This Becoming is Harder Than it Seems

I decided a couple of weeks ago that I wanted to see what music I would hear if I let randomness decide.  I put my iPod on shuffle and left it there.  As a result, I've heard some Christmas songs and skipped through a few things I don't remember purchasing.  But I've also heard some songs that I love and had forgotten about.  

One of them is a Michael W. Smith song called "Place in This World."  If you are younger than I am, you may not even know this song as it came out in 1990.  I had it on cassette tape back then and listened to it until I wore that part of the tape out.  It had become clear that I was not going to be an astronaut as I was already taller than their height limit with no sign of slowing down.  I had not yet found my love of physics, so I didn't know what the future looked like.  The line in this song that most resonated with me was "A heart that's hopeful, a head that's full of dreams, but this becoming is harder than it seems."

As I listened to it in my car this morning, I had many of the same thoughts I had back in the early 90s.  I don't know what happens next at 47 any more than I did at 17.  (And it is all the more jarring after 21 years of knowing exactly what I would be doing from day to day and year to year.)  I have to trust God for that every bit as much now as I did then.  And, I also thought of my students.  They are in the same position I was at that age.  Modern life doesn't make it easier; in fact, in many ways, it makes it harder.  They have more access to information, which seems like it would be helpful; but it can bring about a form of cognitive overload called choice fatigue.  Previous generations may have had to choose between college and a job or the military.  If they went to college, they likely had only one or two options.  Now, students apply to many colleges, and if the one they most want defers them, they are left with many choices they consider disappointments.  They are told all of their eggs rest in this basket even though we know God's plan for them will not be thwarted by one decision.  It's a lot of pressure, and it is worse than it was when we were kids.  Some of them become practically paralyzed with indecision.

If you know a teenager, pray for them.  "This becoming is harder than it seems" is just as true now as it was when Michael W Smith wrote it.  And they likely still feel this:

"If there are millions down on their knees

Among the many, can You still hear me?
Hear me asking, "Where do I belong?"
Is there a vision that I can call my own?
Show me, I'm

Looking for a reason

Roaming through the night to find
My place in this world
My place in this world
Not a lot to lean on
I need Your light to help me find
My place in this world."

Pray for them to know God can still hear them.  Pray for to find that reason.  Pray for God to give them the light they need.  Pray for them to learn to trust Him in the process.

RFK Camp Big Ideas

This week was my 16th year of Royal Family Kids Camp.  Because they rotate through 5 themes (interrupted every 4 years by the Olympic theme), this is the third time I have experienced the year in which the Bible story is Joseph.  It is, hands down, my favorite theme.  That's not to negate the years in which we teach campers about Esther or David or Daniel, but there is something about the Joseph story that resonates with these kids because Joseph was part of an extremely dysfunctional family - I mean, his brothers made him a victim of human trafficking, for heaven's sake.  It is also because it is my favorite collection of Big Ideas (that's the name for each day's takeaway from the drama, the story, the object lesson, and the puppets).  All of the Big Ideas are great, but there is just something special about the collection of Big Ideas in the Joseph year.  They are important for our campers because of their life experiences, but I'm writing about them today because they are important for EVERYONE.

God is Trustworthy, Even When Things Are Hard - The connection to our campers is obvious here, but this year, it struck me more than ever what an important message this is for all of us.  During the pandemic lockdowns, I wrote to each of my students.  I wrote this exact thing in the cards I sent (although I think I added the word faithful).  Life is often hard, and being a Christian doesn't always make it easier; in fact, Jesus warned us that most of the time, following Him would make things harder.  Yet, we know that God is sovereign, which should be comforting because it frees us from the need to understand everything.  We can trust that he knows how the puzzle pieces fit together when we can't see the top of the box.

God Helps Me Make Choices - Kids from abusive backgrounds have few choices.  They didn't choose to be removed from their homes.  They don't choose to be moved in the middle of the night from one placement to another, and they certainly wouldn't choose to have it happen 8 times in two years, which one of our kids has had.  I'm not sure they even choose to come to camp.  However, like everyone, they will be faced with choices in their lives, and they need training in making them.  To that end, we have structured camp to give them tons of choices - about food, activities, what colors they want to make things, whether they want to swim in the deep end of the pool, and a million other things.  But we also talk to them about their biggest choice, whether to respond to God's Word.  And while we encourage them to do that, we know that only God can draw them to that choice.  This is true for all of us.  As we decide how to respond to God and his Word, he will help us make those choices. 

God Has Great Plans for Everyone - Before leaving for camp on Saturday, I asked a friend to pray for us and messaged him with some specifics.  One of the things I put in that message was about the cognitive effect of abuse and neglect.  It puts our kids in a constant state of alert for danger.  When your brain is in a perpetual state of fight or flight, there is little to no capacity to think about the future.  When our ancestors were running from a sabertooth tiger, they didn't think about what they would do the next day or what story they would tell around the fire.  They worried about surviving the moment.  While I thought a lot about the future as a child, hoping first to be an astronaut and then a vet, a pharmacist, and a physical therapist, until God finally showed me that I was going to teach physics, our campers don't necessarily have the cognitive capacity for that.  The activities we do for them often involve planning and overcoming challenges.  We want them to have a mental imprint of building something out of wood and then designing how to paint it.  We want them to look back on being nervous about riding a horse and then having the feeling of accomplishment after having done it.  We want them to discover a potential skill in engineering or artistry or sports and then have conversations with them about how they might use that skill in the future because we want them to think about having a future.  

But just yesterday, I was having an online conversation with a former student about God's plans.  He had posted a rather nihilistic image about how we work 8 hours to live for 4 and how we work 6 days to live for 1.  It was concerning to me that he thought work wasn't part of his life.  He responded that not everyone has the luxury of enjoying their jobs (like he didn't know that I spent some time cleaning arena bathrooms for minimum wage). What I told him is what I tell all of my students.  Whatever God puts in front of you to do each day IS your life, whether that is work or recreation or reading a book; and how we do it is an act of worship.  God has great plans for everyone.  Sometimes, those plans are big things, which is what we usually think about; but sometimes, those plans are about having a conversation with a co-worker, participating in a workout, or having dinner with a friend.  My friend Ben will appreciate it if I use this question and answer from the Westminster shorter catechism - Q: What is the chief end of man.  A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.  This is what gives all of life and work and play dignity and value in service to God, whether you enjoy your job or not.  

God Helps Me Forgive - I don't need to write much about this one.  While our campers have some deep wounds from things that should never happen to them, we also know that unforgiveness leads to bitterness and resentment.  Most of us don't have injuries in our lives as deep as theirs, but we all have people in our life that we need to forgive.  We also know that we cannot forgive in our own strength or out of our own sinful nature.  Only God can put forgiveness in us.  This was communicated to our campers by those in charge of the program, but it was also communicated to the staff in our devotion time with the directors by telling us a story of forgiving her father by praying, "God, I don't feel this and can't do it.  Please put forgiveness in me."  She asked it for years until God finally did put that forgiveness in her.  

God Can Bring Good Out of Bad - At the end of the story of Joseph in Genesis 50 is one of the most well-known lines in the Old Testament, "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today."  It can be hard for us to see how anything good can come out of bad situations, yet we know it does.  We all have a story we can tell about a time when things didn't happen the way we wanted them to, but now we are glad for that.  It doesn't mean we are glad the bad thing happened, but it means we are grateful that God can make good come from anything.  His plans are bigger and deeper and greater and more complex than we can ever fathom.  

I can't share photos that include campers' faces, but this picture is okay.  This is a child wrapping her flannel shirt around a cold adult.  It was a sweet moment of love and care that wouldn't have happened if situations were ideal.  When looking for how God brings good out of bad, it doesn't always have to be big things.  It can be moments like this one.

So, to bring this full circle, it is best if we remember that he is sovereign and we are not and that we would make terrible gods.  Then, we can trust him when things are hard and have the capacity to make choices and forgive and fulfill His plans for us, knowing that he will work things for his glory and our good.

The Toxic Effects of Either/Or

It's become a cliche to say the world is polarized.  Whether it is the divide between left and right, rich and poor, black and white, or old and young, we have become people who decide we are correct, and every other view is wrong.  "It's my way or nothing" has become our default position as though the world is really that simple.  Most things, however, boil down to balancing the perspective of many people, not just adopting the preference of the loudest person in the room.  The either/or mentality has toxic effects that we are only just beginning to experience.  It led to, among other things, the events of January 6.

A few days ago, I read this tweet from a teacher. "Classroom management is not about having the right rules.  It's about having the right relationships."  While I don't think this was a person who would advocate not having rules, there are people who think that way.  They believe that if they invest all of their time in personalized handshakes and playing the music their kids like and talking about popular television shows, their students will want to please them so much that they won't need rules.  If you think that sounds nuts, connect with some teachers online because they are out there, and they are super-passionate about it.  Both ends of this spectrum are damaging to you and your students, as I learned during my student teaching experiences.  The first teacher I was placed with had been teaching for 30 years, and he was burned out but didn't know it.  Structure was everything to him, right down to the fine-tipped black ballpoint pen he insisted I use to take attendance.  His students barely spoke in class, and, when they did, it was to answer a question with what they were certain was the right answer.  There was no joking; there was no curiosity.  His students were well-behaved, and they may have learned some physics; but I doubt any of them are out there right now telling their children about their amazing physics experience.  My second placement was with a pregnant, basic-skills-science teacher for whom "winging it" was a daily event.  She had a loose idea of what she wanted to cover, but there were no rules.  She spent most of her class time just chatting with students.  She knew everything about their lives, from who they were dating to who was on drugs.  While she probably helped a lot of her students through some personal decisions, they did not learn much about science; and no substitute ever wanted to be placed in her class because the kids were accustomed to bouncing off of the walls.  I had to reflect on both of these experiences as I entered my own classroom, and I recognized that I could not be either one of them.  While I want to build relationships with my students, my role in their lives should not be the same as their friends.  It is important that our relationship exists within proper professional boundaries and that they are confident that I am the authority in the room, but it is also important that my students feel free to show their individual personalities and that we laugh together.  That balance is how students feel intellectually and emotionally safe in my classroom.  It's not either rules or relationships.  It's both rules and relationships.  

I also see a lot of either/or mentality when it comes to curriculum and student choice.  There are schools in which standardized tests are so high-stakes that no one ever dares to stray from the curriculum.  Teachers exhaust themselves and their students, trying to stay on pace with the set curriculum.  They do not entertain student questions if they are not aligned with the curriculum.  They are not able to be creative about projects or labs or topics that might inspire their students because they must prepare their students for the test.  I cannot imagine being handcuffed in that way.  However, the backlash to this seems to be a trend toward not having a curriculum at all.  The theory is that students will decide what they should learn on their own and not be required to learn anything they don't want to.  This is, of course, as ridiculous as it sounds, and we would never attempt this in other areas of their life.  No parent would say to their child, "Oh, you are thirsty.  Any liquid will do.  You have an innate understanding of what would be good to drink."  If they did, we would have a lot of five-year-old alcoholics and kids who drink antifreeze because it is as sweet as Kool-Aid.  What a parent might do is give their child a choice between a bottle of water, a juice box, and carton of milk, providing them with choice within a safe and nutritious set of boundaries.  Education should be that way as well.  A teacher with professional judgment knows what is essential in the curriculum and what has inspired students in the past.  They also know what skills can be developed using different kinds of projects.  Why wouldn't they use all of that knowledge to set up a project in which students can choose either from a variety of topics or a variety of methods, allowing choice within a set of boundaries?  It doesn't have to be a strict adherence to a confining curriculum or a free-for-all with little content learning.  It can be helping students develop curiosity about topics they wouldn't have even known they could have chosen without your example.

It seems that the biggest controversy in America right now is the teaching of Critical Race Theory.  I confess that I know little about the theory itself.  I know that it was developed in the 1970s and has been taught most to college students, majoring in history or philosophy.  I have not spent enough time learning about it to know if the allegations that it is based on Marxism are true, but I also don't believe the majority of people screaming about it online have put in that time either.  But, here's the point.  If it turns out that CRT is a horrible thing to teach kids younger than college, that doesn't make the other alternative ignoring history and pretending that slavery, voter suppression, Jim Crow, and hate crimes never happened.  My fear is that completely appropriate teaching of American history, including our racial sins, will now be labeled CRT and protested because no one wants to take the time to find out what they are objecting to.  It doesn't have to be either CRT or nothing.  It can be a curriculum that acknowledges the good America has done in the world without turning our founders into demi-gods.   It can be teaching that includes our maltreatment of Native Americans, Japanese internment camps, and slavery without ignoring the progress that has been made.  You don't have to assume that every white American is a violent racist to recognize that some of our legislators were Klansmen.  Our country's history isn't either/or, and our instruction about it shouldn't be either.

Let's stop treating education as a simple thing.  It is a group of complex and flawed human beings being taught by a group of complex and flawed human beings about complex and flawed topics.  Let's start doing the intellectual work it takes to treat it that way.

Choose This Good or That Good

In the West Wing Episode "Ten Word Answers," President Bartlett talks about the complexity of his job by saying, "Every once in a while, there’s a day with an absolute right and an absolute wrong. But those days almost always include body counts. Other than that, there aren’t very many un-nuanced moments in leading a country that’s way too big for ten words. " It's a great moment in the show and turns the debate in his favor.  It has stuck with me because education is also a very nuanced profession with few choices that are definitely right or wrong.  I'm not saying there aren't any, but in spite of all the arguments taking place on Edu-Twitter, they are few and far between.  

We have been conditioned to believe that every time we make a choice, one is right and is wrong.  We think we are choosing between good and bad.  Sometimes we choose between good and better.  Sometimes we choose between bad and worse.  Sometimes we choose between this good and that good.

Most of the time, we are making choices based on a lot of nuances, from things as important as our educational philosophy to things as mundane as calendar restrictions.  Dozens of considerations, from available resources, budget, academic values, technological proficiency of both teacher and students, age level of students, district testing restrictions, and even the layout of your building can play a role in how you teach a particular topic.  One of my team members has taught her course differently every year, not because she was wrong the first year, but because she felt the needs of her students were different the following year.  As I have written about before, my Global Solutions project looks nothing like the electricity it started out being.  It wasn't wrong the first year, but as my goals and objectives changed, the project changed with it.  When making decisions, the questions to ask yourself are about your goals and values.  Within that, figure out the best way to fit things into your context without worrying that you are making a wrong choice.  Realize you are choosing between this good or that good.

In my physics class, we learn to calculate sliding friction.  There are different approaches to this, from purely conceptual to purely mathematical, and a wide variety in between.  I could purchase equipment to measure force and acceleration, collect data, and have students write formal lab reports in which they draw graphs, calculate coefficients of friction, and analyze the difference between their result and the accepted number.  That has strong academic value and is a perfectly good way to teach calculating friction, but it is not what I do.  

I put out a Jenga game for each pair of students.  As they play, I say things to them about how friction is affecting each move.  I tell them about an interview I heard with Jenga's creator in which she talked about the difficulties of making it; the blocks cannot be identical or there will be too much friction, restricting the movement of pieces; but if they are too different, they won't make a stack.  After they play, we talk about the cause of friction and think of as many examples of everyday things that require friction as we can.  You cannot walk, drive, type on a computer, swallow food, turn a doorknob, swipe a touch screen, or write in any way without friction.  It is after I have gotten through to them just how important friction is that I show them how to do the math.  

Is the way I do it right while the other way is wrong?  No.  Those are both correct ways to approach teaching friction.  Why have I made the choice I have?  It is because I value students seeing scientific concepts in daily life.  I want them to think about friction the next time they play Jenga.  I want it to strike them occasionally as they write with a pencil that what is happening is friction pulling graphite layers off the surface.  I've never been one to view education a job training but as a way of being more connected to the world, so I always take that approach if I can.  I spend little money on equipment from science supply companies.  I buy most of what we use from the grocery store because that is in line with my desire for them to see science as an everyday feature of their lives.  This would, of course, be different if I were teaching a college course to engineers because my value then would necessarily be on their ability to design and build an efficient product.  In middle and high school, I choose the good seeing it everywhere.  In an AP class, I might choose the good of lab reporting.  If I taught engineers, I would probably choose the good of career preparation.  None of these are choices between right and wrong; they are choices between different types of good.

When you make a choice in your class, don't fear making a choice that is wrong or bad.  Figure out what good you are aiming for, and make choices that fit that good.