Are You Pro Life?

Disclaimer:  Usually, this is a blog about education.  Occasionally, I veer off into a little political meddling.  This post will be me working out some feelings, which gets messy and could include thoughts that contradict each other.  While my blog never officially represents my school, it's probably important to state that on this one because I may say some inflammatory things, and you should know that I have not run this by anyone.  The thoughts are ONLY my own.

I have been pro-life for as long as I can remember.  When I was twelve, I was the database keeper for the NC chapter of Right-to-Life.  The chair would call me for a list, which I would print on tractor feed label paper using a dot matrix printer, and he would come over to pick up the print outs because I couldn't drive.  At age 13-16, I worked the NC Right-to-Life booth at the State Fair.  I have voted for the most pro-life candidates in every election since I registered at eighteen.  I have observed Sanctity of Human Life Sunday in multiple churches and stood by many roadsides with pro-life signs while praying for this national tragedy to end.  

I write all of this because I want to be perfectly clear that I believe abortion is abhorrent before I say what I am about to say.  It has become very plain to me in the past few years that there is a difference between being pro-life and merely anti-abortion.  I started noticing this a few years ago, but, like a lot of things, 2020 has brought this into sharp relief.

When horrifying images of what was happening at the border started coming out in 2017, many people that I had respected as pro-life made it clear that they did not care about kids in cages or the people being sent back to places where they would be killed.  They cared a lot about finger-pointing, making sure that people knew this was happening prior to the Trump administration, but they did not care about the lives of the image-bearers of the Creator.  They may be anti-abortion, but they are not pro-life.

When the caravan of refugees was making its way from Guatemala to America in 2018, our President (who many people that I know and love voted for only because he promised anti-abortion policies) threatened military action, and those same people in my circle agreed.  These are people who label themselves pro-life, and they said out loud in my presence that we should just start randomly shooting refugees, people fleeing conditions we cannot imagine.  Some of them have posted angry words at those who go to Mexico to feed those in camps, waiting for their asylum hearings.  Imagine being angry that people are feeding the hungry.  These people in my life are anti-abortion, but they should really stop calling themselves pro-life.  

Please know that I understand that the situation at the border is complex, and there are no easy answers.  I believe in the rule of law, and I want people to do things the right way.  But I also know that those who care about life can't casually talk about randomly shooting human beings.

When the coronavirus was spreading through China in December, we observed from afar, thinking, "Oh, the poor Chinese.  They've got another one."  We'd seen them in masks before, and it really didn't seem to bother us.  Besides, we had koala bears in Australia to worry about.  When the US got its first identified cases, however, we jumped to blame the Chinese.  People I love insisted on calling it everything but its medical name.  When I question that, I get a history lesson (almost always showing their ignorance by using the Spanish flu (which started in Kansas) as their example).  Can you say it?  Of course.  Is it helpful to do so?  Of course not.  Did we care when Chinese people were dying of this virus?  Do we care if our Asian American citizens get attacked?  If not, I'm not sure pro-life is an appropriate label.

In March, the shutdowns began.  For about a week, we were all in this together, separately.  That must be our attention span because as soon as people got done watching Tiger King, they started demanding the lockdowns be over.  I have nothing but sympathy for those who have lost their jobs and worried about feeding their families (and those of us who are able should be doing everything we can to support food security), but the people holding signs like this one are showing their lack of respect for life over convenience and vanity.  

I know we have to re-open eventually, but it has been disheartening to see how many people who call themselves pro-life saying things like, "Only 2% will die from it."  I truly get the point they are making, but it's hardly a pro-life kind of statement.  Some have been even more blatant, like conservative author Bethany Mandel, who tweeted, "Call me a grandma killer. I'm not sacrificing my home, food on the table, all our docs and dentists, every form of pleasure (museums, zoos, restaurants), all my kids' teachers in order to make other people comfortable. If you want to stay locked down, do. I am not."  Where her Twitter bio used to say "pro-life," it now says "grandma killer."  At least she's honest about not being pro-life anymore.  

And now, we have the tragedy of the George Floyd murder.  Don't kid yourself.  It wasn't an arrest.  It wasn't an accident.  It wasn't a complication.  It wasn't a difficult decision that had to be made in a split-second.  It was a murder.  For 526 seconds, that cop listened as a human being suffocated beneath his body weight.  In broad daylight, in front of three other police officers, bystanders begging him to stop, and a firefighter asking to be allowed to check Floyd's pulse, a man charged with the duty to "protect and serve" ignored those pleas, ignored his training, and ignored every human instinct to preserve life.  I keep wondering what was going through his mind for 526 seconds.  In the video, he appears unphased, even a little haughty.  He put his hand in his pocket, which at best shows casual apathy (at worst, he's apply more pressure to his leg with his hand).  I can't read his mind, but surely someone who cared about life would have stopped.  He didn't.  Those of us who identify ourselves as pro-life must respond to this.  So far, the only way I have found is to donate to the NAACP Defense Fund, but I am seeking out other ways.

When the rage over this incident turned to riots, the divisions returned.  I'm not in favor of riots, but I also know many of those who are posting about the riots just found a way to care less about the murder.  It gives them a way to divert their attention and not ask themselves the hard questions.  How did we react to the incredibly peaceful protest of "taking a knee"?  We screamed that disrespecting the flag was protesting wrongly.  When they blocked traffic, we said they were protesting wrongly.  Perhaps if we had paid positive attention to non-violent protests, there wouldn't have been violent ones.  Listen, I'm not condoning it.  I'm truly not.  I'm just saying if we wish to prevent it, we consider its cause.  If you care more about property damage than we do about the death of George Floyd, you are not pro-life.

When I was in the 8th grade, my school showed a video series in chapel, called "How Now Shall We Live?" in which Chuck Colson and Francis Schaeffer examine the history, practice, and effects of abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia.  It's gruesome, and I'm pretty sure no one would advocate showing it to middle school students today.  But, it stuck with me.  What stayed with me the most was that our culture seemed to divide life that was worthy of value from not based on convenience.  If you want the baby, it's a life.  If not, it's a clump of cells.  If a person is born healthy, they are valuable.  If they are born deformed or diseased, not so much.  If a person becomes ill or damaged or in any way inconveniences society at large, we devalue them.  The pro-life world has been preaching how wrong this is for at least the four and a half decades I've been alive.  What is different now?  Is it really about the rule of law and resisting arrest or is it that we are inconvenienced by immigrants and those who are different than we are?  Do we believe human life is sacred or don't we?  These are questions we MUST ask.

I know I am offending at least half of those reading this.  That's fine.  Be offended.  But then be self-reflective.  Are your actions, words, and social media posts part of the problem or part of the solution? Do you care deeply about the unborn but not so much about the post born?  Are you anti-abortion, or are you truly pro-life?  If you are pro-life, how will that change the way you live, speak, and act? 

 

Personal Graduation Ceremonies

Some of you may get tired of how much I brag about my school. but you are just going to have to indulge me today because, while I loved GRACE Christian from the moment I started working there, I've never been more proud to work there than I am right now.  I'm not going to do justice to this day because there aren't enough words to do so, but I have to try.

When I left the school on March 19 to begin teaching from home, there were three women in our office making contingency plans for the possibility of a non-traditonal graduation.  Whether that would be virtual or socially distanced or in the parking lot, we did not yet know.  (At that time, we still dreamed it was possible we would be able to return to a regular ceremony.)  As the stay at home orders were extended, the work of these ladies became plans, and the plans were expanded and changed into realities.

In normal years, one of our senior traditions is a senior dinner, in which every student is spoken about by a teacher who has signed up to share about their character.  I've written about this event before, and it is my favorite night of the year (more so, even, than graduation).  While our graduation is lovely, the dinner is so personal that it represents our school mission and vision statements in a tangible way.  

As we prepared ourselves for an end to the year, there were three events we still hoped to have.  Yearbook distribution, the senior dinner, and graduation.  In teacher meetings and parent surveys, there was one thing that was evident; no one wanted these to be virtual.  Our virtual awards night was great, but it isn't the way you want to graduate or have a senior dinner.  (The yearbook distribution couldn't be virtual of course and happened in the way I described in last week's closure post.)  

Our school gave each of our fifty-seven seniors a personal graduation.  Students signed up for a time slot and came to the school with their parents and siblings.  Because there are fifty-seven of them and a few small breaks were planned, this event took from nine in the morning until almost seven in the evening.

Students arrived in their cap and gown. Their parents were given a box that held their diploma, any awards they had won, gifts or notes some of the teachers had given, a jump drive with the graduation slideshow, a plaque with three character traits the teachers suggested printed on it, and a Bible with their name engraved and messages from their teachers (another tradition we did online and printed for their Bibles).  They were led to the front.  The graduate then walked down the aisle to Pomp and Circumstance (for about four seconds because it doesn't take long for one person to get down the aisle of our chapel) and stood at the front.  

Our principal opened each ceremony in prayer and announced awards.  The parents presented the student with their awards from the box.  She also read the character traits, and the teacher who signed up to speak about them came to the stage to give the same speech they would have given at the dinner.  The parents then gave their senior their diploma, and they walked across the stage, turning their tassel at the center.  This was all streamed on Facebook Live so friends and family could watch even though they couldn't attend.  Since I was only allowed to be in the room for the three I was speaking for, I stayed glued to that feed for most of the day.

After their ceremony, they stepped into the hall, where the teacher who had spoken about them and our Christian Life Director prayed for them.  They proceeded to the cafeteria for photographs.  It took half the building to have everything properly distanced, but it worked.  It just worked.  

GRACE has a three-word mantra that has arisen in addition to our mission and vision statements.  We talk often about how much we want our students to feel that they are known, valued, and loved.  When we went into the virtual environment, we talked often about ways we could still make students feel known, valued, and loved.  At the end of the day on Friday, I believe there were fifty-seven seniors (and their families) who felt known by the teachers who spoke and submitted character traits and "wrote" in their Bibles.  I believe there were fifty-seven seniors who felt valued by the people who spent eleven hours filming, photographing, praying, and speaking for their personal graduation ceremonies.  I believe there were fifty-seven seniors who knew they were loved by everyone in their school, but more importantly by their Creator.

Closure - Find a Way

The camp that I volunteer with has a number of rituals.  One of them as a "Welcome Home Dinner" upon returning from camp.  It involves food and a short ceremony.  Because camp is exhausting, there are always a few people who say they want to just go straight home rather than participate in one more thing.  A few years ago, one of our directors said something really meaningful, "We can change how we do it to make it shorter, but we won't have nothing.  You have a psychological need for closure." 

She understood that psychological need better than most because she is an educator.  People whose jobs don't operate in discreet years probably don't spend much time marking the ends of things, but teachers and school personnel do.  From field days to yearbook singings, from athletic awards ceremonies to graduation, we spend a lot of time ceremonially marking the end of each year. 

Until this year.

When we left our classrooms in March, we did not know the year would end with us still at home.  We didn't know the last person we hugged in March would be the last person we would physically touch for months.  We aren't getting the normal closure activities, and there is psychological stress as a result.

Fortunately, schools are in the creative solutions business.  Most are coming up with some way for their seniors to graduate.  Whether it's a virtual ceremony or a parking lot graduation or giving each student and their parents an individual moment, they are finding ways to give those who are leaving their school some way of celebrating that milestone. 

For those who are not seniors, don't forget they need closure for the school year too.  My school is having a drive-through event in which students will return their laptops and textbooks.  They will receive the contents of their lockers, their artwork, and their yearbooks.  School personnel will be masked and socially distant, but there will be cheering and waving from the sidewalk while these exchanges happen.  We will get to mark the moment.

If your school isn't planning something, that doesn't mean you can't create closure for yourself and your students.  Write them a note.  Send them a video.  Do something fun during that final online class.  Whatever your context enables, give your kids a way to mark the end of the year.  They need it, and so do you.

Thank You for Your Continuous Support

I spend a lot of time on EduTwitter.  It is simultaneously a great place for professional development and a dark and cynical place.  In some ways, it's a digital teacher's lounge.  The pandemic has only served to amplify those extremes. 

Just as schools began to close in March, EduTwitter was filled with people who had done online schooling before offering their best practices, making their resources available for free, and just generally being super supportive to other educators.  It was lovely and encouraging. 

About a week into the shutdown, divisions started rising between those who want to pretend online school is no different that in-person schooling and those who say, "This is a pandemic.  Why are we requiring students to do anything at all?"  My personal opinion, as usual, lies between the extremes.  Things are different.  There is no doubting that.  I believe it is still my job to provide the best education possible to my students and hold my kids accountable for responsible behavior, but I know that there are things I and they cannot do and try to go easier on them in grading.  Every context is different.  Some schools have wider disparity than others, so they cannot all be held to one standard.

The most disheartening stories in the past week or so are from those whose administrators and districts have changed their expectations from week to week and parents who write to them to complain.  Early on, there was an outpouring of love for teachers from parents who were finding out that their kids were not as easy to teach as they once believed.  As the lockdowns have gone on and this way of life has become routine, they have started to criticize everything from content to assessment.  It's as though they expect that the teachers should have it all figured out by now, two months in.

I read these stories on Twitter, and it makes me sad for them.  When I close Twitter and open my email, I have an encouraging message from a parent who reminds me that their family is praying for us, a thank you note from a student who thought taking a test on Kahoot was great once she muted the music, or a copy of the devotional our Head of School gave that day.  Our teachers send each other song lyrics, scriptures, or videos to keep each others' spirits up.  No place is perfect, and we have flaws to address, but at the end of the day, we address those issues to grow together as a team with love and support from the families who trust us with their students. 

Thank you GRACE administration and GRACE parents, not only for your support at the start of all this, but for your continuous support.

Surprised? Completely!

There's a saying used by doctors and crime scene investigators (if television is to be believed).  It says, "When you hear hoofbeats, you should think horses and not zebras."  It's a good way of narrowing your vision to the most likely cause of a problem, but because zebras do exist, occasionally something unlikely does occur.  If I hear hoofbeats, I never think unicorns because that's impossible.  Those do not exist.  This week, however, a unicorn knocked on my front door.

No, the isolation isn't getting to me.  Keep reading. 

I've been teaching yearbook for fifteen years, and every year, when we discuss who we should dedicate it to, my staff members joke, "One of these days, we should dedicate it to you."  I laugh and scoff, "Good luck surprising me.  That's pretty much impossible."  Apparently, this year, my editors decided that was a challenge they should accept.  They found a way to do what I thought was impossible.

While I was busy getting together pictures and information for the person I thought we were dedicating the yearbook to, they were twice as busy, making that page as a decoy and the real page on a system that our yearbook rep set up for them to work on separately.  They asked my art teacher friend how to contact my mom, who sent them information and brought them photos, not only from her house but from mine (she came to my house and took photos from my albums). 

The editors were frequently asking if they could go ask someone in the office questions for the page I thought we were making, and while I thought it was a little odd that they were going together when only one of them was assigned to the page, it didn't strike me as too odd because they were also working on senior pages together and enjoying their collaboration. 

A lot has happened this year, so the yearbook has covered a variety of stuff.  Thankfully, our final deadline was completed two weeks before we went into virtual learning.  (I even like that the Coronavirus won't be reflected in this year's book.  It's a nice way to focus on the positives of the year.)  I knew the stay-at-home order would change our book delivery and distribution.  I even found out recently that Jostens found a way to make virtual signing possible.  What I still did not know was that there would be a spread in the yearbook that I had never seen before. 

Every day since going into the virtual learning environment, we have had a morning faculty meeting.  We share devotions and prayer and make any announcements that need to be made.  On Tuesdays, it includes the faculty and staff from both of our campuses, and our head of school does the devotion.  This week, he asked me if there was a noise at my house because he thought he heard a knocking sound.  He told me that I should go answer my door because he thought someone was knocking on it.  At that point, I obviously knew something was going on, but I couldn't have been more shocked when I opened the door to see my yearbook editors standing on my porch.  In the yard were my mom, my principal and her daughter, our dean of women, and the mom of one of the editors with balloons and a yard sign that said 2020 Yearbook Dedication. 

It was only then that I found out all of this had been going on behind my back since August.  The editors read the lovely text of the page to me while I stood on my front porch.  We took some socially distanced photos (They are standing uphill from me).  They gave me a printout of the page given to them by our Jostens rep.  I struggled with my inability to hug them (just wait until I am allowed to).  And, all of this was being live-streamed to the faculty and staff who were still in the meeting I thought we were having.

After fourteen dedications of the yearbook, I've never been on this end of the sneakiness before.  It's amazing how many people can work behind your back and keep secrets from you.  People keep asking if I knew.  I totally did not.  They have asked if there as anything that I could have tipped me off in hindsight.  There really is not because when you don't believe in Bigfoot, you don't think a person walking down in the street in a furry coat might be him.