vocabulary of any elementary schooler I've ever known, with the possible exception of his classmate Jason and my own youngest child. My favorite memory of Rennie from last year goes as follows:
Visualize, if you will, my classroom. I have a lectern at the front, with an overhead projector next to it. Directly in front of the lectern sits Jason (whom I've mentioned with much fondness before); next to him sits Brian, another of the class smarty-pantses. Across from Brian sits Lisa, who is probably the quietest, most polite, mildest-mannered 10 year old I've ever met in my life. To Lisa's right sits R.C., which stands in my book for "Random Child", who I may or may not get around to telling about in a future post. And at Lisa's left hand, directly in front of the overhead projector, is Rennie. On the classroom map, this group was called the Red Group; my personal pet name for them was the Brain Trust. Or, on my less generous days, Pinky and the Brains o_O
It's another typical day with another typical student-teachery type of lesson…
"OK, so who can tell me… Rennie, I'm using that part of the overhead right now; please turn it back. So, who can tell me which part of this sentence… Jason, did I not just ask Rennie to stop messing with my overhead?"
"Yes, but you never specifically asked me not to touch it. So technically, I'm not disobeying you."
"Fine. Jason, stop touching my overhead. Now, which part…"
"So can I touch it again now?"
"No. Rennie AND Jason, stop touching the overhead. Now, which part of the sentence is the subject?" Rennie's hand moves from the overhead reel and starts waving in the air like a demon-possessed jellyfish. "Let's see… Jennifer, which part is the subject? Who is this sentence about?"
"Um… Joe?" Now both of Rennie's hands are in motion. As one hand waves frantically, the other creeps back to the reel of the overhead projector. Joe (who is, as Jennifer has correctly discerned, the subject of the sentence "Joe walks his dog down the street.") slowly begins to slide, along with his dog, slowly down the overhead screen.
"Yes, Jennifer… Good job!" As I enter the battle for Joe's right to walk his dog at the top of the projector screen, Joe jerkily moves back to his original position. I fix Rennie with a Death Glare and move on to the next question. "So, if Joe is our subject, what is the predicate? What is Joe doing in this sentence?"
Once again, Rennie's hands and arms begin to flail. Only they're now joined by semi-constipated grunting noises. Now, as we all know, a good teacher always tries to ignore behaviors that are purely attention seeking in nature, while seeking out model behaviors and praising those students who exhibit such behaviors. And since flailing, grunting, and overhead-projector tampering are not usually found on the Picture Charts of Model Behaviors in college-level educational theory textbooks, I do what any well-intentioned neophyte teacher wannabe would do: I choose to ignore Rennie and call on other students.
"Adam, I see you're sitting quietly with your hand up. Can you tell us what the predicate of the sentence is?"
At this point, Rennie has had enough.
"OH. MY. GOD. I'm sitting right here!"
"Yes, Rennie. I know you're there. It would be extremely difficult NOT to know you're there, as a matter of fact."
"But YOU DIDN'T CALL ON ME!"
"You're right, I didn't. So, Adam… what's our predicate?"
"BUT I KNOW THE ANSWER!!!"
"I'm sorry, Adam… I had a little trouble hearing you. Could you say that again?"
"OMG!!!" Yes, he actually said it just like that… "oh-em-geeeee!" "I can't BELIEVE this! I'm sitting right HERE, and I KNOW you can see me and I KNOW you can HEAR me… but you STILL won't CALL ON ME??? What do I have to DO to get your ATTENTION???"
I glance over at my supervising teacher, who is sitting at her desk trying her best to hold in the laughter. I'm now quite certain this was how Chamberlain felt at Little Round Top when his men were out of bullets, the Confederate soldiers were preparing another attack, and all they had were some lousy bayonets and no help in sight.
Maybe student teachers should be given a spare bayonet for days like these…
"So, Adam… What's that? You don't want to share your answer after all? OK, then… Who else thinks they might know what the predicate is?"
"HEY GUYS!" Rennie is smart enough to know he needs backup here. And who better to support him than his trusty Brain Trust. "Do you SEE this? She's PURPOSELY DISCRIMINATING against us! She hasn't called on ANYONE from the Red Group YET today!!!"
A quick glimpse at Pinky and the Brains gives great insight into his chances of success. Jason (who hates loud noises and disruptions to the daily routine) is laying with his hood up, his head on the desk, and his hands covering his ears. Brian is glaring at Rennie and mouthing what looks suspiciously like "Shut UP you moron!" while making chopping motions across his throat. R.C. is leaning back in his chair with an ear-to-ear grin watching the show and probably wishing he had some popcorn. And mild-mannered Lisa is staring at Rennie with her eyes about to pop out and roll across the floor and her face a shade of magenta only found on dinosaurs on PBS.
"Don't you see? This is the absolute WORST place to sit in the ENTIRE classroom!" Rennie turns his appeal to the rest of his fellow Americans. "None of you should EVER choose to sit here, EVER! Do you want to know WHY???" He stops to take a dramatic breath.
"Because there is a LIABILITY at this table!!!"
The whole room goes silent. And now I, along with my supervising teacher, am trying desperately to contain the bouts of maniacal laughter. Jason looks up, his eyes meet mine, and we have one of those beautifully random moments of perfect mutual understanding.
Yes, Rennie… there certainly is. ^_^
--------------------------------------------
By the end of the year, Rennie and I had (finally) come to a sense of mutual understanding and respect, and we were both able to laugh at the "Liability" incident-- eventually :-) Rennie even learned how to stop and actually listen to the words that come out of his mouth every once in a while; we call it the "5-Second Delay", and it's been a HUGE help to him in understanding why Lisa has always been so leery of sitting within earshot of him.
Fast forward to today. Rennie is now a 5th grader, and he has learned a lot more self-control than he had last year. He's still the same smart, funny, perceptive (though at times totally clueless) guy I remembered, and still one of my all-time favorite students. So, when he hollered at me from across the blacktop this afternoon, I was more than happy to stop and talk to him.
"Hey, Rennie… What's up?"
"Nothin' much. Hey, guess what?"
"What?"
"Did you know that I can make noise with my mouth?"
I stop. Pause. And just look at him as I silently count to 5.
"OK, that's NOT what I MEANT! You KNOW what I meant…"
"Well, Rennie, I MIGHT have been thinking SOMETHING along the lines of 'Of COURSE you can make noise with your mouth… That's NEVER been one of your areas of struggle…' But of course I would NEVER say such a thing to a student out loud…"
Rennie smirks at me. "Yeah, of course you wouldn't." And then he grins. "What I MEANT was that I can make weird mouth noises like this…" And then he proceeds to make several different creepy/weird/funny noises that were actually pretty impressive for a 10 year old.
"Now that's just awesome!" And I smile back at him. "But you do know that there's something that every 5th grader has to learn before they'll let him into middle school, right?"
"Really? What?"
I fix him with my most serious real-life teacher face. "Burping the entire alphabet from A to Z. All 26 letters. In order."
"Sweet!" And then he starts to burp. And they almost sound like letters. Or weird letter-like mouth noises, anyway. "See? I got up to F that time!" And as he turns to head into Music, he starts to shout. "HEY! I'VE GOT AN F!!!"
OMG, I cannot WAIT to sub in 5th grade this year… :-D
(Oh, and for those of you who are still wondering about the subject and the predicate... )
Well, the school year has begun and I'm officially registered to sub at about 4 different districts in my area. Trouble is, there aren't a whole lot of teachers who call in sick during the first month or two of the school year, so so far it's been a whole lot of waiting. And cleaning the apartment. And going through boxes of old paperwork and bills from 2006. And worrying over my daughter's transition to the drama that is high school and her sudden interest in high school boys. Let's just say that it's been an... interesting couple of months :-)
The other thing I've been doing is creating "motivational" posters for my future middle school classroom. The first one I created was based on a Facebook conversation I was involved in on a friend's wall...
Aim for the moon... even if you miss, you'll still land among the stars. Actually, you won't, because the stars, unlike the moon, are outside of our solar system. So, really, it should be, "Aim for the moon, and if you miss, you miss and plummet back towards earth, where, due to the friction caused by re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, you die a horrific, firey death. So, really, just don't fail, because if you fail, you die." Which really just means that you end up right back where you started... except for the firey ball of doom part, of course. But more importantly, always remember to think critically about such things and pay attention to the details.
I've already made one copy for my daughter and another for her best friend... Any additional copies for the rest of her classmates will be $29.99 plus shipping and handling ^_^
And then there's the poster I just finished this morning... This one was inspired by conversations I've had with my daughter's
best friend, who is completely, adamantly, 100%, absolutely morally
opposed to ever getting a Facebook of his own. He believes FB to be a complete and total waste of time... and I can't say that I completely disagree with him :-/ But anyway, this was my response to him, in picture form :-)
Facebook is like a hammer... It can be used for good, bad, or stupid...
Of course, I had to throw that last little bit at the end in after watching Facebook's first TV commercial... I didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or hit myself in the head with a hammer afterwards o_O (March 2024 Update: Apparently, "Meta" has wiped all reference to this ad from YouTube, since I cannot find the original video I had posted OR any other versions... Feeling slightly gaslit at the moment, not gonna lie :-/ )
Yeah... If this whole substitute teaching thing doesn't work out, I think I could write advertising copy for Facebook... ;-)
Yesterday, my daughter and most of her friends graduated from the 8th grade; as she keeps reminding me, she's "officially" a high schooler now, and "not some little seventh grader anymore, Mooooommmm... " <insert dramatic eye-rolls here> I'm kind of hard-pressed to find the words to say how proud I am of her and all of her friends, and how hope-filled, excited, and nervous I am for all of them as they start the final leg of their journey to adulthood: high school.
With that in mind, here is what I'd like to say to them-- the little bits and pieces of advice that I'd like to give them as one who went through high school and survived. Not that they would listen at the moment, since they're too busy reveling in the fact that it's finally SUMMER (Yay! Yah! WooHOOOOOOOOO!!! and all that jazz) to actually listen to anyone, but hey... that's what my blog is for, right? ^_^
So, without further ado (sounds so much more dramatic than it really is, huh? ^_^), here is my Top 8 list of Things Every New High Schooler Should Know:
1. Everything counts.
If you have a goal of succeeding in high school, going to college, and getting a job where you get paid a lot of money for not working very hard (as one of my daughter's friends was quoted as saying in their graduation ceremony), you have to start now, with that first Freshman Study Skills class. In high school, there are no MDFs to turn in when you were too busy to finish your homework and need an extra day or two (or 17, as the case may be) to get it in... Either you turn it in on time or the teacher docks you by half, no ifs ands or buts. It's not that there are no second chances in high school... it's just that second chances in high school are called "Credit Recovery" and you have to take them during your summer vacation :-( Which just plain sucks. Big time.
2. Don't underestimate the little things.
You never know what someone else is going through, and your one insignificant little action could be the thing that either makes their day bearable or destroys their will to go on. A whole school year of little things can make the difference between giving up and pushing through... especially since you have no idea of all the other "little things" that someone is thinking about in any given moment.
3. Kindness.
No matter what, you will never go wrong with kindness. Don't do to others just because they did it to you... an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind and all that. It doesn't matter who started it... You can be the one to finish it :-)
4. You don't know the future.
You may get the chance tomorrow to make amends for the stupidities of today. Then again, you may not. You have no way of knowing what is going to happen next to yourself or to that person walking away from you... As far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone, and don't wait to make the wrong things right.
5. You can't change the past.
When all else fails, today is a new day, and you can always choose to keep walking forward. It really doesn't matter what everyone says you are or what everyone is predicting based on yesterday and all that came before... You are who you are because God has formed you and shaped you to be in this place, and where you go from here is between you and Him. Don't let the haters tell you who you have to be.
6. YOLO.
When Nickelback says to live like today was your last day, it doesn't necessarily mean that you should go out and give everything away and refuse to plan for the future. Rather, live each day so that when you lay down at night, you don't have any regrets to keep you awake. If you have to think about how you're going to hide what you're about to do, chances are good you probably shouldn't be doing it. If you've screwed up and need to make things right, do it today, ASAP. Very few people will be ticked off at you for calling or texting them at 10:45 PM to say you're sorry :-)
7. YODO. You only die once too. Don't be excessively stupid :-) (And, since I forgot to include a video in the last post, I'll throw in a bonus video here...
And finally, with all that being said...
8. Enjoy high school.
This is your last chance to be a kid, before you have to worry about a job, a place to live, insurance, settling down and raising kids, etcetera. Think about it... If you're 14 now, you could have at least 60 years ahead of you to do all those things. You don't have to choose a husband or wife, a career path, or a house right now (although the choices you make now could end up having a huge effect on those choices down the road...) Enjoy being young and having your whole life ahead of you... Don't be in such a hurry to weigh yourself down with the worries of being an adult just yet, because in 20 years, you'll be looking back and going, "Y'know, I really, really wish I hadn't done that...", and you'll end up sitting at your kitchen table writing all of these things down in a blog instead of actually telling your kids and their friends what they need to know to survive high school ^_^
I think this song pretty much sums up everything I want to say here... and knowing my daughter, chances are good that she'd rather hear it from somebody yelling into a microphone than from me, anyway ^_^
Today really is the first day of the rest of your life... and not just because that's what the vice-principal said in his official 8th grade graduation speech that he's probably been giving from memory since Vanilla Ice was still cool o_O No, today is the first day of the rest of your life because, as long as you still have life in you, you can choose to make it the first day. This is your life, no one else's... and no one can take that away from you :-)
Well, it's official... I'm an official university graduate with an official BS degree in Elementary Education (which, if one thinks too hard about it, actually makes quite a bit of sense, as about 67% of what we El Ed people do is pure improv anyway ^_^) Not to mention that during my last week of student teaching, I caught the flu bug that was spreading through my class, and so stumbled through graduation on a cocktail of Nyquil, coffee, and Mountain Dew... ah, those wild and crazy college days :-D
Rather than post pics of graduation, I figured I'd share a story from my final day of student teaching. Of course, before I tell the story, I have to explain a little bit about Casey. Casey is the A-Number-One, Oregon's Most Wanted "problem child" in the fourth grade... actually, in the whole school. First off, he's been held back once, and is none too happy about it. Second, this is his first year at our school, so to start the year off right, Casey found the biggest, most-feared fifth grader in the school and picked a fight with him. He got thoroughly pounded, of course... but the point was made that you don't mess with Myles or Casey o_O Third, he's become the subject of both a school-wide anti-bullying campaign AND an ESD-level threat assessment... simply by making an offhand comment to a staff member that he was planning to bring a gun to school and that he already had 3 people "on the hit list". And then there are all the little day-to-day joys of life with Casey... such as him warning me that, if I didn't handle his most recent disagreement with a classmate properly, he would have to take care of the matter himself, and that I wasn't "going to like the results 'cause there's gonna be lots of blood and concrete and somebody would probably be going to jail afterwards." Rather considerate of him to warn me, all things considered... o_O Casey's not at all stupid, though he seems to have a lot of people convinced that, because he refuses to do most of his schoolwork, he must be a slow learner. Personally, I think he's just got the system figured out already... which tells me a lot about his intelligence that I wouldn't get from looking at his grades :-)
When he's not terrorizing his peers, though, Casey can actually be a pretty funny, sweet kid. Such as the time when his classmate Yesenia was told by another student, "Well, at least I'm white...", and Casey went out of his way to comfort her and make her laugh again. Or the incident that happened on my last day in the classroom:
That morning, I busted Casey with his iPhone in class again... third time in four days. After first refusing to put it in his backpack and then stuffing it in his back pocket and lying outright about it ("Whaaaaat? It IS in my backpack!!!" "Yeah, OK, so what is that in your pocket, then?" "That? Well, it's NOT my PHOOOOOONE... it's my iPHOOOOONE! Hahahahahahaha..."), Casey eventually did go and put the phone away like I had asked... yes, we celebrate the small victories here... ^_^
... and came out of the coat closet with two fistfuls of candy and both cheeks stuffed full besides...
... which became really interesting because it was his turn to lead the class in the Pledge of Allegiance. Which is a little difficult to do with a mouth full of Starlight Mints ("Ipfffawwjttdffphguv d Oontdfdd Stttsuvv Mrrrguhh...") Natural consequences FTW ^_^
The day progressed normally (this was the same day as Casey's oh-so-considerate pre-warning about the blood and concrete and all that... pretty typical, all things considered o_O), until about half an hour before the end of the day. At that time, Casey was headed out to one of his Special Ed classes, when he suddenly turned and ran over to hand me two Starlight Mints. "It's a good-bye present."
"Oh... OK. Thanks!" How sweet of him :-) Really, it was actually pretty sweet... no kidding :-D
When Casey returned from his class to get his things at the end of the day, he came over to my desk, where I was starting to pack up my things. "Here," he says, and gestures for me to hold out my hands. I do so, and he dumps a couple of handfuls of Starlight Mints into my hands and onto my desk.
"Um... Thanks. By the way, where did you get all of these mints from?"
"My backpack. Duh..." And he shows me that the bottom of his backpack is filled with about the same amount of mints as he's just given me.
I laugh. "Okay, yeah, 'duh...' I meant before they were in your backpack... Where did you get so much candy from?"
"Oh, from the restaurant."
"The restaurant?"
"Yeah, the restaurant. My mom said that, for 50 bucks for dinner, we deserved as many mints as we could carry!"
Lovely. Just... lovely :-D Wonder if they take away your teaching license for accepting stolen goods from your students...
As I draw near to the end of my full-time student teaching experience (Graduation in t-minus 11 days... Squeeeeee! :-D), I've come to the conclusion that there are certain phrases that should be banned from any classroom anywhere at any time...
5. "But you never TAUGHT us THIS...!"
In some cases, this is OK. Just not when we're talking about nouns
after I've spent a week and a half covering them. In detail. With all
sorts of color-coded whiteboard games and Mad Libs. And Schoolhouse
Rock videos. Did I mention that I'm teaching fourth grade? Yeah. You see how it is...
4. (Careful... this one is a two-parter) Student: "I don't GET it..." Me: "OK... what part don't you get?" Student: "... AAAALLLLL of it!"
Me: Sigh. Consider banging head against wall. Decide against the wall plan and take a peek at Student's paper. Point. "First, put your name on the paper." Walk away and repeat with the student three desks over. If you make it through 5 students before your head explodes, you win. Go directly to the teacher's lounge and scarf down any form of unguarded chocolate you find.
3. "But this is HAAAAAAARRRRRD..."
My response to this varies with the student. Sometimes it's, "Well, let's take it one step at a time... First, put your name on the paper..." Sometimes it's "Yes... Welcome to fourth grade. Your point is?" And sometimes (if it happens to be Rennie or Jason saying it) it's "Noooo, this isn't hard, it's complex... Which are two related but linguistically separate things." Which means I now have to tell y'all about Rennie, but that's a whole other post entirely...
2. "But I don't WANT to..."
Of course you don't want to... If
you DID, you would have already come up with this idea on your own and
finished it. Probably while I was explaining something else, to which your
response was...
1. "Do we HAAAAAAAVVVVVE to do this???"
No, no, of course not... I
just spent the past 5 minutes explaining the directions for this art
project/math game/vocabulary worksheet because I enjoy talking to myself in front of a room full of 10-year-olds, all of whom are now wondering if it would be better to notify their parents of their teacher's insanity or just sit back and enjoy the ride... ^_^
When I (someday) have my own classroom, one of the first things I'm going to do is create one of these bad boys... Many thanks to Ms. Teach for the idea :-D
As soon as any one of those phrases passes the lips of one of my students, they will earn a pick from the Fortune Teller of Doom... I swear on the soul of my father... Domingo Montoya...
Well, maybe not, but still... you see how utterly serious I am about this subject. ^_^
And now, for those of you who know exactly what Schoolhouse Rock song I was referring to (and who now have it running around in your head like a caffeinated hamster...)
OK, yes, it's been several months... FTST (Full-Time Student Teaching) will do that to a person o_O
I'm currently in a 4th grade bilingual classroom in rural Oregon... 29 kids, 12 girls and 17 boys... that right there should tell you 80% of what you need to know about how it's going o_O
But anyway, I figured that 1) it's been a while since I posted anything, and 2) I had to share this little incident with somebody other than my hubby and kids.
A little background: On my first day at the school, one of the boys in my class (who I'll call Jason) decided that he hated my guts simply because I was there. As it turns out, Jason has an ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), so he pretty much hates everything that doesn't fit into his schema... which includes student teachers, apparently. Which is fine... we have a family friend with the same ASD, so I totally get where Jason was coming from.
Over the first few weeks, Jason and I developed a special kind of relationship... I would make eye contact with him, he would glare at me; I would ask him how he was doing, he would growl and turn his back; I would ask him to get out his homework, he would pull his hoodie over his face and pretend to sleep. It was a beautiful and heartwarming thing, this budding friendship of ours.
And then, one day, we discovered that we had something in common: we've both read and loved the Warriors books by Erin Hunter :-D
After that, it was a whole different story... kind of a Longtail-and-Firepaw sort of thing, if you've read the books ^_^ As it turns out, Jason is off-the-charts brilliant... which goes a ways towards explaining why, as he puts it, "99% of the people in this school irritate me..." He also does a killer Christopher Judge impersonation...
... though I seriously doubt that he would ever contemplate watching Stargate SG-1. Ever. Because everybody knows that intergalactic travel through a wormhole is both physically and theoretically impossible. As are time travel and the existence of alternate realities. Oh, well...
So, anyway, this week, I had just finished teaching a lesson when a random fourth grader walked up to me and randomly handed me a meterstick. For no apparent reason. Just... thought I should hold onto it, I guess... o_O
"OK... I now have a big stick. Any idea what I'm supposed to do with it?"
Random Child shrugs, grins, and walks off. Which is typical, but more on Random-Child later on, I'm sure...
At this point, Jason leans over, gives me his Teal'c look, and remarks, "Now all you need is to learn how to speak softly..."
Gah! Roosevelt quotes from a fourth grader??? OMG... I love this kid! :-) (And for the record, yes, he was able to tell me which Roosevelt he was quoting...)
OK, so I guess I should post this while it's still relatively close to Thanksgiving... My original plan was to post after we got home from visiting my family, but we all know how planning goes... :-)
But anyway, here is my list of things I'm thankful for:
I'm thankful for the opportunity to finish school and get my teaching degree in a matter of months from now... even though I'm not always thrilled with the irritations (aka those really boring textbook note-taking assignments) and the minor potholes (aka "What do you mean I have to take Freshman Intro to Literature after all? The advising department told me that that was covered by my AA degree...") along the way.
In that vein, right now I'm thankful for my Science Methods textbook, which has provided me with almost immeasurable inspiration tonight... inspiration to clean the kitchen, inspiration to write in my blog, inspiration to hunt down and kill all of the new black mold colonies in all of the windows of the entire apartment, inspiration to do anything but read the 4 chapters that are due this week ^_^
I'm also thankful that MacBooks are actually pretty durable little guys... and that I realized that the back of the screen was a little too close to the cinnamon spice scented candles before it melted all the way through the shell o_O
I'm thankful for all of the friends I've made in my cohort at school over the past year and a half, and for the close-knit family that we've become. For the first time I can remember, I've finally found a school where I actually belong, and where I feel at home and wanted.
I'm thankful for Facebook, because it actually does help me to stay connected with people (something I'm really, really not good at in real-life)... and it helps me to keep on top of my hectic assignment calendar (read as "Hey, BTW, does anyone know which chapters we were supposed to read for class tomorrow?")
I'm thankful for my husband and my 3 kids, who keep me on my toes and remind me that I really don't have it all figured out yet :-) Humility is a wonderful thing... or so they keep telling me ^_^
I'm also thankful for my extended family, because they've taught me everything I know about being me. I'm convinced that family is God's way of teaching us to love like He does... You see, with friends, if they tick you off or let you down, you always have the choice of just walking away. With family, though, you're kind of stuck with them... no matter how screwed up they are or how badly they've blown it, they're still your family, and like them or not, you still love them. Of course, that whole part about being screwed up and blowing it applies just as much to you as to them... no matter what we've done or how much they might complain about us on Facebook, they still love us and welcome us back home each holiday.
Our family sees us at our most unlovely... when we're babies who've just pooped all over our best holiday dress, when we're five years old and throwing a tantrum because somebody had the audacity to put both green beans AND sweet potatoes on our plate-- and they're TOUCHING!!!!!--, when we're thirteen and refusing to come out of our rooms because we have to sit at the kids' table AGAIN... and on and on into the totally separate issues of adulthood. Yet in spite of all our issues, our family is still our family, and they still love us-- even when they may not like us very much at the moment. (Remind me to talk about the ginormous difference between "like" and "love" some other time... ^_^)
OK, so you may be saying, "Well, maybe in YOUR family... mine hasn't spoken to each other in years, and not just because of all the restraining orders and conditions of parole..." Still, hear me out... Even if your family says they hate you, or you hate them, or your parents do all their communicating through you, or if your family has disowned people, guess what? You still think about those people and have never forgotten them. Why? Because they're family, and somewhere, buried underneath all the drama and scar tissue, there will always be love there.
See, this is why I say that family is how God teaches us what His love is really like... We came from Him, because He made us. He loves us when we're at our crappiest, and when we've done everything possible-- whether we meant to or not-- to make Him give up on us. Even if we deny our relationship to Him and deny that He even exists, He still shows His love for us by giving us what we need to live and by putting a desire in our hearts to be loved by somebody. When we realize this and love Him back, things are wonderful... maybe not in the circumstances, but in our ability to deal with those circumstances. When we turn our backs on Him, things get messy... and then a lot of the time we go crying out to Him like teenagers calling their parents to bail them out of jail at 3AM ^_^ And then, even if He doesn't come and bail us out right away, we know He's there working on it and that He cares about us. So, it really isn't that big of a stretch to say that family is a lot like God after all :-)
Which leads to the biggest thing that I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving... I'm thankful to God for loving me and saving me when I was at my worst, for knowing how little I deserved His love and for still sending Jesus to die for me so that I could actually know Him as His Child and not just as a pawn in this world of His. I'm thankful for the life that He has given me... I only hope I can remember to be thankful more often than just once a year :-/
So, anyway, true to form, here's a musical interlude that kind of fits the theme and my mood... The song is "Faith My Eyes" from Caedmon's Call's album 40 Acres.
This past couple of months has been full of what Mark Lowry would call "life... more abundantly". What he means by that is that life is full of ups and downs... it's not a plateau by any means. And (further paraphrasing Lowry), if Jesus came so that we might have life more abundantly (John 10:10... pretty easy to remember, if I could only remember to remember it...), then this logically means that instead of life being happy little series of hills and valleys...
life should be more like this...
... crazy, chaotic, completely out of our control at all times.
This is how it works. I get that. It keeps things interesting.
Over the past couple of months, I started and finished my first bout of full-day student teaching... 3 weeks in a second grade classroom, which has in itself its very own microcosm of ups-and-downs. This was a higher point in the crazy roller coaster ride of the past few months... the kids were overall pretty sweet, they theoretically learned some math, and I got 27 construction paper "thank you" cards at the end of the last week (plus a Dutch Brothers coffee gift card from the teacher :-D) And now it's back to regular college classes for another 6 weeks or so... happy happy joy joy ^_^
Of course, there's no point whatsoever in mentioning everything that I wrote before that last paragraph unless I'm now going to talk about the abundant downside of life... but at least you can go into reading the rest of this post knowing that no matter how it might seem in the moment, there ARE still high points to life...
Recently, not one but two teenagers within our family's circle of friends have threatened or attempted to commit suicide. Both girls survived, but to say that they are "OK" would be a huge mistake and would actually be a lie. Physically, they look fine... "no permanent damage has been done" as the doctors say. But still, they're not OK.
I know because I've been there.
The biggest question that people keep asking is "Why?" As in, "Why would she do such a thing? I mean, look at her... she's beautiful, she's got such a nice family, she's smart, she's got friends who love her... There are thousands of people out there who would gladly trade their life for hers, or who would gladly take the years that she's willing to throw away... What on earth could make her think that suicide is ANY sort of an answer to the momentary troubles of this present life?"
Let me tell you why.
You may have a great family, with a mom and a dad and a nice house in the suburbs. Maybe your family has been attending the same church since you were a baby, or at least since you were old enough for Awanas. Maybe you went to the good schools in town, and maybe you've always gotten good grades and made everyone proud of you your whole life. Maybe you have awards on the wall for your art, or for your band solos, or for your writing... maybe your name has been in the paper as an Academic All-Star or as the top finisher in the long-jump or the 500m dash. Maybe your friends are all good kids with the same sorts of awards on their walls and the same badges on their Awanas vest.
Or, on the other hand, maybe your family is fractured beyond fixing. Maybe your mom and dad spend equal parts of their time fighting and making up, making peace and raising hell. Maybe your mom tells you that you're stronger than your past and your dad tells you to make sure you go farther than he did. Maybe life is tough, but you know that you'll make it if you're tougher. Maybe you've had to work hard for your good grades (or your not-so-good grades), and maybe you're just hanging onto your spot in the Jazz Band or on the soccer team through the kindness of people giving you rides to practices and events. Maybe you're even good enough to someday get a scholarship to a college that's somewhere far away from this godforsaken town you've landed in, and then you will make your own decisions and run your own life.
Or maybe your story is somewhere in the middle, or a mix of both.
Either way, it doesn't matter. Because none of it does.
Your church attendance, your Awanas awards... you know it's all a scam. Underneath, you know how messed up you-- and your family-- really are. You know that the thrill of winning first chair in the band or first place in the art fair will wear off after a day or two... and then everyone will expect you to top yourself next time. You know that no matter how tough you are, or how good you look on the outside, nothing can fix the things that are broken on the inside.
And frankly, you get tired of keeping up the act. It gets harder and harder each day to keep everyone from seeing the real you, from seeing how you're barely holding on, barely holding it together. You feel like one of those plate spinners in the circus... You have to keep all of the plates spinning, because if one plate falls to the ground and shatters, people will notice and you will be a failure. And you can't just stop, because then all of the plates will fall and shatter and no one will notice anything but your failure.
And when your life is reduced to the spinning of stupid china plates, you realize that none of it has any meaning. That your life is meaningless and empty. Nothing-- not your good grades, not your nice family, not your reputation or your status or your trophies-- has any worth or any value.
You have no value.
And when you have no value, your life has no value.
If your life has no value, it is insignificant.
If you're insignificant, then no one would notice if, suddenly, you weren't there.
So, you start dropping hints... "Imma gonna kill myself. I know where they keep the guns."
"What do you care... I'll be gone soon anyway."
"No one lives forever, you know..."
"I wish I were dead."
And then you wait and see what people do. You hope that it will make a difference, that someone will notice you and ask you how you're doing... and actually mean it. You hope that, finally, someone will look behind the mask and either help you spin the plates or take the plates from your hands before they fall.
But instead, they tell you you're just being melodramatic. You're just young, and you don't know yet that it will all pass. You have your whole life ahead of you... don't sweat the small stuff. When you're older, you will understand how silly your life right now really is, and you will look back on these days and laugh.
No one takes you seriously.
Unless you actually go through with it, that is.
And then, when they realize that they could have stopped you, but didn't... when they realize what a great and priceless treasure they let slip through their fingers... when they finally realize all that you could have been was lost because of their inaction... then they'll finally understand and take you seriously.
Death not only is supposed to make you a martyr, but it's also a way out of the meaningless endlessness of spinning all of those stupid china plates. It's a way to say, "I quit... this is stupid...", without anyone calling you a failure or a waste of space. It's a final rebellion against a system built on fakery and mindlessness: If you die young and leave a beautiful memory, you win.
Game over.
But... I'm still here to write this. Apparently, I was such a failure that I couldn't even succeed at suicide... which is the same spot that these two girls who have been weighing on my mind so heavily these past couple of days are in right now. What was supposed to be a final victory over an unfair world has now turned them into victims and prisoners and (according to their parents and the "professionals" who have been charged with watching over them) "persons who cannot be trusted."
But... I'm still here. Let me tell you why.
This life we live... all of the status, all of the activities, all of the homework and practices and awards... in and of themselves, yes, they are meaningless. No matter how much we do, or how well we do it, or how many awards we get, there will always be something left undone, or something we're not perfect at, or someone else who tops us.
All of our nice houses, or our nice families, or our nice friends... Some of that niceness is a facade, just like the siding on a house or the paint on a car. It makes it look better on the outside, but it doesn't do a thing to fix the rusted engine, or the leaky pipes, or even the squeaky garbage disposal.
Without a real meaning to life, life is meaningless. Without a good reason to spin those plates, there's no point to spinning them. In other words, if you're thinking your life has no meaning, no purpose... you may be right.
Which is as scary as standing on a cliff and getting ready to jump.
But... what if there is a meaning to life? What if there is a reason to get up and go out and be?
What if you are valuable because, out of all of the possible combinations of eggs and sperm and all of the situations in the world, someone chose the specific time and place and matter to create you? What if you are not a mistake, not an oversight, not an accident... What if you were chosen to be born into this world, to live in these times, to know these people... for a specific purpose?
Think about it this way. Think of everything you did today, all of the choices you made and the choices you didn't make, all of the things you did and the things you forgot to do, all of the things that were awesome and the things you wish you could take back... somehow, all of those random bits of circumstance ended up with you sitting here, reading these words right now, and thinking about a couple of girls who you've probably never met and who probably won't even read these words themselves.
If that ain't random, I don't know what is :-)
But I actually don't believe in randomness. Because when I was at the point where my life had no reason to go on, and where I figured I had nothing left to lose by committing suicide, I discovered that there really is a God, and that He really does love me... not because I was an amazing plate spinner, but simply because He chose to create me in the first place.
I had been told the "good news" countless times by countless Christians growing up... but not one of them could give me a reason why they thought that their God would love me. Sometimes their spiel was, "God loves you... Won't you make Him happy by getting saved today?"-- as if God's love was a limited-time, call-now-while-the-operators-are-still-standing-by sort of offer.
Other times their routine was, "God would hate for you to be cast into hell... If you choose Jesus today, God won't have to do that to you..." Which always made me imagine God standing there, wringing His hands and waiting indecisively for me to let Him off the hook on the whole casting-into-Hell-business.
And then there was always this one: "God loves you. He sent His son to die for your sins. If you ask Jesus into your heart today, all your sins will be taken away and you will live happily with Him for all eternity." To which I had one question... Why? OK, two questions, really... Will Jesus make the kids at school quit picking on me, or make my mom and dad stop fighting, or give me an immunity to head lice? Which is actually more like four questions, but you get my point...
By the time I was 16 or so, I had my reaction to these oh-so-concerned soul winners down pretty pat.
Them: "Hello there, young lady... We're from that (fill-in-the-denomination-here) church just down the street. Do you know for sure if you died today that you would go to Heaven?" Me: "I don't believe in Heaven." Them: (Pause... for some reason, this must never have been the next line in any of the scripts they rehearsed back at the church.)"Well... if you don't believe in Heaven, you'll end up in Hell, then. You wouldn't want that, now, would you?" Me: "Don't believe in Hell either." Them: (Another pause... usually accompanied with frowns and blinking eyes as well.) "Well... if you don't accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior, I guess you'll end up in Hell, then. Have a nice day!"
Which always made me laugh... If their God was so concerned about me that He sent them to tell me about Him and rescue me from the eternal torments of a lake of fire and sulfur, why were they always so quick to leave me once their script ran out?
But...
God-- the real, true God who really did create the universe, and who really did create me-- is much, much bigger than any of the so-called missionaries who tried to boost their own spiritual self-esteem by converting one more angry, hurting teenager for their church. God really did send His son Jesus to die for me... not because I owed Him one for creating me in the first place, but because He loved me and wanted me to return to Him and be a part of His family. God already knew all about my screw-ups-- after all, if He didn't, then He certainly couldn't have been much of a God at all-- but He also already knew about why I was so screwed up in the first place. God already knew about all of the people I had hurt... and about all of the people who had hurt me. He already knew that I couldn't keep the plates spinning... and He knew which ones were about to fall.
God knew all of this all along... Even when I didn't.
All I knew was that I was at the end of everything I had, and it wasn't enough. All I knew was that I had nothing left to lose, nothing left worth keeping, and nothing left to live for. I figured that, if this "God" or "Jesus" or "Whoever" was real, then great... Maybe He could save me from myself. And if He wasn't... then I was no worse off than I already was, and suicide would still be there tomorrow.
So I kind of put it to God this way: "OK, Jesus... fine. Save me... I dare you."
For the first time in years, I found peace. And for the first time in four days, I was able to sleep.
The next day, I woke up. Nothing in my circumstances had changed... same apartment with the leaky window, same crummy minimum-wage job, same classes that I was struggling to care about and pass, same insecurities about who I was supposed to be and whether I was doing any of it right.
But for some strange reason, now I had hope. And that was what made all the difference.
And so... I'm still here. And now I can see that God let me go through all of the crap in middle and high school-- including my 6 suicide attempts-- so that I could stand here, on the other side of darkness, and say, "Hey... I'm still here. Let me help you across."
As I was thinking about what to write here and driving my daughter back from Youth Group, I heard this song, and it just seems to fit... Yet another example of the Randomness That Isn't that is God ^_^
