September 2015 felt like it was12 weeks
long. That was a long month. The days seemed interminable. About ten students,
with individual issues, challenged us from the first week of school, with
behaviors an outsider would find hard to believe.
Every day was rife with emergencies, and every day demanded
strategy sessions that monopolized us school leaders, our campus officer, teachers,
and many itinerant workers, including our school psychologist and social worker.
In their classrooms, teachers soldiered
bravely every day, trying to be consistent and firm, yet warm and relational,
as they established productive learning environments through their own
expertise and with the backup of our our multi-leveled school discipline system.
This year, we did not wait on students
to show us unproductive behaviors over the course of the first quarter. We
implemented our Success in School Playbook from the first day of school,
intervening early when anyone failed to behave appropriately or put forth
effort on their school work.
Although we are kind, we have a mission
that requires us to be in our students’ faces, so to speak, about their life’s
goals, their work habits, their peer relations and interactions, and their
learning.
I think our intentional early
intervention with our youth squeezed out some issues and attitudes that may not
have surfaced until later in the quarter. So be it. Let’s get to it.
On the other hand, it helped a lot of kids
to decide not to mess around, to go ahead and get with the program as expected,
to engage in learning and growing.
The initial pressure to work and do
right exposed a number of young people who struggle with be-ing … with being a son or a daughter, with being a learner, with being a friend, with being okay at
all around others, or when they don’t get what they think they want.
People may not believe it, but
discipline, delivered in relationship, is the only hope and help for severely
misbehaving kids.
Discipline is mentoring:
Do life
like this.
No, not
like that.
Watch me.
You don’t
have to feel bad.
I’ll help
you.
Relax.
Sit here.
Pay
attention.
You can get
it.
See what
you did?
You’re
getting it.
Try again.
You’re out
of bounds.
This is
where you hit the ropes.
Sit out and
regroup.
Think.
Make a
choice.
How did
that work for you?
What will
you do next time?
Have a
Pepsi.
How do you
feel?
Let’s try
again.
We’re with
you.
That's what teachers do. They mentor. They are trusted guides and advisors.
Despite all of the exhausting incidents, I
keep hearing a love message in my heart:
When you apply this verse to our work at
school, it spins the dynamic of our interactions enough to gift us with a brilliant new
perspective.
Here’s what I mean: There’s quite a lot
to bear and endure in the teaching profession. Educators bear the blame
of all of society for whatever folks do or don’t see happening with youth. Educators bear attacks from media, from parents, from kids, from pundits, from all manner
of critics.
If it were merely a thankless job, it would be bearable. The fact is, it can be somewhat hostile.
Teachers have to bear with one another as well.
When a substitute doesn’t show up, teachers have to cover one another’s classes
during their too-short planning periods, and in all systems, "the strong have to bear the infirmities of the weak."
They have to bear the pressure to
consistently improve their craft. They have tremendous time pressures to manage
work loads unrivaled in most professions.
But if we decide to bear our own and
others’ burdens because we love, that’s a different experience of the weight we carry.
Love believes
all things, hopes all things. We have to continue to believe that the kid
who is showing us absolutely zero zeal for life and learning will find a reason
to rise one day.
We have to believe in ourselves when we
don’t get the results we worked so hard to achieve. We have to hope that our
efforts, and that education itself, will pay off for our kids, even though it
feels like a fight for their lives that we, or they, might not all win.
But if we decide to believe in our kids and
in ourselves because we love, that ignites our passion to give our best while they
are with us, no matter how grouchy, selfish, or unreachable they may seem today (or the next
day, or the next day).
Our hope, because we love, is that they
will live, they will know fulfillment, they will build on the foundation they
got in school, where we were together and loved one another.
The next verse in I Corinthians 13 says: Love
never fails.
Good news.
