Vision for Students

Over the years, I've spent a lot of space on this blog writing about my school's mission statement.  I don't know if I have ever brought up the vision statement, which is weird, because I actually find it more applicable to my daily classroom practice.  It states:  "GRACE students will be grounded in God's Word and challenged to achieve academic excellence as they prepare to use their gifts and abilities effectively to follow God's plan for their lives."

I remember sitting in a staff meeting when we were trying to write the school mission and vision statements.  We spent twenty minutes during the mission statement discussion deciding what the connotation of the word equip was and whether it was too mediocre a word.  As a result, we added the word challenge and inspire, but essentially the final draft was the same as the first.  The vision statement was different.  The draft first presented to us spoke only of developing leaders.  A general murmur went up amongst the teachers in the room; I turned to the person next to me and said, "I think I've been doing my job wrong."  A fifth-grade teacher raised her hand and said, "They aren't all supposed to be leaders, are they?  If they are all leading, who are they leading?"  We talked a lot about what we strive to develop in our students, and we ultimately came to the statement as it is seen above.  I thought a lot about why the first draft was so different from the final one, and I finally came to the conclusion that the first draft was written by our board members, most of whom own a business and all of whom are leaders.  Thus, that was a quality they valued highly.  It was probably a quality they hoped to develop in their own children.  Teachers, however, spent their days with all the students, seeing that some were leaders and other had different qualities that had nothing to do with leadership.  We can all become hyper-focused on one characteristic, especially those we possess, and forget that God has different plans for different people.

We want all of our students to be grounded in God's Word.  No matter what their future holds, a knowledge of the Bible and the ability to interpret it as well as apply it to their lives will matter.  We want them to achieve academic excellence, not because grades are so important, but because having a wide breadth of knowledge and the ability to analyze, synthesize, and innovate are necessary to adult life.  

God has gifted each of us for the plan He has for us and not someone else.  I do not have an ear for foreign languages.  I took two years of high school German, and what I retained makes me fully qualified to communicate with a two-year-old German child.  I can say, "Hello. My name is Beth. How old are you? What color is this?"  When I have tried to learn a few phrases in other languages as an adult, someone will tell me what the phrase is, and I will repeat it.  Two minutes later, I can't say it anymore.  While I believe in growth mindset and know I could get better at it with time, I also know that we start with some natural abilities, and foreign language just isn't in my natural skill set.  You know why?  God didn't call me to a life where the ability to pick up language would be needed.  I have students, however, that God will call to the mission field or who will serve as interpreters at the UN; so God did give them the ability to absorb pronunciation and understand other syntax in a way He did not gift me.  

As we help our students develop their skills, it is important to remember that they won't all be equally good at everything.  That's not what academic excellence means.  I know that not all of my students will be scientists, and they shouldn't all be scientists.  It is important that they have the ability to think scientifically because we live in a world that increasingly relies on the results of science but doesn't understand it.  We've seen that a lot during this pandemic, and it has revealed a severe lack of scientific thinking in a large portion of the public.  Every student doesn't have to do science professionally, but they will need to make decisions that require at least a little scientific knowledge and analytical ability.  Learning science develops a part of the brain that can be used in a variety of fields.  When I am teaching science, I keep in mind what it takes to develop those skills and brain processes, not just the content I am teaching.  

While we should help students grow in every area, it is important that we think about God's plan for them, not ours.  When a student struggles with a subject, we should support them in their growth.  When a student shows a natural aptitude for a skill, we should encourage them to develop it even more because God has obviously gifted them in that thing for a reason.  Five years ago, I was in a meeting with the mom of one of my 8th graders.  She was an incredibly detail-oriented perfectionist with a lot of anxiety.  I said to her mom, "Clearly, whatever God has planned for her will require this level of attention to detail.  It's just hard to get through middle school with it."  We came up with some ways to help her with her anxiety, but we were careful not to tell her that wanting to do things right was the wrong way to think.  We gave her some coping strategies that I think have been helpful to her, but we did not try to take out of her something that God put in her.  When she's working for the CIA or pursuing a career in a lab or whatever detail-driven career God is going to place her in, she will need the gift He gave her.  

As we get to know our students over the next few weeks, it's important that we look beyond their grades or our priorities and look for ways to develop in them those things that will allow them to "use their gifts and abilities effectively to follow God's plan for their lives."

Classroom Mission Statement

If you were an education major, you wrote a philosophy of education.  It was likely a very long examination of your beliefs about the purpose of education; but if your was like mine, it was likely not very practical.  I found mine a few years ago and laughed a lot about how idealistic I was.  I don't disagree now with anything I said in it.  I am just aware of the reality of dealing with students now than I was in college.

Your school has a mission statement, and you should be on board with it, but how you execute your school's mission will look different in your classroom than it does in the room next door.  It will look different in my 7th-grade science class than it does in a senior calculus class.  Even with teachers who teach the same grade and subject, it will look different because teachers are individuals with different personalities and philosophies.  After reading Dave Stuart, Jr.'s book These Six Things, in which he advocates having a "Mt. Everest statement," I decided to write a classroom mission statement for myself.  I've had mine on the wall for a few years now, and I thought that perhaps telling you about mine would help you think about yours.

I began with the mission statement of my school.  It says, "GRACE Christian School is a loving community that academically and spiritually equips, challenges, and inspires students to impact their world for Christ."  Since there are three verbs there, I started with them.

Equip - Make you the informed thinker you need to be to make good decisions.  

We make decisions all day every day.  Some of them require little thought. (Do I prefer to use a purple pen?  Would I like chicken or tacos for lunch?)  Some require a lot of thought.  (How do I plan to cover the remaining material by the end of this semester?  Who do I vote for?  Which insurance plan do I choose?)  Some decisions require the input of an expert who is more informed in their thinking than you are.  (Should I social distance?  If I decide to become vegan, what are the issues I need to think about?)  Being educated does not mean you know everything, but it means you have been taught to think and who to listen to.

I was reminded of the importance of this yesterday.  I was scrolling through Twitter and found an argument between an American man and an Australian man about mask-wearing.  The American man said, "I've done my own research and . . ."  Now, I'm wise enough not to have jumped into this argument, but I what I wanted to say was, "Where did you get your epidemiology degree?"  It means nothing to "do your own research" if you have little to no knowledge of the thing you are researching.  That's why people get medical degrees rather than reading WebMD.  You can look at a graph and attempt to draw conclusions, but a person with knowledge can interpret it more accurately.  Statisticians can show you data and give you three different interpretations depending on how the data was collected and which tools you use to interpret it.  The sheer volume of information available to us has led some to believe that education is irrelevant.  I think it makes it more critical than ever because Google doesn't have wisdom or judgment.

Challenge - Ask you to perform better than you think you can at things you don’t think you are good at.

Students are capable of more than they think.  By middle school, many have decided that they are bad at math or that they don't like art or that they are "visual" learners.  To that, I say, "We'll see."  We are demonstrably terrible at judging our own abilities.  There's a move among educators right now to base all their decisions on feedback from students.  I want my students to have a voice, but the idea that I should do everything they want is silly because they don't know what they need.  As a student, I didn't know I loved physics; and I certainly didn't know what the best way for my teacher to teach it to me was.  Mr. Barbara knew physics, and what he did made me love and made me want to work hard at it.  The value of the teacher is undermined if we lead by survey.  In almost every survey of study strategies, students rate the highest those things that research shows to be the least effective (re-reading and highlighting).  One of the top strategies, retrieval practice, is low on those student lists.  They don't want to do it because it takes more effort, but I don't expect a middle schooler to know current brain research, which is why the professional development of the teacher matters so much.

My 8th-graders are shocked at what they can accomplish.  I'm not.  They need to be pushed and given strategies, but if they employ those strategies, they can improve at anything.  Growth mindset doesn't have to mean that we believe everyone is equally skilled naturally.  Talent does exist, so you are going to have some students who are naturally better at some things.  Growth mindset means believing that I can be better at anything than I currently am if I strengthen my brain the same way I would strengthen a muscle.

Inspire - Ask you to look beyond the grade, the curriculum, and the tests to see what you can do with your education.

I believe in assessment and grades, but education isn't, at its core, about the grade.  I love my curriculum, but I care more that students build skills than that they remember every detail of my curriculum.  I want them to learn perseverance, following directions, communication, teamwork, individual responsibility, reading comprehension, social awareness, kindness to the person sitting next to them, and problem-solving.  

I have often written about conversations I had with my own teachers that still influence me today.  I am conscious of many of those moments, and I am certain that there are moments of which I am unaware that influence me today as well.  I know that each class I took changed me in some way, which is why I bristle at those who say nonsense like "I never use Algebra in life."  Setting aside that you do, what else did you learn in that class besides the math?  What you learned in that class does impact you today, whether you are aware of it or not.  I want my students to think about what education is building in them and how they will use it to "impact their world for Christ."

Snapped Into Action

The story I am about to tell you is about my school.  I make no judgment about those schools that have made different decisions.  We are in a situation with no precedent, and each has to make the decision that is right in the context of their community.  With that disclaimer, I want to tell you about the incredible people with whom I work.

Wednesday night, after our first day of online instruction, a parent expressed gratitude on Facebook for how GRACE "snapped into action."  I smiled because I know it looked like a snap from the outside, but it was a long, slow snap of either two weeks or ten years, depending on how you look at it.

Two weeks before we all started social distancing, a meeting was called.  "We need to start thinking about what we would do IF schools have to close."  At that point, almost no one thought it would happen or that, if it did, it would be several weeks away.  That meeting was a Thursday.  On Monday, we had department meetings to brainstorm contingency plans, filling out a spreadsheet with questions like, "What do we need the kids to take home?  What do we need to take home?  What is and is not possible to do at home?"  Behind the scenes, our administration and IT departments were having meetings about the best tool for the delivery of online instruction.  By Friday, we were being trained on Google Hangouts Meet and outlining policies for the virtual learning environment in the event we MAY need to use it.

At that point, we thought we would have at least one more day at school to give the kids a little training, but Saturday morning, the email went out that we would transition to online learning immediately.  Two days, the faculty would be at school for planning, and we would start delivering instruction on Wednesday.  Our teachers spent that weekend adjusting our hearts to the news and preparing our homes for the change.  I live alone and only had to prepare for a teaching spot.  Those teachers who are also parents had to figure out multiple places and determine whether their internet access was strong enough for multiple people to do video streaming at the same time. 

Our IT Team and administrators started making events in the Google calendar for each of our classes for every teacher and student.  (I printed the fifth and sixth-grade rosters for our Media Specialist and was stunned to find it was 82 pages long!  I don't know how they input every student in every class K-12.)

Monday and Tuesday, there were meetings and work time and tears and training.  We made goofy videos for our students to watch on social media, letting them know how much we love and miss them.  We were encouraged to model adaptability and growth mindset to our students and communicate frequently with our parents.  We researched best practices in online schooling, shared tools, got help from our blessed Millenials, and prayed for our students and each other.

Through those days, we thanked God for putting us in a position where we could respond this way.  It all started back in 2010, when we went one to one.   All 5th through 12th-grade students at GRACE are issued a MacBook Air to use for the school year.  4th-grade students use classroom Chromebooks at school, and 3rd-grade teachers sometimes check out a cart to use them as well.  Without this equipment, there would be no way to provide equity to our students in online learning.  In the second year of the program, we realized the need for a Learning Management System (LMS).  The learning curve was pretty steep that first year, but we eventually became comfortable using it.  Now, we just say, "It's on Talon," and students know what to do.  In the years since, we have been coached by some amazing people (Laura, Daniel, Tomeka, and others) on how to implement technology usage in the classroom.  Like European cathedrals that took generations to build, each successive technology teaching coach has laid bricks on top of the foundation originally laid by Sean and Diane when they first cheered us through the one to one model.

Wednesday morning, we began online delivery of content, each teacher in different places.  Students jumped in quickly, and with few exceptions, they behaved well in our classes.  We've laughed and stayed connected.  We've met each others' pets, and students have used things at their home to show examples of our content (from a fish tank to an accordion).  Each teacher has office hours online for students to ask questions, and some do.  Others just drop in to say hello.  Teachers have checked in on each other with hangouts as well.  We miss each other dearly, but we are grateful for these tools and for our ability to use them.  We have a daily faculty meeting to debrief what is and is not working and to pray.  Without these face to digital face interactions, I would lose my mind from isolation.  It's been great to see people, even if it is across a screen.

As I scrolled through Facebook on Wednesday night, I was grateful for the support of our parents because, while parents from other schools were complaining about trying to teach their kids at home (and students after the new AP test guidelines were released), our parents and students were expressing their prayers for us and thanking us for our efforts.  As I watched videos and read statements from other heads of school and superintendents (who are still trying to figure out what to do) and read the arguments about equity from some very ungracious educators on Twitter, I realized just how perfectly everything led up to us being prepared for this.  Not everyone has a one to one program, pedagogy training from a technology coach, a forward-thinking administration, supportive parents, a special ed department to meet the needs of struggling learners, a counselor who checks in on the more anxiety-prone, colleagues who provide encouragement and support, and kids who adapt.  We are truly blessed.


No one can predict what will happen in the coming days.  It does seem this is going to go on longer than the 2-3 weeks we originally planned for.  I am hoping and praying that we will have May with our students (not because of the academics but for the end of the year closure), but there is no way to know.  When I left the building for the foreseeable future, I said goodbye to a principal who was making back-up plans for a virtual graduation while still praying that we won't need those plans.  At GRACE, we have hope for the best, but we also plan for the worst.  Because of those forward-thinking planners, we were able to "snap" into action.

Our Common Rival

In sports, there are many rivalries.  Whether it is UNC and Duke, Alabama State and Auburn, or OU and OSU, there are certain teams that you just care about beating more than others.  Friday night, GRACE Christian and Cary Christian set aside their rivalry for one night.  Don't get me wrong.  Both teams still wanted to win their basketball games.  But, that night, they had a common rival, and that was cancer.

In GRACE's eleventh Hoops for Hope (Play for Kay) event, the gym was absolutely packed.  There was a lot of activity.  Cakes were sold in a silent auction.  T-shirts, jewelry, and child-friendly prizes were available for kids to win in games. 

Coffee and snacks were sold in addition to normal concessions.

There was face painting for kids of all ages.

The National Anthem was played and sung.

Funds were raised that resulted in two faculty members getting pies in the face. 

Kids posed in a photo booth. 

Survivors were honored and prayed for. 

And, oh yeah, there were three basketball games. 

The goal was ambitious.  We had hoped to raise ten thousand dollars from one event.  We did not meet that goal.  With the help of our friends at Cary Christian, we crushed it beyond belief.  Just before the final quarter of the last game, it was announced that we had topped FOURTEEN THOUSAND!  We know much good is being done with these funds.  From better patient treatment to clinical research trials, the Kay Yow Fund is committed to keep working with every dollar raised until a cure is found.

Almost Obnoxious - Part 5 - To Impact Their World for Christ

For the past month, I have been writing about the mission statement of my school.  Just in case you need to be reminded, here it is (with links to the previous posts).

"GRACE Christian School is a loving community that spiritually and academically equips, challenges, and inspires students to impact their world for Christ."

Today, let me address the most important part of the mission - "to impact their world for Christ."

Their World:

My students will enter different worlds from each other.  That's a good thing.  They aren't all going to be business leaders or engineers, although some will (and have) become those things.  In the twenty years I've been teaching, some of my students have become musicians.  Others have become nurses.  Some have been stay-at-home moms.  Some have become teachers.  Some have become dancers.  Some have become fashion designers.  Some have gone into the military.  Others serve on the police force.  They have all entered different worlds.  The way in which one impact their world will be different from the way some else impacts theirs.  My hope and prayer, as a Christian educator, is that they have been prepared in my classroom for whatever world they have chosen, whether by the academic content or the spiritual modeling of their teachers.

For Christ:

Mark 8:36 is clear that our focus needs to be on eternal matters rather than temporary definitions of success.  "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"  If my students become millionaires but do nothing to glorify Christ, I have not fulfilled my mission.  If their name is on the news every night, but they don't use their platform to advance the gospel, what will their Christian education have been about?  I am far more proud of my student, Liz, who teaches her children (and the children of others) in her home about the grace of God than I would ever be of a student making a fortune from taking advantage of clients in any field.  

I love the mission of GRACE.  I believe in it, even when I find it difficult to fulfill.  I carry it around with me, not just on a laminated sheet of paper, but in my heart.  As long as God gives me a classroom, I will endeavor to carry it out, even if it means being almost obnoxious about it.

Almost Obnoxious - Part 4 - Academically Equip, Challenge, and Inspire

Last week, I talked about how our school spiritually equips, challenges, and inspires our students as part of our mission statement.  We are aware, however, that our school is not a church.  It is a school.  Thus, the other part of our mission, to academically equip, challenge, and inspire.

Equip
The academic equipping of students is the mission of all schools, and it is no small task.  Let's first address what it is not.  Academically equipping students does not mean teaching them every skill they may need in life.  We are not in the business of teaching them to cook and sew buttons (though I have nothing against a good home ec class).  We are not teaching them to repair a transmission (again, no problem with schools offering a shop class).  If you are a parent who wants your kids to know those things, please teach them to your children.  We are also not attempting to teach every piece of content they need to know for any career they may choose.  For one thing, that isn't possible.  There would just be too many things to know.  Also, they may have careers that do not currently exist. 

What does it mean to academically equip?  It means teaching them how to learn.  A few years ago, our graduation speaker said, "An educated person doesn't know everything; but in a pinch, he can learn anything."  That perfectly sums up the way I see my job.  In the same way you don't lift weights because the weight needs to be off the ground but because it trains the muscle, academic content, while important, mostly serves as a vehicle for the training of the brain.  Equipping students with the ability to learn is how they become prepared for whatever life may throw their way.

Challenge
What does it mean to academically challenge?  Again, I would start with what it is not.  Academically challenging students does not mean giving them more work or harder work to do.  While GRACE does have a rigorous curriculum, our mission to challenge them comes from asking them to raise their level of thinking.  Creating a base knowledge is important in any subject, but asking them to apply that knowledge to the problems of the world is what creates the challenge.  Our science department asks students to examine their impact on the environment, create a plan for growing crops more efficiently, and propose solutions to some of the problems in the developing world (lack of access to clean water, electricity, etc.).  Our math department challenges them to design a tiny house and decide whether it might be a feasible solution for people experiencing homelessness.  Last year, our 8th-grade English teacher allowed students to put the book they were reading "on trial" to defend whether or not it should remain a part of the curriculum.  These sorts of projects push the knowledge students have learned far beyond the surface level of understanding that a simple multiple choice test measures.

Inspire
As I mentioned last week, inspiration is not something we can accomplish.  We can't write academically inspire into a lesson plan.  It's something that happens because of the magical combination of the right student having the right teacher learning the right content.  What inspires one student won't necessarily inspire the student next to him.  Every teacher has some students who think they are the best while others in the same class can't stand them (which is why you can't base your feelings about your career on their feedback).  God brings the right teacher into a student's life at the right time to help shape that student.  It's something that only He can plan.

Next week, I'll address the ultimate goal of all of this, that our students "impact their world for Christ."

Almost Obnoxious - Part 3 - Spiritually Equip, Challenge, and Inspire

Our mission statement hangs on three walls of my classroom.  It hangs in the school lobby.  I walk past it a couple of hundred times a day.  In case you haven't been reading this series, it says,

"GRACE Christian School is a loving community that spiritually and academically equips, challenges, and inspires students to impact their world for Christ."

Read again.  There are parts of it that I am skilled to do, and there are parts of it that WE are skilled to do.  There are parts of it, however, that are, in fact impossible.  That doesn't mean we should change our mission.  Quite the contrary.  It means, we have to call in the big guns.  The portion of our mission statement that says we will "spiritually . . . equip, challenge, and inspire" is not within our power.  It is only possible if we are daily putting this part of our mission in the hands of God.

I don't know if you have ever written a mission statement with a group of people.  You wouldn't believe how long it takes to dissect each phrase and word.  The first draft of this statement only included the word "equips."  Some of the teacher in the room felt that word was too small, that it made it sound like we only did the minimum.  While I disagreed, I certainly understood how, if they thought that others might as well.  We spent several minutes brainstorming other words with the intent of replacing the word equipped.  When we were through, the three favorite words were "challenges and inspires," and there were a few people who still fought for the word "equips."  We ended up keeping all three words, not because it was easier, but because each of those words means something different that we agreed we wanted for our students.  Let's look at each of them.

Equip
 As I said earlier, there was a contingent in favor of this word because it means giving students what they need.  Imagine that you are an astronaut being sent on a mission.  You would expect NASA to equip you with training time and manuals, a suit, oxygen, biomonitors, etc.  You would expect that the ship would be equipped with fuel, safety devices and procedures, food and water that can be consumed in microgravity, waste disposal equipment, electrical systems, and guidance computers.  As you can see, equipping is hardly a small thing.

When we set out to spiritually equip students, the job is daunting.  We have chapel and Bible classes.  Our English classes teach students to analyze literature, and those skills are useful for Bible analysis as well.  We converse with our students often about spiritual issues.  Tomorrow, our high school students leave for a spiritual retreat, in which they will hear sermons but also be broken into smaller groups to discuss topics that have been specifically chosen for them by the faculty and staff.  While there may be people who thought of this word as small, you can see that God must be the one who does the equipping because it is too big a job for us.

Challenge
Challenging students comes with the job description of any teacher.  English teachers challenge students to raise their level of writing and increase their vocabulary.  Science teachers challenge students to ask big questions and draw conclusions from things they observe.  Foreign language teachers challenge students to speak when it is not comfortable to do so.  In Christian education, all of those things are still there, but we are also tasked with challenging our students to stand up to the influence of their culture, one that is increasingly secular and even militantly atheist.  Sometimes, it feels a bit like we are standing in a raging storm with the culture flashing lightning and blaring thunder, while we shout at our students to fight back.  It would be easy to give up on this if it were up to us.  Fortunately, God will challenge their hearts.  We, their teachers, are merely the tools he uses to do so.

Inspires
If there is any word in the mission statement that I know for sure I am incapable of achieving, it is this one.  I can teach.  I can talk.  I can design lessons.  I can give students opportunities.  I cannot inspire.  Only God can do that, so we as teachers should pray each day that he will.

Almost Obnoxious - Part 1 - GRACE Christian School

In a recent meeting, the head of school said that we should be almost obnoxious about carrying out our mission.  I like this phrase and kind of want it on a T-shirt.  I would put the mission statement on the back; it would be great.  Since that would be pretty expensive, I'll have to be almost obnoxious in other ways, like having the mission statement displayed in my classroom in three places (every wall seemed obnoxious, so three seemed almost obnoxious) and using my blog to really dive deeply into our mission by dissecting it into phrases and discussing how each one plays out in the classroom.  Let me begin with the following disclaimer:  I have not run any of this by my administration.  These thoughts are completely my own.

Our mission statement says, "GRACE Christian School is a loving community that spiritually and academically equips, challenges, and inspires students to impact their world for Christ."

Let me start with the first phrase - GRACE Christian School.

Grace is often defined as getting something good that you have not earned and, therefore, do not deserve.  It's difficult in modern culture to know when you are receiving grace because you are told that you deserve good things a hundred times a day.  If you won't believe me, watch daytime television for a couple of hours; the phrase "you deserve" is in almost every commercial.  Students at GRACE get unearned blessings every day in the form of their teachers, their friends, their education, field trips, and a variety of other things.  

Our school is distinctly Christian in staff, goals, and methods.  Someone at an open house asked us to break down our emphasis on the Bible and academics into a percentage balance - "like is it 70/30? 50/50?"  I was pretty shocked when I heard about this because I don't believe I can separate the two.  The percentage breakdown is 100/100 because every teacher at GRACE is a Christian all day long and carries that with them into everything, whether it is being stated verbally at each moment or not.

We are a school.  We are teachers, not camp counselors or youth group leaders.  A student will receive a solid education from me and my colleagues.  We will make decisions that are in their best interests, not those that are easiest for us or them.  

In the coming weeks, I will discuss our loving community and how we carry out this statement, which is, on our own and outside of Christ, impossible to fulfill.  It is far too much for one post, so stay tuned.

You Aren't Born With Your Passion - Part 1

If you had asked me at this time in my junior year what I wanted to do with my life, I would not have had an answer.  It wasn't that I had no interests; I had many interests.  I had too many interests and didn't know what I wanted to do with them.  When it came to choosing a career or college major, I felt like God had lost my phone number.  If you are a high school student being told to "follow your passion" but don't know what it is yet, this post and the next one are for you.

Let me back up to elementary school.  If you had asked me in third grade what I wanted to be when I grew up, it would have looked something like this:

Yep, that was my plan.  I was going to have a husband and three kids.  I was also going to pilot the space shuttle.  For those of you that say, "Yeah, everybody wanted to be an astronaut," notice that I didn't say that.  My goals were very specific; I was going to pilot the space shuttle.  I had a plan for this.  In fourth grade, I somehow got my hands on an application to the air force academy.  I had it completely filled out (you have to imagine the fourth grader handwriting to fully appreciate this).  I had people lined up to write me recommendation letters and was getting advice on how to have a congressperson provide me with an appointment.  I carried around pictures of the shuttle next to my pictures of Michael J. Fox and had photos of the moon in my notebooks.  This was going to happen.  Until . . .

Have you ever looked up the requirements for astronauts?  If you do so today, you can be 6'3" regardless of gender, but in the 80's, a female astronaut couldn't be taller than 5'8" tall.  I passed that height in fifth grade and kept growing until I reached 5'11" at the age of fifteen.  I was not going to pilot the space shuttle.  Well-meaning people who were honestly trying to be helpful told me some very stupid things.  Among them, I would be so good that NASA would change the rules for me (seriously?).

The most dangerous thing that several people told this disappointed fifth grader was that God wouldn't have let me want it so much if it wasn't His plan for me.  I had read enough of the Bible at that point to know that was garbage.  As an adult, let me just say that not matter how well meaning you are - This. Is. Heresy.  The advice to follow one's heart is ridiculous when put up next scriptures that tell us the heart is desperately wicked.  The idea that God won't let you want things He doesn't want for you flies in the face of Paul asking to have his thorn in the flesh removed.  Don't say this to children; don't say it to anyone.

So, I was a little aimless for a while.  As I mentioned earlier, I had many interests.  I loved animals, theater, science, music, television, church activities, and books.  I played the piano, the clarinet, and the handbells.  I participated in school plays and babysat and volunteered for the NC Right to Life.  There wasn't a lack of interest; there was a lack of focus.  I was interested in everything (except sports - I never could seem to get psyched about that).  I considered all kinds of careers.  If I had become everything I considered during this time, it would have looked like this:

Yes, I would have been a writing, photograph taking, elementary school teaching, pharmaceutical, veterinarian, physical therapist.  And, oh yeah, I still wanted to have a husband and three kids.  

I was a little lost, not knowing what I wanted to do or what God wanted me to do.  I remained in that wandering state until my senior year, but remember the line from JJ Tolkien's poem, "All That is Gold Does Not Glitter."  He reminds us that "not all those who wander are lost."  

More on this in my next post.

What Students Learn From Our Response to the Inauguration

For as long as I can remember, there are people who are upset about the outcomes of elections and refuse to watch the inauguration because "he ain't my President."  I'm not saying that President Elect Trump isn't causing more intense reactions than normal, but I am saying that it isn't new.  From Jimmy Carter, who was President the year I was born until now, I have heard people every four years on both sides claim that this particular person isn't their President.  I have heard people every four years on both sides threaten to move to Canada if the other guy wins; but as far as I know, there hasn't been a population spike in the great North.  I have heard people every four years on both sides complain about how much money is spent on the inauguration and the inaugural balls, but they only complain about it when it is the guy they didn't vote for.  This year, there are some pretty famous people encouraging us to boycott watching the inauguration because of Donald Trump's election, as though it will keep him from being President.  (That doesn't work, by the way.  I go to bed before the ball drop every New Year's Eve, and every year when I wake up, it's the next year anyway.)

As a teacher, I must always be ready to ask, "what do my students learn from my reaction to this?"  I know it never seems like they are paying attention, but they pick up on more than you think.  They listen to adults as we make these statements, and they watch what we do.  When we say, "he ain't my President," we teach them that it is okay to be childish when we don't get what we want.  We teach them not to respect authority as long we don't like that particular authority figure, which in turns teaches them to undermine all authority figures, including us.  When we act as though the world is about to come to an end, we teach them that God's sovereignty is dependent upon the actions of one man.  We teach them that our founders didn't plan very well when they limited the power one man could have.  When we refuse to watch the man we didn't want to win take the oath of office, we teach them that our preferences should override our patriotism.  These are dangerous things to teach our kids, and I believe we need to grow up and like grown ups.

From previous posts, you know that I am not a fan of our President Elect.  As a life-long Republican and Never Trumper, I had some very complex emotions on election night.  I voted third party for the first time in my life and would never have wanted this man to be my President.  But here's the deal; HE IS.  He is my President, whether I voted for him or not because our country only has one President.  He is going to be the President for the next four years because the constitution that governs our country says so.  Since George Washington made the choice to step down after his second term, America has been defined by the peaceful transfer of power.  People like me, who opposed Trump's election, didn't have to be publically killed in order for him to be elected.

Do you want your students (or parents, your kids) to respect your authority, trust God, and believe in the rule of law?  Then, let's start teaching our kids more positive lessons than we did in 2016, and let's start this week.  Let's speak about the office of the President with respect even when we don't respect the man.  In so doing, we will teach them that we respect authority, all authority because that's the only way a civilized society works.  Let's talk about God's plan for the future of our country instead of acting like it doesn't have one.  In so doing, we will teach them to trust something bigger than a man.  Let's teach our kids about the constitution and the wisdom of our founding fathers in restricting the power of President instead of hoping their history teacher will do it for us and then complaining if he doesn't.  In so doing, we will teach them that understanding our government is the responsibility of every citizen.  Let's celebrate what the inauguration represents, as hard as it may be to listen to Trump take the oath.  In so doing, we will teach them that in a democracy, sometimes the other guy wins and that believing in the concept of democracy means we accept that.  Not only do we accept it, we celebrate it by throwing a bunch of big parties, a cost far lower than other countries have to pay to change their government.

When you spend time with kids, for a few minutes or for eight hours a day, God has given you a responsibility.  They watch you in order to learn what it means to be an adult.  If we act like children instead of adults, we abuse that responsibility.  Before I went to bed on election night, I practiced saying, "President Trump" a few times out loud.  It helped my say it the next day when I had students in front of me.  If you are having trouble with Trump, try it; it might work for you.

Trump enthusiasts, you aren't off the hook either.  You have the opportunity and responsibility to teach your kids to be gracious this week.

Fine Arts Pep Rally

If you read last year's Yearbook Dedication Day posts (Anticipation and Dedication), you know that a big part of our tradition is a Fine Arts Pep Rally.  Your school doesn't have one of those?  You are missing out.  We just had our fifth one.  In a time when many schools are slashing their arts programs to ribbons, this pep rally shows GRACE's fine arts to be growing, diverse, and dynamic.

As soon as the yearbook is finished in early March, I start doing two things - the graduation slide show and organizing for this pep rally.  Our visual arts teachers send me photos of much of the year's artwork.  The theater teacher sends me cast lists.  Our music teachers tell me what groups they want to perform and what songs they will be doing.  I put together a slide show, and we do some planning in a shared document (thanks, Google).  This all culminates in a big event that involves every one of our students and teachers.

Our school is one K-12 school, but it is on two campuses.  While they are only a quarter of a mile apart, the other campus sometimes feels very far away.  We don't get to see the elementary students as often as we would like, and this is one of only two times that were are all together in one place each year.  The first is the homecoming parade.  I love that the thing bringing us all together is a celebration of the fine arts.

As students enter the gym, a slideshow containing photographs of visual art made by our students is playing.  High school students get to feel nostalgia about art project from their childhood when they see elementary projects, and kindergarten students get to see the kind of work they can one day aspire to make.  Our middle and high school combined chorus sings the national anthem, and our sixth grade chaplain opens us in prayer.  Our visual arts teachers then recognize those who have won awards in art competitions this year (several dozen students have excelled in some competition).  Some of those kids are also athletes, and some are scholars.  Some will also be performing during the rally.  I love how well rounded our kids are.

Our performance arts are well represented.  The elementary chorus sings, and 6th-12th grade bands play.  This year, they played a Star Wars medley, so a couple of drama students had a light saber battle.  The crowd loved it.  Our dance team performs, and our strings group plays a jazz number.  The sixth grade theater class performs a short number.  This year was "Step in Time" from Mary Poppins.

The rally leads up to the unveiling of the yearbook dedication.  This year, it was for our middle and high school visual arts teacher and my friend, Elizabeth Walters.  She is an amazing woman, capable of pulling talent out of students that they don't know they have.  Her students' work covers our hallways.  Without that artwork, our school is just a building.  She is a friend, mentor, and inspiration.  It was the perfect way to end this celebration of the arts.

Look, I know academic, fact-based disciplines are important.  I teach science, for heaven's sake.  I believe, however, the God created us in His image.  Part of that image is creative, and we should all reflect that.  As a Christian school, GRACE knows that students are created with diverse talents - from math to music, from science to dance, from writing to sculpting, from Latin to theater.  We strive to help students to discover them.  The list of names on each of our fine arts rosters makes me happy.  Our students are finding their God-given talents, and we get to be part of that.  Today's pep rally was a great reminder of that.

Thank you to our band, chorus, theater, strings, dance, and art teachers.  Your work is inspiring.

Senior Dinner

I know I already wrote a little about senior dinner in my Reflecting on Students post, but tonight is the dinner, and I feel the need to talk a little more about how this fits into the culture of our school.

This year, GRACE will graduate its 13th senior class.  I have been at GRACE for 13 years, so I have been at every dinner we have ever had.  It has changed a bit over the years.  Its original purpose was to honor the parents.  Teachers did speak about every student, but that was a relatively small portion of the program.  The larger portion was students making a speech.  They wrote a letter ahead of time to thank their parents for everything they had done.  At the dinner, they stood and read the speech aloud.  This was a festival of tears from the student, their parents, the teachers, and the principals.

Our school has grown since then.  Our first graduating class had 7 students.  This year's class has 43.  The dinner has grown as well.  We now use it as an awards night for students, announcing valedictorian and salutatorian, bestowing graduation cords, and presenting ACSI awards.  Every student also receives a framed printout with three character traits the teachers have said they see in that student.  As the focus of the dinner shifted from parents to graduates, the program changed.  Students still write letters to their parents, but they read them privately at their table rather than out loud at the podium.  As a teacher/speaker, I no longer speak about every student.  I speak about the 2-3 that I have signed up for.  

While we only speak for about two minutes, it is the culmination of our mission and vision statements at GRACE.  It shows that every student is well known by at least one teacher, not just on an academic level, but at the character level.  These speeches rarely mention their classroom abilities; they are about character.  We bring the student to the front and share what we see in them and what we hope for their future.

A few years ago, I spoke about a student that isn't a super-positive person.  The next morning, during my first-period class, she interrupted me and asked if she could say something.  She told the sophomores in my chemistry class that they didn't know how lucky they were and how much they were loved.  She spoke to my class for over five minutes about how glad they should be that they have teachers who know and love them.  She didn't graduate as cynical as she might have, and that is what this dinner does for many students.

Next year, GRACE will have over 60 seniors, and there has been much discussion this week about how this dinner might change again.  It would, after all, take 2 hours to talk about each student for 2 minutes each.  Tuesday, we had a one and a half hour meeting to discuss it.  You might be surprised to find a group of teachers and principals weeping over possible changes in this tradition, basically begging to be allowed to stay longer on a Friday and do more work.  If a student walked past the library and saw us through the window, I'm sure he would have been confused by the scene.  We ultimately decided to limit ourselves to 200 words, written ahead of time to keep us accountable.  As I drove home from that meeting, I thought again about our mission and vision as a school and thanked God for the amazing group of people with whom I am blessed to work.  Their passion for this dinner isn't about the dinner; it is about making sure our students graduate knowing that God has gifted them for His purpose.  Our wonderful principal actually cares what we think and accepts our level of intensity.  She didn't just say, "This is the way it will be now, so get to it."  She wanted to help us keep the heart of what we do while making it logistically feasible.

This night is special.  It was special before, and now it is special in a different way.  As the next wave of changes come, it will continue to be special - possibly in a different way.  Whatever changes we make, we know that it will come from an administration who cares about our students and about us.  We know that it will still proclaim to our students, "You are loved by your teachers and by the God who gave you these gifts.  Go accomplish the mission He has given you."

What Your Education Degree Didn't Teach You

My degree is in secondary science education with an emphasis in physics.  To earn that degree, I took many courses in educational psychology, theory, and methods.  I had standard general education classes, which I loved.  I took every science class I could fit into every minute of the day.  I even had a zero credit seminar in physics and engineering, which I also loved.  (I think I just really just loved classes, so it is probably good that I made that my life.)

In seventeen years of teaching, every one of those classes has been valuable.  I have never taught an Anatomy class, but I have shared much of what I learned in anatomy with my students, and the understanding it gave me of how light and sound and electricity interact with the human body certainly make me teach the physics differently than I would have otherwise done.  I have never taught English, but writing skills have been important in my life nonetheless.  I enjoy talking about the novels my students are reading and believe it is important for them to see a well rounded life.  I am grateful for everything I did learn in college; but after seventeen years in the classroom, I've come to realize how much I didn't learn while earning my degree.  I'd like to make a few proposals.

Drama - Teachers spend much of their day pretending.  That doesn't mean we aren't genuine with our students, but it is sometimes important to pretend that something is less funny than it is just to maintain classroom management.  Some days, you might not be enthusiastic about the necessary but not thrilling topic of the day (e.g. required steps for showing your work); but it would be detrimental to your students' motivation if you show that.  You might be a single person who has just had your heart broken; it would be unprofessional to bring that into your classroom.  Some days you have to pretend to be in a better mood than you are really in because, while being real is good, being completely transparent is not.  You have to pretend at least a little.  A theater class in improv might prove useful in the development of those skills.

Lab Storage Safety
This one is, of course, meant for science teachers.  My first teaching job was in a brand new building.  We were putting all of our equipment and chemicals on the shelves for the very first time.  While all six science teachers had an understanding of chemistry on a level they could teach, none of us knew the safest arrangement of chemicals on shelves.  We knew that alphabetical was a recipe for disaster, but no one had been trained in proper storage.  I'm guessing that most colleges believe that we will glean this information from our understanding of chemistry, but that is like hoping that we could write a novel in Arabic just be learning their alphabet and a few passages.  There are simply too many combinations chemicals and their compounds.   A semester of lab safety would make us all safer.

Group Crisis Management
In the years I have been teaching, I have taught through a variety of difficult circumstances.  My second year in the classroom, my school received a shooting threat.  I was teaching on 9/11.  Ten years ago, a student in our school died.  During a homecoming pep rally, one of our teachers experienced a serious injury, which we believed at the time to be life threatening.  Recently, one of our teachers has battled cancer.  When we were told on Friday that the cancer had returned, you can imagine what it was like to step into a  classroom of hurting kids while dealing with our own shock and sadness.  When I tell you that I taught through those circumstances, I mean it.  It was not healthy on 9/11 for students to travel from room to room, watching television footage of terror; so I taught science.  When our school was threatened with a shooting even, I couldn't just decide to make the day a wash.  I taught differently, with my eyes alternating from window to door and back again all day, but I did continue to teach.

When we gathered in chapel to be together and ask questions after the death of a student, my friend came by my room with boxes of tissues for us to take with us and said, "Here's something they didn't teach us in teacher school."  She was right, and that should not be.  I know they couldn't have addressed every potential problem, but any teacher who teaches more than a couple of years will experience a class in crisis.  Some training in how to deal with groups of frightened, sad, or angry students just makes sense.

To the people who write degree plans, all the things we learn about content and methods are important, and I am grateful I had them.  The real work of teaching, however, involves much more than I ever learned in college.  Consider adding a few of those "rubber meets the road" type of courses - even a seminar with veteran teachers as guest speakers could be useful.  Please consider.

Together - Not the Same

This week, I have been on an accreditation visiting team.  That means I got to help evaluate and affirm a Christian school that is seeking the renewal of their accreditation.  In the training documents, the following statement is highlighted.

"There is no one type of school. Nor is there just one approach to teaching and learning. Yet regardless of a school’s size, location, philosophy or education model, it benefits from intensive, ongoing diagnostic reviews of its work, carried out by knowledgeable, well-trained, independent reviewers."

Around the same time I began this training, a commercial started airing on television.  For the life of me, I can't figure out what it has to do with Android products (The first time I saw it, I thought it was going to be a PSA about tolerance or bullying or something), but I like the ad itself.  Also, I may be strange, but I like the song he is playing where all the keys are the same as well.  I guess I just like the rhythm.  

These two things made me think of how glad I am that GRACE is not the only school or the only type of school.  Because people are different, their educational needs are certainly different.  While I don't think I could have handled the Montessori approach when I was in school, I have no doubt that there are those who thrive in that type of school.  My school's athletic rival is a very strict classical school.  While I COULD NOT teach there because the structure is too much for me, there are students who absolutely need that structure in order to feel secure.  The school we are evaluating is a very small community, but their people are fully supportive of each other and their students on every level.  I observed some classes that I didn't want to leave. 

 Christian schools have many things in common.  We all want to see spiritual growth and development in students as they make the transition from childhood faith in their parent's church to their own relationship with Christ.  We all want to see students educated in such a way that they can pursue whatever path God has for them.  We all want to mentor our students in citizenship, a lifelong love of learning, and just decision making.  

While all the Christian schools in the world have these things in common, they approach meeting these goals in hundreds of different ways.  Some of them focus heavily on their academic programs while others place a higher priority on student / teacher relationships.  Some are heavily STEM while others place a high priority on their fine arts programs.  Some schools try to meet the needs of all types of students while others enroll only students whose needs they are already capable of meeting.  No one Christian school can accomplish God's plan by itself.  When parents are looking at Christian schools, it is important that they know what matters to them.  Most schools will cover the true essentials, so parents should also look for the school that is a "good fit" for their child.  

As Christian schools, we are together; but we are not the same.  We are all heading in the same direction.  We are just driving different cars.

Make a Memory

School, like a lot of long-term experiences, can become a monotonous series of similar days.  To some extent, that is good and necessary.  Routines are important to safety, security, and proper function.  If, when you went to work each day, you had zero idea of what to expect, your job would be difficult to master.  It might seem fun for a few days; but after a while, it would result in a lack of security.  Get ready for a big however.

HOWEVER, the days you remember from school are probably not the everyday ins and outs of grammar and math and foreign language.  They are the days where something different happened.  My most memorable experience of elementary school is the day we read the story of the Gingerbread man.  We went as a class to the school kitchen and made a giant Gingerbread man.  When we returned at the end of the baking time, he was gone.  We went from room to room, seeking out our gingerbread man.  We learned directions.  We learned to talk to older kids and their teachers.  We learned the joy of finding something lost (which was the point, if I remember correctly).  Each year after that, I would enjoy reliving the experience as small people came into my classroom in search of their lost gingerbread man.

My most memorable experience from high school came at the end of our reading of The Great Gatsby.  It was school tradition that when all of the English classes had finished Fitzgerald's masterpiece, there would be a party worthy of the time.  As students, we were assigned to committees (decorating our English classroom or the hallway, food, music, etc.), and our work on that committee comprised half of our grade.  We were required to dress in period costume (the other half of the grade) and were given extra credit for dressing as a character from the novel.  We could attend this party during our English period and our lunch time, but since party crashing is a frequent occurrence in the novel, we felt obliged to try it and didn't get into too much trouble if we did.  The school has stopped this tradition for a variety of reasons, and it makes me sad.  The memory of that day is still connected to my enjoyment of the novel.

It is important to help our students create memories of their school experiences.  At my school, the elementary campus really excels at this.  When the kindergarten learns about Antarctica, they come dressed as different types of penguins for a day.  They march around the building, squawking and having a great time.  If they remain at the school, they will experience it again each year, much as I did with the gingerbread man.  When fourth grade learns about planets, they come dressed on different days with some item that is meaningful about that planet.  One day, they wear sunglasses and surgical masks to represent Mercury and Venus.  When they learn about the civil war, they set up tents on the school lawn and come dressed as either union or confederate soldiers.  They spend the day eating as soldiers, learning to darn socks, and hearing from experts on the war.  Years later, I still hear them reference this experience, especially if it was particularly cold or raining their fourth-grade year.

By necessity, this looks a little different in middle and high school.  Because they travel from class to class, it would be logistically rather difficult to have an all day experience (although that can and does happen from time to time).  Rather, we tend to work our memorable experiences into projects.  The two physics teachers do climb to the top of the school building every year to throw egg drop projects down to the parking lot, and I like to think they will look back fondly on that experience.  Our math teachers give students all kinds of mathematical memories, like flying kites they make themselves.  Our foreign language departments take advantage of holidays specific to French and Spanish speaking countries.  The Latin club even marked Saturnalia just before Christmas break.  This week, my physics students are presenting projects that I call Free Choice Projects (I think I'll do a post on that project at some point because it is a great project).  They decide what the memorable experience will be.  I've had years in which students analyzed blood spatter by smashing balloons of colored corn syrup.  I had a student build a hovercraft, which we all enjoyed riding.  One of my groups this week is presenting the physics of swimming.  They asked if they could do a live demonstration rather than a video, so we will be heading to the area aquatic center for one class period.  As students gather around the pool, I believe they will create a better connection of memory to Newton's laws than they would if they were watching a video, not to mention they will think of more interesting questions, which the experts can address on the spot.

It isn't always possible to break from the day to day experience of class time.  When it is possible, make every effort to do it.  After all, we want them to learn the curriculum; but what we really want is for them to love learning.  It is that love that will make them want to learn as much as possible for the rest of their lives.

Do you have a favorite memory of school?  Feel free to comment.

Expressions We Shouldn't Carry Into 2016

Just like fashions change from season to season, there are also fads in language.  I know how the clothing changes.  There are designers that intend to have millions in skinny jeans for a year even though they told them everyone should wear bootcut the year before.  I can tell how it happens in language, but it does.  From Twitter to the board room to teacher conventions, there are certain expressions and phrases that are the hot buttons for a while.  While anything overused in this way can be annoying, there are some expressions we should just stop using altogether.  While I don't believe in resolutions, the new year seems to be a good time to drop these expressions from our vocabulary.  These are my top three expressions to abandon.

3.  Leverage - I was at an educational workshop in which I swear this word was used as a verb over a hundred times.  The workshop was only four hours long.  Unless you are talking about the physics of exchanging force for distance by use of a fulcrum, this word just means use.  Saying you can leverage an app with your students might make you feel smarter, but it doesn't make you sound smarter.  If you mean use, just say use.  (On behalf of my friend, Cheryl, you can place the word utilize in the same category.)

2.  What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. - Contrary to popular belief, this didn't first appear in a pop song.  When you say this crazy sentence, you are quoting atheist German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.  Thanks to the power of pop music, it has resurfaced.  It is now used for every situation that involves suffering of any kind.  Some well meaning but trite friend will try to make you feel better using this inane sentence.  Among other problems, it just isn't true.  The pneumonia I had in 6th grade did not kill me, but it absolutely didn't make me stronger.  A bullet wound might not kill you, but it certainly will not strengthen you.  The only person ever made stronger by overexposure to gamma rays was Bruce Banner; everyone else just gets radiation poisoning.  The song may be catchy, but we should stop saying this stupid expression.

1.  It is what it is.  This is my number one most hated expression in all of modern English, and I can't get through a day without hearing it.  What does it mean?  If you take it literally, it means nothing.  Most people don't mean it literally, so what does it mean in practice?  It means I GIVE UP.  It implies that a situation can't be changed, so why bother.  I've thought about this for a long time, and I cannot think of a historic figure I respect who would use this sentence.  John Adams, fighting the Continental Congress for the passage of the Declaration of Independence would never say, "Oh, well.  It is what it is."  William Wilberforce in England and Frederick Douglas in America would not have used this sentence in their fight against slavery.  The Apostles traveled the known world to carry the gospel of Christ, and it wasn't because they were content with the state of the world as it was.  Can you imagine Jesus saying it?  I can't.  Name anyone who has accomplished something with their lives, and you will not find this sentence.  Could we please put this expression behind us tonight?

As we head into the new year, let's examine our own speech.  Let's say things that are true, helpful, and meaningful.

Athletic Artists and Artistic Athletes

My role as yearbook teacher has given me a unique take on my school.  I am in and out of classes from Transitional Kindergarten through AP Biology.  I go to at least one or two games of every athletic team we have.  I have at least some communication with every teacher who works here, and I attend most events.  One of the most interesting things that I get to observe in this role is the variety of artistic opportunities we have.

My school offers visual art, dance, theater, band, strings, and chorus.  As other schools have cut some of their arts programs for budget purposes, we are trying to grow ours.  Our school's vision statement is, "Students at GRACE Christian School will be grounded in God's Word and challenged to achieve academic excellence as they prepare to use their gifts and abilities effectively to follow God's plan for their lives."  We don't believe that God made people the same, and we want our kids to seek out whatever gifts God has given them to use for His glory.

I teach both science and yearbook, and people always respond to that as though it is strange.  Apparently, I am supposed to be one dimensional.  Our AP Biology teacher also holds a history teaching degree, and he loves them both.  One of our earth science teachers also teaches history, and the other one also teaches Bible.  At one point, our math teacher took up Irish dance.  She eventually gave up math to teach dance full time, but our students were able to see that a person is not one thing.  We want our kids to have a well rounded view of the world and themselves.


As the person who photographs everything, I have had the opportunity to witness this in action.  Some of the leaders on our girls basketball team have also been the most devoted members of our chorus.  This violinist, who is one of the founding members of our strings group, is the same guy protecting our goal on the soccer field.  He understands that he can do both of those things well and not have sacrifice one for the other.  Much of the visual art that decorates our school halls and wins awards at competitions was made by runners and soccer players and volleyball girls.  We also have artists who excel academically or in more than one artistic endeavor.  My yearbook editor just completed her role as Badger in Wind in the Willows, excels in multiple AP classes, and is one of our most accomplished visual artists.  When a student graduates from GRACE, we hope that they have explored all kinds of activities and found Christ in all of them.  They are all reflections of God's creation, and we don't want them to limit themselves to one thing.

I understand the difficulties faced by schools who are wrestling with budget problems.  Financially, it is easy to say that the athletic programs bring in money and should be kept while the artistic programs do not.  I get that, but our students aren't numbers on a spreadsheet.  The contribution they will make to the world can't be measured that way.  The impact that the arts have on a student's brain will change them in ways that cannot be quantified.  I am proud that I have a school that knows this is important and funds our arts programs.  We even hold a pep rally for them.   Don't get me wrong; we still struggle with the balance between athletics and arts, just like other schools.  I think our struggle is often for a different reason, however.  We struggle with the fact that a student can't be in two places at once.  They can't be at cheer practice and play rehearsal at the same time.  While I know that is frustrating to both the coach and the director, I'll take that struggle any day over the struggle of cutting back.

Love reading.  Love computers.  Love music.  Love tennis.  Love fashion.  Love knitting.  Love math.  Love painting.  Love science.  Love Latin.  Love writing.  Love God and learn about him through all of these things because these are all reflections of His nature.

What's So Hard About Being a Good Teacher?

Recently, one of my more outspoken 8th graders said, "I don't get what's so hard about being a good teacher.  I mean, you just do it."  We were in the middle of a lesson on the periodic table, so I didn't have time to go into a soliloquy about the training and experience that brought me to the point where I am today.  I replied, "That's because you only see what happens in these 45 minutes." and of course followed up with, "Read my blog."

His question, however improperly timed, does reflect the thinking of many students (and probably parents and society at large).  It got me thinking about other comments I have heard.  A teacher friend of mine said her husband told her she wouldn't be so tired all the time if she had better boundaries between work and life.  Legislators in most states play political bingo with test scores and teacher pay and school assignment for students because they don't understand what goes into good teaching either.  At the risk of sounding defensive, I'm going to take it upon myself to explain what the big deal is.  What's so hard about being a good teacher?  My dear 8th grader, I'll give you four answers; but they won't even scratch the surface.

Answer one - Let's start with a teacher's education.  I hold a bachelor's degree in secondary science education with an emphasis in physics.  When I was in college I took all the teaching classes an education major has to take as well as two calculus courses, four biology classes and their labs, three chemistry class with two labs, earth science and its lab, and every physics course I could fit into the schedule.  I even pushed some of my general ed into the summer so that I could take Applied Thermodynamics and Modern Physics.  Since graduating from college, I have attended hundreds of hours of workshops, training seminars, and conventions.  I read articles on new educational research and books on neuroscience.  I follow Talks with Teachers on Twitter and participated in their Idea Lab.  I'm not complaining about ANY of this.  I love learning, and it's part of being good.  I wouldn't want a doctor who got his degree in 1998 to have learned none of the medical science that happened since then, and I wouldn't want my teaching to reflect only the information that was available then either.  Professional development is a good and enjoyable thing, but it is part one of the answer to your 8th grader question.  Good teaching is hard because you never stop developing it.

Answer two - All the research says something different.  I was reading an article recently on the importance of homework.  It discussed the part of the brain that is activated when doing work independently after having left the environment in which you learned it.  Then I clicked on the related article, which was about how homework is the worst thing ever invented and why no one should ever be required to do it.  As I have mentioned in the past, I work in a school with a one to one program.  We've read a lot of research about millennial students and technology and the importance of collaboration and are all on board with our program.  Then, in the course of two days, we have read two articles about how technology is messing with our memories and why introverts are being harmed by the focus on collaboration.  What's a good teacher to do?  The research isn't wrong; it is just that we aren't working with widgets.  Every student responds differently to what we do, and only the lazy teacher responds with "teach to the middle."  We have to take in all this conflicting research and figure out a way to turn it into a lesson plan.  This would be like you, my 8th grade friend, trying to write one paper for five different teachers who all believe that good writing is something different.

Answer three - Your school community has specific expectations.  I won't re-hash my post on my school's mission statement.  You can find that by scrolling down to last week.  When I was in public school, spiritual inspiration was not an expectation.  It is here.  Some schools focus heavily on citizenship or service, and others are all about test scores.  Some care about getting grades posted within 24 hours while others want you to take the time to give deep and meaningful feedback.  Learning the expectations of your specific school community isn't easy; most don't post a list or anything.  You learn them at faculty meetings (meetings could be its own answer because there are so many of them).  The expectations of parents are also quite different than they were even a decade ago.  We live in an instant results, consumer driven, Yelp review kind of world.  So, my inquisitive 8th grade student, ask yourself if it would be hard to do well in my class if I had four conflicting expectations of you and graded you on all of them and posted your grades on twitter.

Answer four - All students are different.  I mentioned in answer two that every student responds differently to what we do.  Introverts need quiet time to think while extroverts need verbal processing.  Auditory learners find your diagrams distracting while visual learners can't learn without them.  The student with auditory processing disorder needs you to have lots of bright informational posters in the room while the ADHD student finds the same posters make it difficult to listen to you.  One student needs you to make constant eye contact while another would be riddled with anxiety if you looked in their direction.  All these students are in the same period and are expected to accomplish the same objectives.  Again, I hope you will not read this as a complaint.  I do not want Stepford Students.  It is a wonderful thing to have such a diverse group of people.  We all learn from each other's differences, and it is one of the things that makes my job so wonderful.  It is also one of the things that makes it hard to be good at.

Well, my 8th grade student, have you figured it out yet?  You see me standing in front of you talking as though I am coming up with things on the spot.  I've worked long and hard to make it look that way.  You see me answer your questions as though it didn't take years of training to have those answers and years of experience to learn how to put those answer on an 8th grade level for you.  You see me put a score on a test without any understanding of the years it has taken to build professional judgement about which error is worth 1 point off and which is worth only half a point off.  You see a test as though there is a printed book of tests I am copying.  (By the way, that book does exist, but you wouldn't be happy if I used it).  You don't know this, but you complimented me and all your teachers with your question because you implied that we make it look easy.  I hope this post helps answer your question.  Being a good teacher isn't easy, but as Tom Hanks says in the movie A League of Their Own, "It's the hard that makes it great."