The Most Important Job

If you regularly read my blog, you know that I volunteer at a camp for foster children every summer. If not, you can read about it at this post and this one.  This year, I had an interesting conversation with one of the men during his counselor break.  We were chatting about what each of us had done during the day and had left to do, and he said, "Wow, every job here has to be done, or this camp just can't happen."

He was right.  There are a lot of jobs at camp, and without any one of them, it wouldn't be the experience that it is.

Cooks - When we get to camp, our amazing cooks immediately get into the kitchen and start work (actually they come down even earlier to set up).  They pretty much don't leave the kitchen again until Friday.  They make three wonderful meals every day plus snacks for both the kids and the adults.  They don't just feed us; they make the experience of family dinner possible for kids who have not had that in their lives.

Administrative People - This year, I had the opportunity to observe the registration and check in process.  If you think this wouldn't take a lot of people, then you have never tried to do it.  The kids come in with their foster parent and encounter a wonderful lady named Chris with check in paperwork.  They have talked to her on the phone before because she works with social workers for months prior to camp in order to get out kids enrolled.  Without Chris, we wouldn't have camp because we wouldn't have kids.  Next, they encounter the nurses, who collect their medications for distribution during the week.  As you can imagine, the nurses may be the busiest people at our camp.  In addition to regular medications, they also deal with injuries, bee stings, heat related ailments, etc.  We couldn't have camp without them.  The next person they encounter takes their luggage and marks them clearly.  You know that horrible feeling when the airline loses your suitcase?  Well, that would be far worse if you were a child who had been moved from home to home (because of most of what you can call your own fits in your suitcase).  The lady who labels their luggage is important because we don't want our kids to panic when they get to camp by not having their stuff.  They go to the next person who gives them their camp t-shirt.  That shirt might not mean much to a lot of kids.  Since some of our wear this shirt all week long, it must mean a lot to them.  They get the correct size shirt because of our secretary, Pat, who assists the director all year long with all kinds of things from applications to name tags.  Without her, camp couldn't happen because the state would never let us have the kids if we were a disorganized mess.

Counselors - When the kids get off of the bus at camp, the first person they encounter is their counselor.  The counselor is the person they bond with, the person they eat with, the person they do activities with, and the person they lose their temper with.  The counselor remains enthusiastic about everything all week, which takes a lot of energy.   They get about two hours worth of break time each day, and it is an extremely important job.

Activity Staff - Three to four hours of each day are devoted to activities.  The kids can choose from horses, woodworking, making bracelets, fishing, bike riding, going on hikes, playing checkers, writing notes, spin art, playing dress up, etc.  You name it, we probably have it.  Each of those activities must be manned by a staff member.  This is one of the reasons we take more adults to camp than kids.  The staff also takes over for the counselors during their break times.  They serve the kids and counselors at meal times.  They don't have the same emotional strain as the kids, but they work very hard physically from breakfast until bedtime.

Program Staff - So, we aren't just a camp of activities.  We are a ministry, and we want to teach our kids about the love of Jesus.  We use a variety of methods in that teaching.  We sing a lot of fun and crazy and meaningful songs, so our song director is very important.  We use drama, so people who are willing to act are needed.  We have two ladies who handle puppets.  One person is in charge of object lessons.  One is in charge of Bible stories.  Without these people, our kids might not go home with the understanding of God's love that we so desperately wish for them to.

Lifeguard - At every meal, I ask the kids what their favorite thing was during that day.  Most of the kids say, "SWIMMING!"  They love it, and they get to do it for an hour every day.  This would not be possible, of course, without a lifeguard.  We are blessed to have a lifeguard who taught elementary PE and swimming for many years.  I have watched her teach kids to swim, and I wish I could take swimming lessons from her.  We often have kids who come in afraid of the water at the beginning of the week and leave as swimmers by the end.  Without our lifeguard, camp would not be camp.

Sheet Checker - Every day, some of our awesome staff people take on an unenviable task when the kids aren't in their rooms.  They go into the cabins and run their hands over the beds to check for wetness.  If a child wets their bed at night, the counselors keep very quiet about it.  They simply leave the wet pajamas in the middle of the bed.  The sheet checkers pull wet sheets off of the bed, redress it, launder the pajamas and return them at some time of day when the kids aren't there.  This is huge because it happens completely without the knowledge of the other campus; there is no embarrassment involved.  Camp might not be the positive experience it is without these lovely ladies.

Photographer and Videographer - Do you have pictures from your childhood?  Whether it is yearbook pictures or family portraits, you can probably look back on photos of your childhood and see yourself grow.  Some of our kids don't have that.  Since our camp is for kid from ages 6-12, a child can potentially attend our camp for six years in a row.  They leave camp with a book of photos.  In these photos they are smiling or making faces or swimming or riding a horse or doing something that will be a positive memory of a happy moment.  Some of them have siblings that they don't see at other times of the year, so the sibling picture they go home with is the closest thing they have to a family portrait.  One of them asked me at registration if they would get a photo with their brother again this year.  Our videographer puts together a video that is one of the highlights of the week.  It shows bits of everything they have done during the week.  The kids like looking for themselves in the video, but the most important function of this video is that we show it to the foster parents upon our return.  They get to see the love and fun their kids have experienced all week.  They get to know that it is a good idea for them to come back next year.  Without that video, I don't think we would have the  return rate that we do.

Prayers and Knitters - Each person who goes to camp has family members or friends that pray for them, of course; but they aren't the only ones.  The sending church has a group of people who specifically pray for each camper by name.  They also have a group of people who make blankets and pillowcases for our campers to keep.  I have watched more than one kid walk around with that blanket wrapped around herself to every event for five days.  This camp takes place in 90º plus weather, but the camper could not be dissuaded from having it at all times.   she said.  "Someone made it for me," she said.  "It means safety and security," said one boy when he received his.  The people who pray and knit might not be able to attend camp, but they are part of making camp special.

Directors - Our directors start working on next year's camp during this year's camp.  They plan everything, communicate everything, pray about everything, reach out to everyone for partnerships, and get very little sleep.  Without them, camp simply wouldn't exist.

If any one of these jobs was not done, camp would not be successful.  Every job at camp is the most important job.

Draw a Flower on Your STEM

My school has an annual meet and greet at the beginning of the year.  I stand outside my door and enthusiastically answer the same 5 questions about my physical science class.  Physical science is an introduction to chemistry in first semester and an introduction to physics in second semester.  Yes, it is fun.  Yes, it is hard.  No, you will not have to memorize the periodic table, but yes, you will learn to use it for the tool that it is.  Yes, I like to blow things up, but don't expect it every day or anything.

A few years ago, a mom cornered me, literally close-talking me to the corner between the lockers and my room.  She said, "I don't think we are placing enough emphasis on STEM."  She was expecting me, as a science teacher, to jump right in with agreement; so she was pretty surprised by my response.  "Actually, as a society," I said, "I think we are placing to much emphasis on it.  We shouldn't only educate kids from the neck up and slightly to the left." (That last part comes from Sir Ken Robinson, not me.)  Kids need to learn a little of everything, including science and math but not limited to it.  No one cares about a well rounded education more than I do.

It's time for a science teacher to say it - Enough with the crazy emphasis on STEM.  Yes, we do need classes in science, but scientists also need to be creative.  Yes, we do need our kids to be proficient in math, but those same students should be taking music as well.  I absolutely want to produce engineers and computer scientists, but I am just as proud of my student who is a professional dancer and another who composes music for Disney.  There are all kinds of kids, which means we need all kinds of education.

We have many discussions in our school about the fact that some of the best jobs there are now didn't even exist when we were in school and that many of the ones our kids will have don't exist now.  We know, of course, that kids will need courses that are classified as STEM, but we have to also expect that there will be a need for well-educated writers, farmers, carpenters, photographers, news anchors, real estate agents, insurance adjusters, salesmen, lawyers, coaches, tour guides, and social workers. Does anyone see these careers going anywhere?  Also, do we think an engineer doesn't need a knowledge of history?  Do we think a physicist shouldn't have learned to be creative?  By the way, there will never be advancement in physics without creativity, so that's a bad plan.  I want computer scientists to work in collaboration with poets and musicians so that their work can be brought everyone.

When we place value on only one kind of learning, we cause students to de-value learning.  Let's stop pushing our kids into one thing as though the future is monolithic.  The future needs educated people of all varieties, which is why God wisely gave different gifts to different people.  We don't have to abandon one type of learning for another.  You can have all.  You draw a flower on your STEM, giving the world more depth and beauty than tunnel vision will ever accomplish.

Someone in you-tube land compiled seven minutes of scenes from Mr. Holland's Opus, which work well here to make my point, so I leave you with them.

The Purpose of Education

Take a quick survey of the people you encounter this week.  Ask them, "What is the purpose of education?"  Then come back to this blog and read it.  Okay, I didn't really expect you to do that, so I'll just go ahead and tell you some of the answers you are likely to hear.
- To train you for a career.
- To get into college.
- To get a better-paying job.

I live in the Research Triangle area with NC State, UNC Chapel Hill, Duke, and Wake Forest all within shouting distance, so my perspective may be skewed.  You might get some other answers, but I am guessing that the vast majority of answers will fall into the areas of getting into college and getting a job (and a "real" one at that).  I want to say something kind of radical.  Education is NOT about getting into college!  Education is NOT about getting a job!

Don't get me wrong.  It is nice that these things often result from being well educated.  I'm glad that students learn something in my classes that will help them in college and careers, but it is NOT why I teach.  I did not get a good education in order to enter a profession in which I would work 75 hour weeks so that my students could earn more money.  In fact, I have high respect for people who work in mills and factories and fishing boats and farms.  I want those people to have education whether or not it leads to career advancement.  Since I do not even believe everyone should go to college, I certainly didn't enter the teaching profession to ensure that kids get into college.

So, what is the purpose of education?  I believe there is more than one purpose, so allow me to ramble about a few of them.

1.  Discovery of Talent - All people have been gifted by God in some way.  Education helps them discover what that gift is and develop it.  This is an area in which our current attitude toward education does harm to students.  We implicitly send students the message that the gift God gave them is less valuable than the gift he gave someone else.  If a student is an amazing dancer, we too often encourage them to keep that as a hobby while they pursue accounting or computer science because you probably won't make money as a dancer (forget about the hundreds of thousands of people in dance companies across the world who make their living as dancers, not to mention those on Broadway or in music tours or at Disney).  Students need to learn in as many areas as possible to discover and develop their gifts (more on this in a future post).

2.  Brain Training - About once a year, a student will ask "When am I ever going to use this in life?"  This question only arises when something is difficult, so I have little respect for the question.  There are answers to this question, but it also isn't the purpose of education.  Everything you learn makes a connection between the neurons in your brain.  While that piece of information may never be important to you again, the connection it has made in your brain will be.  It means that the next thing you learn can be processed faster.  We all get this when it comes to physical workouts.  No one asks "why should I lift this weight when I don't need it to be off the floor?"  We understand that we are training our muscles.  Education is training your brain.

3.  Learning to Love Learning - First, let me apologize on behalf of any teacher that made you hate learning because their class was so boring.  Hopefully, that teacher is a minority in the profession, and they should definitely not stay in the profession if that is their norm.  Learning is amazing.  If it weren't, there wouldn't be so much viewership of Kahn Academy or Crash Course channels on YouTube: and there certainly wouldn't be a Discovery Channel or shows like How It's Made.  People are wired to learn.  It is why the average five year old asks 400 questions every day.  It is why we invent new things.  It is why we explored the west and went to the moon.  It is part of our nature as human beings and one of the things that separates us from the animals.  They learn, but we enjoy it.

4.  Reintegration with God - Adam and Eve's sin broke EVERYTHING.  The fall affects the entire universe, and it broke our relationship with him, our relationships with each other, and our relationship with the creation.  Education teaches us about His nature through the reflections of those aspects in creation.  Whether it is the rationality of math, the beauty of poetry, or the patience reflected in the Grand Canyon, we see reflections of God's character through is creation.  Despite his lack of religious devotion, Einstein called it, "thinking God's thoughts after Him."  While education cannot redeem us, it is an aspect of God's plan.

Thinking of education in these ways will definitely change your approach to it.  You will stop trying to find the easiest way to an A and start pursuing a better understanding of everything God puts in your path.  If you are a parent, I beg you to stop saying things to your kids that reflect only a utilitarian approach to learning.  Encourage them to train their brains, love learning, find their gifts, and use those gifts to glorify God.  It matters.