cairns

When a skilled and caring teacher see a person with less skill or heart mishandling a child, it can be depressing.  Everything in the quality teacher’s training, heart, and soul cries out that it doesn’t have to be that way.  They know that children can be lovingly held accountable to achieve excellence in both academics and behavior.  They know that beating a child down with words or actions has never lifted up a healthy adult; neither the adult whom that child will become nor the teacher trying to establish their superiority.  And the pain of having to observe such a wrong can go deep down into the hidden parts of your being to hide as fatigue, illness, or depression.

OR, when a skilled and caring teacher sees a child receiving less than the love their place in the Kingdom of God deserves, they can look up in gratitude and realize they have a reason to exist that day.  They are in the presence of a child who needs them.  They can be the difference between a child’s day of torment, or a child’s finding a place of refuge.  They can participate in the work of heaven by living out their calling with new evidence of the importance of their presence in that place, at that time.

Until the day when The Teacher holds class for all of us little ones forever, may every holy servant of the Truth know without question that they are loved by the One who declared that the Kingdom belongs to children — loved beyond their wildest imagining and given as a gift of light in dark places and dark times.  May they rest in the simple knowledge that a very small light changes everything in the darkest of places.  May they know that the arm they place around a wounded child is met by the hand of God.

peace

Comments Off

It was a good, but very emptying, day with the Masters class today working on the course nobody wants to teach.  Students routinely give faculty lower evaluations after this course.  My last group did.  But, I think it is one of our most fundamental offerings and gladly accepted this request to teach it again two hours from home.  Helping teachers develop eyes and hearts for the unity in uniqueness among children is more important to me than how to do a little more math or English.

But, it is getting harder and harder for me to do, and I didn’t see it coming.  I celebrate diversity.  I see the glory of God in it.  I love to discuss it and explore ways that we all can grow past where each of us now is in worshiping God more by better loving the wild variety in creation.  But, today it was almost too emotional to handle.

It is no longer an academic subject to me.  Any pretense I ever had of objectivity or old school detached professionalism has been stripped away.  Every single topic brings floods of memories of specific children, the people who hurt them, and the ones who loved them.  Every attempt by a teacher in the class to become more open, see more fully, and love kids more deeply brings a wave of awareness of God’s love for the one allowing themselves to grow.

Some of it is just too deep and powerful to share in any normal academic way.  Now, I just have to decide whether its time to stop teaching it, or whether I am finally becoming qualified to start.

peace

Comments Off

Tomorrow starts my final week with this year’s crew of elementary students.  I hope I have served them well.

We will finish the final pages of The Last Battle having read our way through all seven books as we moved through the year.  I hope I can handle it.  The final pages always get to me.  The longing of my heart is contained in those paragraphs.  Still, they cause me to reflect.  CS Lewis, himself an educator, uses the words ‘the term is over the holidays have begun’ (Perhaps paraphrased by my memory) to describe leaving the Shadowlands for true life in Aslan’s land which is the reality beyond all realities.  I know the feeling of joy when school is out for an unexpected snow day or the long awaited summer.

But, I hope my little friends will feel more than set free.  I hope they will have experienced reality and love in our classroom.  I hope they will not leave with the same degree of joy with which I plan to eventually run further up and further in to Aslan’s country!  It is sad to me that we have turned learning, the pursuit of truth, into schooling which makes people miserable enough to compare leaving us to going to heaven.

I don’t think we have changed it much since Lewis’ time.  In many ways our current reform efforts are making it worse.  But, I thank God for even the exasperating days with my y0ung friends and fellow learners.  And, I raise to the throne with gratitude every other teacher who daily walks the presence of the divine into the lives of their young charges right here, right now.  Finish well.

peace,

Greg

1 Comment »

I got a thank you note from a mom.  I appreciate it, I really do.  But, still it bothers me.

See, all I did was make arrangements for her daughter to stay in my room while I take the rest of the kids to the bus.  She waits in my room.  The other daycare kids get to their assigned places and calm down.  Then she has at least a chance to join them without getting in trouble.  I know why she and her mom appreciate it, she has been in trouble in daycare a lot lately.  But, all I did was give her permission to sit in my room a few extra minutes!  Today she even straightened the place up for me, and I didn’t ask!

I appreciate it anytime somebody in our rush-about culture takes time to say thank you.  I just wish acts that simple and small were too common  among those who take care of kids to rate a thank you!

peace

1 Comment »

The kids did great.  They took the math test with confidence in spite of teachers all over the place saying that the material covered is too hard.  Just took their time and answered everything they knew.  I hate doing tests when we could be learning so much instead, especially since we already know who can do what. But, the kids took it right in stride.

Near the end of the second session today, I looked over at one of the girls.  She was frustrated, but working until she was sure she had done all she knew, then switched to reading a library book.  At the beginning of the year, she froze up completely when confronted with tests or difficult assignments.  Now she competes with the identified gifted kids.  Forget the fact that others have more than she does, she is becoming resilient.  I know what I need to know.  She is going to be fine.

We finished up, had lunch, discussed serious issues of the Vietnam War (and Sam’s book), then started playing with Newton’s laws of motion.  My little charges were engaged, interested, and shifted into full gear on each part of the day.  What a gift to hang out with kids!

peace

1 Comment »

I read the first chapter of Lewis’ Caspian to my fourth graders.  We just have this book and Final Battle to go.  Also read and gave them copies of James Whitcomb Riley’s “Little Orphant Annie” as the storm darkened and the wind blew.  Spent time talking with them about how to thrive and avoid hassle in public school environments.  Confronted a little girl who thought lying followed by throwing a crying fit was the best response to being caught with gum, and two little boys exchanging a toy right after we talked about staying with the rules.  They really do not understand what a big deal future teachers will make of such small things as they transition from being considered “cute little kids” to adolescents.  Two more identical toys materialized on my desk after school! Ha! They made me laugh with that!  Also, answered a student’s questions about how there can be acid in rain.  Helped them work through how to think through puzzling situations by asking me questions about a murder in Uganda….and laughed with them all as we braved the wind on the way to the busses.

It was all important.  Most of it was fun.  All of it was loving and helping them grow.  And none of it is in the damn standards or on the minimum competency exam the public believes is guiding us to excellence.  Only teach what will be tested?  I think not.  Fire me for teaching too much.

peace

Comments Off

Little kids who only get yelled at all day having one day of being somebody noticed, cared about, and in the process behaving.  Little guy who is very bright and very bored noticed and correctly identified before lunch while an experienced faculty member tells me how much of a problem the same quiet polite young black is.  Plans that would bore a slug, completed and surpassed to engage kids in fun and learning.  A whole room full of kids who are a problem to everyone who is on the same hall everyday, behaving acceptably all day.  A very low functioning little boy who gets yelled at by teachers and picked on by kids made to feel noticed and cared for by a simple seat change, and walking next to the teacher to get to the bus with no more problems.  All of that in just today!

Years in school, enough hours for a doctorate, still trying to complete a bachelor’s, will have to do a transition to teaching degree second because of standards, rules, procedures in teacher training to mirror “no child.”  Its such a waste.  Its so wrong that we do not allow university professors to recognize and groom talent quickly into the classroom.  Sure, she made a lot of her own problems, but once she figured it out, the whole system is roadblocks, and tuition on top of tuition and more time…

At least while she is subbing, a few more kids get a day or two of humane treatment and quality instruction.  Maybe the rest of us will come to our senses before too many more years and too many more kids go by.

Count me very proud right now.

peace

Comments Off

Introduced my little fourth graders to the wonderful world of creating Math expressions today.  We really did have fun and they are asking me to take them into more algebra than required by the end of the year!  But, as they worked on their independent assignments, the chorus began.  “Dr. Brown, I’m having trouble with…I don’t understand number…what are they asking me for on number…Dr. Brown what about number…”  And of course the same problem numbers were repeated endlessly as each child finally got ready for that item on tehir own paper.  It didn’t matter that I had already explained that problem six times, it didn’t become important until it was their next problem.

It made me picture Jesus and the disciples walking along the road with similar questions repeated over and over.  That was a happy thought.  I like to think of my little charges as God seed capable of becoming great in spite of their current growing points.

Then it reminded me of the church’s explanation for a recent personnel decision, “We determined over time that there just wasn’t the correct skill set match for the position we had hired the person to do.”  I will spare everyone the tirade about what discredited part of old business theory that fits and how it allows good people to treat other human beings as disposable cogs.  But, what about Jesus and that crowd of 12?

What skill set could he possibly have used to select these guys?  Hot tempers? Dense beyond belief in the face of continuous teaching and miraculous demonstrations?  Selfish ambition and greed?  They certainly deomnstrated all of these things.  And, I just cannot picture Him sitting them down and saying, “I am so happy you left family and home to follow me, but I have determined that you just do not have the skill set appropriate for changing the world.  I am going to have to let you go.  But, please stay true to the ministry and continue to folk how wonderful we are!”

No, He knew something greater and beyond.  He knew Himself, the Father, and the Spirit.  And He saw these slow learning, competitive, friends as they would be when transformed by the effect of the divine invasion into their lives.  Skill set, no, eternal heavenly power all His and given in order to transform those He chose into the great Ones He had created them to be.

I want to teach and lead like that!  WIth all thanks to Jesus (and Blackaby), “What is the Father doing in this life?  How do I partner with that?  What is the unbelievable potential of this person beyond my obvious and temporal observations?”  Let it be and to God be the glory!

peace

Comments Off

S, thank you.  L, thank you as well.  D, D, and B thank you for being part of the place we had that made this place possible.  As I was scanning and uploading this image it occurred to me.  This is and will most probably remain the pinnacle of my teaching career.

The experiences I had that day right where this picture was taken are also now a major metaphor of my current life.  All I have most of the time or truly need is strength and sight for one more rock, one more step, and a clear marker in the distance.

peace

3 Comments »