Not Knowing

At the desk where I scan my ID at the YMCA, there is a little sign that always has a question.  It is usually something silly like, "Do you eat or drink soup?" or "What's the most embarrassing thing you ever let someone talk you into doing?"  So while I am heading down the steps to my class, I decide mentally that if you use a spoon, you are eating and drinking if you aren't.  

A few days ago, the question was, "What is something you miss from childhood?"  I'm sure the intent was that I arrive in the locker room with a thought like, "Hungry Hungry Hippos was a great game."  But my mind went somewhere else.  I thought, "I miss not knowing . . ." and then realized that was the complete thought.  There is something joyful in childhood that comes from the things I did not know.  I'll address why it is important that I now know them at the end, but first, here are some things I miss not knowing.

I miss not knowing about discrimination.  When I was a child, I did not know people were unable to do what they wanted because people thought they shouldn't be allowed to (you know, other than their parents).  No one had ever told me girls couldn't be scientists, so I didn't know that other girls were being told that.  While I saw stories about racism on television, and my mom told me about some awful things her family members had said when she was young, I had no personal experience with it myself.

When I was young, I had no concept of losing people to preventable diseases.  I attended many funerals, but most of them were people who had lived long lives.  In fifth grade, my friend's five-month-old nephew died, but that was a bizarre occurrence in my life.  I had no idea that young children around the world died as a result of malaria and the flu because I lived in a world that prevented those things. I miss being unaware of just how much grief there is in the world. 

When guns were discussed in my childhood, it was usually in the context of hunting (or some newsworthy incident in Fayetteville or Durham - which felt far away).  I never considered that a gun might harm me.  I certainly didn't have to do active shooter drills at school.  I remember a time in high school when we had to evacuate the school during an exam because someone had "called in a bomb threat," but my emotion was annoyance, not fear.  We didn't believe it was real, and I was just irritated that my flow of thought had been interrupted and that I might earn a worse grade as a result.  Not one of us in that parking lot believed there was actually a bomb, and neither did the school personnel because after they had looked around the building for twenty minutes, we went back inside and finished our exams with no thought of trauma.  I miss not knowing that anyone can be shot anywhere.

I am so grateful that social media did not exist when I was young. I'm aware of the irony that you probably linked to this post from Facebook or Twitter, but I am so happy that I was not exposed to every thought of hundreds of people twenty-four hours a day.  I am so grateful that the only comparison I had to make was with my small circle of friends.  Social media gives adults the immaturity of 7th graders and exposes 7th graders to issues they shouldn't have to live with until they are adults.  And AI scares me to the point where I wish I was born a few decades earlier.  I miss not knowing the influence these things would have on our culture.

These were the big things I could think of, but there are a thousand small things that could be listed here as well.  I didn't know that the friends I had in kindergarten wouldn't remain my friends for my entire life.  I didn't know that bills had to match income.  I did not know how much laundry and dishes there would be to do.  I knew only the part of the world my brain was ready for, and I am grateful that I didn't have to know more.  However, it would be inappropriate for me to still be unaware of those things at 47.  While I may miss the blissful innocence of unawareness, that is only meant for childhood.  If an adult remains unaware of the things I have mentioned above, they are living out of touch with reality and unable to address the issues of the world.

This weekend was GRACE's graduation, and that always gets me thinking about my own.  I don't remember my graduation speaker, but I do remember the speech at my baccalaureate.  A local pastor who had previously been a magician showed us a card trick and then explained how it was done.  He then spoke to us about disillusionment - that living under an illusion might be easier or more fun, but it is always better to know the truth.  If you live without knowledge of discrimination, you will not treat your fellow image-bearers with sensitivity and love when they experience it or tell you about their experience.  If you are illusioned about the preventable diseases in the world, you won't feel the need to donate to organizations that save lives.  We need to know.

The only way to help is to know.  So while I may miss not knowing, it wouldn't be right for me to return to a state of not knowing.  

Try New Things

I didn't plan for it to be, but this week inadvertently became the week of trying new things.  Monday's was actually planned.  I've been taking spin classes since March, but until this week, I had not tried peddling while standing up.  Tuesday, my spin instructor was out and had a sub who isn't my cup of tea, so I took a class called Group Power, which is a weightlifting class.  Wednesday, I had dinner with friends at a restaurant I had been curious about for years.  That's when I realized what this week had become, so I had to try and think of things that were new (a few things related to the senior prank and buying things from Dick's Sporting Goods - If I had been planning it, I could have done better.).

People are often resistant to trying new things.  It can be scary because you don't know what to expect or because you risk failure.  Students resist it because they worry they will embarrass themselves.  And sometimes, you do fail.  Sometimes, you do embarrass yourself.  But sometimes, you find a source of joy you didn't previously know. I will be taking Group Power every week now because it turned out I was better at it than I thought I would be (to be fair, I thought I would be atrocious, so it wasn't hard to be better than that).  I can't wait to take people to the restaurant I went to because it was delicious.  I will try to stand up more while peddling because it works different muscles than seated peddling does.

Students think they already know what they like and often don't think they need to try anything else.  When I encourage them to take art, they will sometimes say they aren't good at it.  It seems odd to them to think you could enjoy something even if you aren't good at it.  They have trouble believing they could get better at it.  They can't imagine that there are things they do not know and don't believe me when I say I regret that I didn't take art and that I would take Latin if I could go back to school and do it over.  By their middle school years, they have bought into the idea that they should only have to learn things that will get them a job, and since I teach physics, they don't understand how I might want those other things in my life.  By the way, I didn't know I liked physics until I took it in my senior year either, so even that thing that became my job was a new thing to me at one point.

I recently wrote a scholarship recommendation letter for one of my juniors.  I made a lot of observations about her in that letter, but the one I spent the most time on was how much I admire her willingness to take on new challenges.  She started acting in middle school and joined the swim team as a sophomore just to try something new.  I wish this quality weren't so rare.

If you are an adult in the life of a child (whether that is a parent, a teacher, a coach, or a camp counselor), please encourage them to try new things - new foods, new sports, new musical instruments, new classes, new friendships.  You may help them find a career, but you may just increase the amount of joy they have in their lives.

We Did What?

At our senior dinner last week, our college counselor described what our current seniors had experienced since the start of their freshman year.  This, of course, included both the lockdown spring and the hybrid year.  As she described it, I had a sort of out-of-body experience.  While I know we did those things, I can't quite connect to them.  I turned to the person next to me and said, "How did we do that?"  

While lockdown and hybrid were certainly the biggest an most unexpected things we have ever done, the truth is that my teaching career has been full of things I would not have imagined before they happened.  

I've had to deal with a student having a grand mal seizure.  I've taught during a shooting threat.  I witnessed a fight in the cafeteria. I had a student take me shopping for jeans (a different time -  I wouldn't do that now).  I sponsored multiple clubs, organizing trips and judges and events.  All of that was before I turned 25, and none of them are things I would have imagined before the age of 20.

The year I taught in Wake County is a bit of blur, but the defining moment was when the principal came in to tell me about 9/11.  Who could have imagined the country could be attacked at 9:30 in the morning, and teachers would continue to teach until 3 in the afternoon?  All day, I had to make decisions about how to deal with this unfolding story as bells rang and new groups of kids came into my room.  Should we watch the coverage because it is historic, or is it bad for their brains to soak in it all day?  These aren't decisions a teacher thinks they will have to make when they choose this profession at the age of 18.

I've been at my current school for 20 years, and occasionally I say to the teacher next door to me (we came the same year), "Man, we have seen a lot."  And, as is becoming the pattern, most of the things we have seen were things we weren't prepared for.  We've been part of new building projects, hiring new people, taught subjects we've ever taught before (algebra, health, and video editing were not in my mind ever), and growing our programs.  We've guided students through grief while dealing with our own.  We've put out fires (both metaphorical and literal).  We've learned to teach in new ways year after year, written textbooks, made videos, adapted to schedule changes, collaborated with other teachers, and dealt with three accreditation cycles.  When I imagined my teaching career as a college student, I pictured planning and teaching lessons and grading tests.  The rest of that wasn't something I had even considered.

As I distribute my 18th and final yearbook on Friday, I look back and can't quite imagine that there have been 18 of them.  Part of me still feels like I am new to the job and don't know what I'm doing.  When I took a job teaching science at GRACE 20 years ago, I could not have envisioned that one day, I'd be carting around 1280 pounds of books.  I'm getting ahead of myself because that is next week's post, so I'll stop now.

My point is this.  It's a good thing we don't know what is coming.  We would believe it wasn't possible to do things we've never done before and have trouble even imagining.  But afterward, we can look back on it and say, "We did what?" and "Yes, we did that."