176 days in

The school year is like the baseball season - it seemingly goes on forever. And also like baseball, the significance of any one day or game really seems fairly meaningless. It's in the day to day routine of working on the skills or standards as we call them, the patient but confident building of abilities and molding of character that things happen. As a teacher now for a while and a pastor for much longer, I've learned the routines and accepted them.

When a batter is in a slump, one of the first things he does is to go back and watch film of when he was in the groove. If it's a really bad slump, he might even reach out to an old coach. I've read of stars who were struggling calling in high school coaches.

When a teacher can't reach a student, they do check to see if they are teaching the fundamentals well. They examine their interactions with the child, and talk with others who interact as well. They try other approaches. They seek to find a motivating tool to use to get the student to perform in a way that will help them grow.

176 days in, after doing all of that and much more, after being at the point of frustration many many times, I think it happened.

I was hugged by a nine year old boy.

He's so very bright. I have never had a child who has asked so many questions that were worthy of adult conversations. Of course most all of those occurred when we were discussing something else, but...

Yet he is always on his own path, that only occasionally coincides with what all the adults who want desperately to see him grow have planned.

But Friday, after a typical day of trying to encourage him to persevere in doing his best and finding him doing far less, we had a conversation. Nothing unusual on my side - another try at getting him to see that if he'd set his sights on a goal and work hard until he got there, all the adults who care so much about him would not only rejoice in a way the heavens would hear, but he would find that all the structures we've constructed to keep him in line would fall away, like training wheels taken off a bicycle do once the skills are mastered.

He listened and went back to work.

Then right before he left, he came up to my side and gave me a hug before he left.

176 days in.

Teaching...

It made me wonder... "Lord Jesus, how in the world do you put up with us?"

"Just like you said."

I'm a man who believes in grace and mercy - and who draws strength from those deep wells more often than most realize. As a pastor of a smaller church family that's seen its share of challenges, staying focused on Jesus' love has meant that when the storms come I know they come with needed rain and that they will not last forever. God loves me and works everything together for my good - even if it doesn't feel like "good" at the time. And that same beacon keeps me straight at school too.

Every year as a teacher is different. Obviously there are new children and new parents to know and relate to. Less obvious to the outside world are the changes in what you teach and how you teach. Let's just say we are in a time of extremely rapid change that's affecting everyone.

Teaching relies on a lot of skills, but really good teaching has that and more - good teachers have a character that lets them sway with the wind but stay rooted in their confident belief that if they do the right things every day, children will come through their classroom and leave as better students and better people. Like my work as a pastor though, that belief is tested by the times when you can't see the change happen, or when you look out and see people headed the wrong way despite everything you invested and prayed for.

So you learn to pray for rays of sunlight in the dark days - for glimpses of God's mercy and grace. You say things to Him like "If I could just see one thing go right today..."

In the avalanche of prayers that reach His ears, I'm sure that seems trivial. But absent confidence, teaching becomes something of a roller coaster ride depending on immediate success to keep you going. But this time of year, 12 weeks in, immediacy isn't always there.

Our awards ceremony comes for the first nine weeks and I have only one student who qualifies. Most classes have 6 or more. Four of my kids missed it by one point, but they missed it. I'm trying to shake the feeling that somehow I failed.

So I'm sitting in the audience after my turn, watching the 4th graders troop across the stage and applauding when they do, but harder when my kids from last year do. About halfway through,I notice a kid who had the teacher next door to me last year made it. He struggled last year for a lot of reasons out of his control, and a couple of times his teacher had asked me to talk to him. I tried to let him know that it wouldn't always be that hard, and the best thing he could do was do his best at the things he could control. Then I had him look directly at me when I told him that I believed he could and should be an honors student.

And now he was. That was cool to see, but then it happened.

As the 4th graders filed past me, returning to their seats, the boy stopped in front of me and said, "I did it Mr. Wilson. Just like you said I could."

I replied, "Just like I knew you could. Great job!"

A sense of warmth and love filled my soul. I needed that. I had prayed for that.

Thank you God. You were there for me, just like You said.

Are There Many Of You?

During the first week of school in Okaloosa County, teachers are required to eat lunch with their students in the cafeteria. It's a great time to get to know your new charges on a personal level. Most days now, "lunch" consists of my wolfing down something while simultaneously working on getting ready for Math after lunch, but maybe I need to eat with them every once in a while just to experience something like that which happened that first week.

It's the very first day, and I get my lunch and sit on the corner of two tables, between a boy wearing a ninja turtle shirt and sporting a green mohawk on my right and a sweet freckle-faced little girl with ribbons in her hair on my left.

At first the boy dominates my attention as we talk ninjas, turtles, and ninja turtles. We disagree over which is the coolest, but do so agreeing to revisit once I learn more. It's a slam dunk that I will learn more during the year, as TMNT trivia along with Pokemon traits are hot topics for third grade boys.

Then the little girl tugs on my sleeve and gets my attention. Looking up, she says, "Mr. Wilson, you are my first boy teacher. Are there many of you?"

It took everything I had to keep from bursting into laughter. It was as if she was studiously observing an animal so rare that just being in its presence was a treat. I was trying to decide whether a white rhino or unicorn would be the best avatar when I replied, "No, there aren't many like me in elementary schools, not many at all. But I LOVE teaching third graders like you!"

She grinned from ear to ear, and I looked in the other direction and every one of the others was grinning back at me too.

Tonight, I'm tired and cranky after spending hours planning and grading. I gave everything I had to give this morning at church, enjoyed a great lunch with friends from New Hope, and took a quick nap in the afternoon. But the next 6 hours were intense work, and it wears on you.

So I chose to write this so I could focus on why I teach.

God put me there to make a difference. And I believe I make one.

A rare one. :)

Why I Love America

Our school (Eglin Elementary, on Eglin AFB) had a wonderful Veteran's Day walk Tuesday. The whole school went over to the All Wars Memorial on base, and when the buses parked, the kids and their parents (many of whom were in uniform) walked together to the memorial. The program was great. In preparation that morning, I had the kids writing about "Why I Love America". They worked for a while, and as I walked around and looked at their work, most centered on what they owned - X-Box 360, or what they could do "play video games, eat McDonald's" etc. A few said "freedom."

But not nearly enough.

So I got them all together and explained that when I was in elementary school, I was asked to recite something in a veteran's day program.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.


I then launched into an explanation of just why out of everything I knew or experienced of America in my life what I learned when I was about their age had stuck with me. I wanted to share it today with you. This isn't the way I explained it to 3rd and 4th graders, but my readership doesn't hold a high percentage of that demographic. :) So for you, gentle reader, here's why I love America.


We - that was huge, because until those words were penned, there was no "We", only a collection of states born from different motives and filled with people determined to live their individual lives for their own reasons. "We" was the binding principle that said to the world "We may all be individuals, but when it comes to knowing, believing, and defending at the cost of our lives if necessary - "We" are one.


Hold these truths - In the era we live in, people feel free to live their own truth. They pick it from here or there and preach toleration of whatever anyone chooses to believe. At the birth of our country, out of all the "truths" that were out there, our forefathers decided to proclaim to the world that this nation would live out a creed higher in purpose than just making a living.

That all men are created equal - I know, I know - maybe the first thing you think of is how that lofty goal took many years and the shedding of thousands of lives in a civil war to approach. And maybe you think we still aren't there. But for a nation whose inhabitants came from the rigid caste system of Europe to write this into their founding document sent to the world as why they were forming a new country - it was explosive. It marked out one corner of the world where freedom was real - or would be.

That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights - "lex rex" - the King is the law- meant that a man's rights were whatever the King said they were, or whatever the government said they were. This phrase places man's rights beyond reach of King, parliament or Congress, grounding them in God. Again, the mere idea is so far beyond anything that had ever come before in Europe, when the common man read this he knew there was one place in the world where a king's or nobleman's whims held no power over them.

"...that among those are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." - We frequently focus on the three mentioned, but should also notice the founders knew enough to know there were more than just those three. "Among those" means that while America wanted to let the world know that those three - "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" were at the core of what America aspired to be, there were things already acknowledged and truths accepted across cultures that would be part of America's genus as well. If we guarantee that rights are "inalienable" because they are given by God, we do not have to name them all.

The uniqueness of these phrases, regardless of the imperfectness of how we lived it out is why I love America. And I learned that in elementary school.

If we aren't inspiring kids today to remember what makes America great, the loss will be... everything.

Week Two

Everyone knows the opening line... "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times." Maybe the reason it sticks in our memories is that it happens oh so often - the highest of highs placed cheek and jowl next to the worst. "Flying high in April, and shot down in May" opines one famous song after beginning with "That's life. That's what people say."

Well this guy can bring some fresh evidence to those thoughts.

Just finished my second week of full time teaching a combined class of 3rd and 4th graders and Charles Dickens has got nothing on me. There were times these past two weeks that it seemed as if we were going to race to the top together. And there were other times I wondered how it was going to work. As a teacher, I have to remind myself that these are kids who are wholly and dearly loved by God and made in His image. When I relate to them, I am in a sense that "pencil in the hand of God" that Mother Teresa so famously wrote about and emulated with her life. What I do matters. It matters more than a grade on a paper or an inscription in that infamous "permanent record." So whether the child is "full of grace" or "full of woe", they deserve everything I have to give.

The week began with a teacher workday and a holiday for the kids. That coupled with a half-day workshop I had to attend on Tuesday morning did not help us launch well. Tuesday afternoon was then turned into a review, and we didn't really get moving until Wednesday. But by Friday, we were right where we should have been, and I think they left excited about what next week would be bringing. We started a class-wide project on the earliest Floridians that had them racing to research. :) Awesome to see. I set up a special search page for them to use and they found so much information they wanted to print out and read later I realized I needed two printers to keep up. Here's the link for the page: http://searchteam.com/search_1_2621_6543_Early_Florida

I'm hoping to gradually increase their use of technology for learning gains, and this is only the beginning. Each child will produce an "e-book" using Power Point as their work product. Hopefully they will be content and image rich and really help them learn about part of Florida's History that at least in my research is incredibly interesting.

My mentor teacher Mrs. Hudson and our principal Dr Combs both gave me the gift of their time this week as they worked to help me become the teacher I want to be. The cohort of teachers at Eglin is so supportive of each other that I truly feel blessed to be placed here. I'm learning every single day.

I want these kids to look back and say "Mr. Wilson believed in me." But more than that, I want them to believe in themselves.

So goodbye week two. Let's roll.

THEY are the 1%

Tuesday evening, I spent a couple hours of my life meeting and greeting with some of the forgotten 1% of America. It was open house at Eglin Elementary. They came in smiling, couple after young couple with their children around them. They represented all kinds of ethnic backgrounds, all sorts of levels of education, and all ranks.

They are the 1%.

They are America's military families.

Eglin Elementary sits on the largest Air Force base in the United States. Most of the children that come there are dependents of military families. Due to Eglin's multi-service nature, we see children whose parents serve in every branch of service. Monday night, I met two families who serve in the 7th Special Forces group. They had just moved down from Ft Bragg NC recently. They were a bit concerned about whether their children would catch up, since we start school much earlier here. One of the things most of America forgets about when they think about the military - if they think about them at all - is the effects on the families the last ten years of war and the deployments have had on the children. Simple things like whether a child is going to be okay in school don't need to be a worry for someone who is putting his/her life on the line. But it can be.

I met a young Marine family in which the dad was working hard to finish Explosive Ordinance School. Surrounded by four children and his wife, he was saying how happy his kids were at school. All the while I was thinking how proud I was to serve as their teacher. Then I met a Navy Chief who was also part of the EOD community. She was a very articulate Mom who stressed that she wanted to see her child succeed. "Just let me know if there's anyway I can help." I couldn't help but think that many of the people in the room had done more than I would ever know to help me already.

In encounter after encounter, I met people who were proud parents wanting the best for their children and eager and willing to assist me in every way they could.

In this tumultuous time, where pundits and politics are cutting America up into percentages, I want to add this. Less than 1% of Americans are serving in the military today.

And we, the 99% have no idea what that 1% gives up to do so.

I was blessed to see those parents Tuesday night. But all America is blessed by them and their compatriots.

THEY are the 1%.

Certified!

I passed the K-6 certification test yesterday!

It was "high-stakes" testing yesterday for me. Not just due to the $200 price of admission, but since the door to the classroom was padlocked until I passed the test, there was some pressure. Yes I had just completed a teacher education program with straight "A's." Yes I had purchased two study guides and reviewed them for the last month.

But after substitute teaching this spring, and the experiences I had in student teaching, I am very aware - more than ever before of the stakes involved. If "Johnny and Jennie" don't learn, everything starts to unravel. Their lives and the lives they will touch, certainly. But beyond that, our society as a whole. We need educated citizens who understand what their role in this "grand experiment" is. Those who teach them ought to be highly motivated and highly skilled.

The test definitely spanned a wide range of topics and information. There were a lot of thoughtful questions about strategies you might use with students presenting with different needs. I liked that, because it was the reality in every classroom I taught in this year. There were some good questions about civics and government, about real world use of math and science - overall I thought it was harder than I thought it would be going in. And that's a good thing.

There are more tests to come. The General Knowledge test, the Professional Educator's Test, and possibly the Social Studies or English subject test. But since I want to teach in Elementary, the K-6 was the ONE I needed NOW to be  "hireable." I expect to receive certification in Business Education and Social Studies 6-12 based on transcript review, but my heart is in the lower grades. We'll see.

The last six months of work, school, substitute and student teaching combined to really stress me, Bunny, and our relationship. We made it through thanks to an enduring love and the grace of God. Bunny was so supportive and encouraging even when it was really rough. We hope to be able to squeeze a quick get-away in before school starts so we can stand in a vacation-location and just be a couple again. We LOVE those times when we remember just how deep and intense our love for one another is. There has been no prayer I've prayed more over the years than one of thanks to God for sending me her.

So dear reader, one more hurdle has been overcome. Now lets pray there's a principal out there in Okaloosa County that wants to hire me. Thank you for all your help (I'm looking at you Amy Anderson and Diane Weech) and prayers.

My Next Book To Read

One of the things I have loved about my dive into elementary education has been the rediscovery of children's books. I LOVE THEM! Since it's been a while since Sean was listening to me or Bunny read to him, and since no other munchkins are around us much, I haven't had a chance to read anything other than adult materials. But now that I'm back into the lives of children, I get to read some awesome books. I think "What Are You So Grumpy About?" by Tom Lichtenheld will prove to be one of them

Well, this one may be helpful not just for the child, but for the adult who reads it to them.

And particularly for crabby folks like me. 

The author writes: "Every day can be a good day if you know what you are grumpy about." Know your problem. That seems to be wise counsel. Then the appendix lists "Sure cures for grumpiness." $11.19 sure seems cheaper than anger management therapy. :) Just looking at the illustrations makes me smile. For teachers, there is a pdf available with ideas for using the book in the classroom that got me excited just thinking about the kid's reactions. The author believes that telling a good story with a moral lesson woven in it is the key to reaching kids. 

“… any ‘moral’ in my books is the by-product of an interesting story. My goal is to do books that kids are naturally attracted to, because kids can sniff-out a lecture a mile away and it sends them running. So, I try not to do books that are blatantly message-driven.” 

For children of all ages (including crabby pastors), this book seems like a winner. 

The Minority Report

I've never been a minority before... in a big way I mean. Everyone feels like they are at times - I've been the only kid with asthma and allergies back in 4th grade, or that kid that lives in the country, even the kid with all 64 Crayolas. Not really much of a minority report, is it?

But in every class of teaching, I'm a minority.

Because I'm a man.

In one class last Saturday, I was it. In two more, there were two of us. Out of two dozen or so.

The number of men teachers has been dropping steadily for years. Right now it's less than 9% in elementary education and a bit more in secondary.

I don't get it. ABC did a study a couple years ago and listed these reasons why men shy away from teaching.


"The first reason is stereotypes. People believe men aren't nurturing. The second reason is fear of accusations of abuse. People are afraid men are going to harm children. And the third reason is low status, low pay," Brian Nelson of Menteach.org said.


So abandoning the profession - what has that done?


Left a hole.


"Children are no dummies," says Nelson. "When they see no men in a school, they get a message. And that message is that men don't care or men don't belong here."


Well I think they do. Men matter. The great female teachers I have met realize that too. One of them told me "we need more male teachers" this week although when I told her I wanted to teach 4th or 5th grade, she said (being a 5th grade teacher) "Well you can't have my job." LOL


I don't know how you change this, especially with the changes education is undergoing right now. While education used to be a profession appreciated by the average American, for whatever reason it doesn't seem to be so now. Whether it's about unions, tenure or whatever, I think America will return to appreciation for teachers. But the low starting salary and uncertain future may continue to make men shy away from choosing education as a career. That will be America's loss.


Men matter.