My Liberian God-Adventure: The Gbarnga Tranining & Final Thoughts

Over the weekend, we spent time with our United Methodist hosts – having meals together and seeing the city together. I got to know Dehkontee, Sam, and Rose the most. Dehkontee and Sam showed us Monrovia – we saw the beach that was just on the other side of our compound wall – we could hear the waves crashing on the beach at night. We went shopping for fabric to make clothes, and then we went out to eat at a fancy hotel restaurant. They welcomed artisans into the compound to sell us their crafts – crosses made out of bullets, dolls, purses, jewelry, wood carvings. Our friends took us to important Liberian historical sites, like the National History Museum, a ceremonial government building, First United Methodist Church, and the monument to their first president, JJ Roberts. We got a feel for the city on these trips out – we could see people just doing their daily routine and the effects of their history still impacting them today. We saw the Ducor Palace, once a five-star resort hotel looking over the ocean, but that was all but destroyed during their fourteen year civil war. That war ended in 2003, the year I graduated high school, and the ruins of the Ducor Palace still stand there, a physical reminder of the tragedy they endured. We heard their stories of survival – through the civil war and then through the Ebola crisis – and our hearts broke for the tragedies they endured. More importantly, our hearts rejoiced that they survived, that God was still telling a story of love and hope through their lives.  

            On Sunday we worshiped at a United Methodist church in the city – the congregation welcomed us like old friends. Worshipping with them, like worshiping with our teacher colleagues throughout the week, was incredibly powerful. That afternoon, we visited West Point, a neighborhood located on a peninsula on the edge of the city. Over 70,000 people live there, in a one square mile area. Sam is closely tied to the community – and so are we. In 2012, the Illinois Great Rivers Annual Conference paid to build a school there, their first high school. This year they graduated their first senior class. The school is furnished with desks made at the Midwest Mission Distribution Center, and our Annual Conference is still active in supporting the teachers and the students at West Point.

            On Monday, we traveled to Gbarnga, a city 120 miles east of Monrovia. People here in Illinois had described it to me as, “going to the country,” even though it’s the fourth largest city in Liberia. It took a record-breaking two and a half hours to drive there – we had planned for four hours, which is down from ten hours that a friend of mine took six years ago when he went. You see, back then, the beautiful highway wasn’t there – instead, they traveled on dirt roads between cities…so this highway was a really big deal.

            We passed small villages, rice patties, rubber tree plantations, mountains and valleys full of jungle forest. And then we drove into the Gbarnga Mission Station, 300 acres of land that house a school of theology, St. John’s United Methodist Church, Tubman Gray K-12 School, farmland, and the homes of the people who work there.

            When we pulled up, I could already hear the sounds of the country – birds and bugs and puppies and chickens and children playing. And yet it was so quiet compared to Monrovia. And then we met Dr. Anna – the principal of Tubman Gray School.

            I didn’t realize at first how influential Anna would be to me. Upon arriving at the Mission Station, Anna introduced herself to us, we met her husband James, and they helped their cooks serve us lunch. I learned about Anna’s background in education, ministry, and leadership. After a few hours, she took us on a tour of her school – and as we stood in her high school library, full of books and visual aids donated by US schools – she told us about her teachers. How she hoped we would teach them about learning styles (one of my most favorite topics in the whole world) and engagement strategies. She said she often taught them about lessons that are more than just taking notes…which is literally a discussion I had with my department in Jacksonville last May. She said that it was possible her teachers would be more likely to believe us, since we were seen as the experts from outside…which is, again, something I’ve had to deal with many times in my career. I stood there in awe – this woman who is living a half a world away was telling me she faces the very same leadership difficulties I do. Over the course of the next four days, Anna and I had several conversations about teaching and leadership, particularly as a woman. We talked about having high expectations for the people we work with and for our students, and how difficult it can be to support them while they reach those expectations. She and I have struck up a friendship that I hope flourishes in the future. In fact, I’ve already had lunch with her in Peoria, when she was here in August visiting churches who help support her school.

            Our team spent the next three days following the same schedule in the trainings as we did in Monrovia. Like before, we started and ended each day with devotions with our teachers – and it always ended with us holding hands in a big circle, singing to God about the great things He has done in our lives. Carol and I even covered a few more lessons on how to teach writing because the teachers there had a stronger foundation of training to begin with – Anna is building up her faculty with highly qualified teachers.

            Our afternoons in Gbarnga were different than they’d been in Monrovia, though. The guest house where we stayed was just a ten minute walk from the school, so we didn’t have the long commute to fill our afternoon. So we just sat on the porch of the guest house – and in those hours on the porch, I felt God’s peace like I had never felt it before. The sounds of the country, the butterflies floating by, the neighborhood children playing with the baseball and bat we brought, the 4 o’clock flowers opening slowly before us, the rainbow fading away as quickly as it had come. I spent hours just being in that very moment. Being still, knowing God is in control. Being still has never been so easy before.

During those hours, I talked with Bunny about other missions she’s been on, and I talked to her and Rose about becoming a better prayer warrior and how to fast. As we sat there one afternoon, we heard our cooks singing, “How Great Thou Art,” at the top of their lungs – it left me speechless. I nearly cried, but let’s be honest, that was a common occurrence by that time. Praising God in Liberia showed me what it means to really praise God – like we hear in Psalm 86. In versus 11-13, it says, “Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify your name forever. For great is your love toward me; you have delivered me from the depths, from the realm of the dead.” Our friends helped me praise God with all my heart because they showed me how they did; they showed what it was like to rely on His faithfulness when they had nothing else, when He had literally delivered them from the realm of the dead – first during their civil war, and then during the Ebola crisis. They taught me how to praise God in a way that shows that I know He is truly God.

We ended our training in Gbarnga like in Monrovia – with a closing ceremony complete with gifts for our colleagues and friends. And again, their gratitude was so immense, so magnificent – they spoke of the things they learned in the training, of how they had grown during our time together. One teacher said that their hunger for learning was more than satisfied. James reminded us that we cannot fully measure the impact of the seeds we planted during our training, that God will grow those seeds. Anna spoke, holding back tears and thanking us for coming, thanking God for providing even in the most unlikely times. I did not hold back my tears – yet again I was overcome with the love they felt for us. Then one by one they gave us each a gift, again chosen specifically for each of us. Anna and her teachers gave me this dress, and she said it was just a small token of the immense gratitude she felt for us coming.

We left Gbarnga the next day, eyes full of tears but hearts full of peace, love, and gratitude, and we headed back to Monrovia for two short days before returning home. That leg of the trip was full of adventures, including a flat tire and seeing someone drive by with a goat on top their car. On our way, we made a short stop in the Weala District, another United Methodist Mission Station. Since 2008, Springfield First has built a strong relationship with the Weala District. Bunny made sure we stopped there during our travels since my church is so closely tied to it, so that I could see firsthand what our generosity has provided – a high school wing to the school, a church, a parsonage, a well, an operation theater. Just standing there, where we have sent so many prayers and so much support, brought me to tears.

            We arrived back at the guest house in Monrovia on Friday afternoon and started packing and preparing to go home. Something in the day’s travels left me feeling a bit off, you know there’s nothing worse than feeling a bit off when you’re away from home. Bunny seized the opportunity to teach me even more about prayer – she prayed for me, and she asked her friend Cynthia, whom we had met a few days before, to pray for me. The next morning, I felt just fine – wonderful, in fact. Before breakfast, Rose asked me how I was, and I told her I felt great. She looked at me and calmly replied, “Because when you’re about God’s business, God’s about your business.” She said it twice; she knew I needed to hear it twice. I was speechless, again. God doesn’t promise living out His call will be easy, but He does promise He will be with us. “Do not fear, for I am with you,” he says to us in Joshua, and again in Isaiah. Always. And that’s enough, if we learn to look to Him, rely on Him. That’s not easy, either, but God remains constant.

            In Matthew 28:19, Jesus charges us in the Great Commission to go to the ends of the earth for Him, sharing His love with everyone. I did actually travel half way around the world to share the best way I could – through teaching and education – because that’s who God made me to be, so that’s how He asked me to show His love. That was God’s business that He wanted me to be about. The more I followed, the more He paved the way for it to all work out. Our friends in Liberia, they don’t have the means to travel, so they show God’s love to the ends of the earth who come to them. The teachers we trained, the United Methodist staff who hosted us, the cooks who fed us, the drivers and guards who took care of us – they loved us unconditionally. They don’t love me because they know me all that well. They love me because God loves me and because we are in this crazy, amazing, pain-stricken, and beauty-filled life together.

            Just before I left, a friend of mine told me that my “Be still” verse from Psalm 46:10 had more to it than I’d been reading – the entire verse is, “Be still and know that I am God. I am exalted among all the nations, I am exalted in the earth.” To the ends of the earth, Jesus said. I want to leave you today with this -- be still, and ask God where and how He’s calling you. Maybe it’s serving others right here in Nokomis, or far away like Liberia, or anywhere in between. Maybe it’s financial support for people who need your help, or maybe it’s giving your time and energy to serving them. Be still. God is calling you to share His love in some way. What part of God’s business is He calling you to be about?

My Liberian God-Adventure: The Monrovia Training

After three and a half months of planning and praying – far more of the latter than the former – I boarded the plane to Monrovia, Liberia, on July 10. We arrived on a Tuesday, and the next two weeks were some of the most transformational experiences of my life.

            When we arrived at Roberts Airport, tired and kinda gross from being on airplanes for 16 hours, our United Methodist hosts picked us up. Dehkontee is the volunteer coordinator for the Liberian conference, and Sam is the manager of the United Methodist Missionaries Compound, which is where we stayed while we were in Monrovia. The sign on the door of the compound had our familiar United Methodist cross and flame – one thing that felt like home. The concrete brick wall that surrounded the compound and that was adorned with barbed wire and upside-down broken glass bottles, however, did not feel like home. Sam and Dehkontee helped us settle into our guest house for the night. We brought mosquito nets – tents really – to sleep in, and then we left them for our friends to use after we left. We met more of our friends who work at the compound that night – like Rose, who owns a catering business and is always the resident cook when Bunny brings a team to Liberia. Throughout our trip, she made amazing meals for us – eggs and oatmeal for breakfast, rice and stew of all flavors, fried chicken and plantains, donuts and coconut tarts. And fresh pineapple. Guys, I didn’t know pineapple could be so sweet.

            We hit the ground running – the very next day, we started the teacher training in Monrovia. First we held three days of training for five local schools there in the city. We started each day with a big breakfast and a devotion, and we drove for about an hour to Elaine Chapman United Methodist School and church. The commute was a bumpy one, but our drivers, Roland and Harrison, always delivered us to our destination safely. Our hosts gathered us all in the sanctuary for a moving opening ceremony – one teacher preached, and others led us in several songs. Our friends lifted their praises to God around us, hands clapping, voices singing. And I was in awe.

            We then split up into small groups, each with one American teacher and five Liberian teachers. We asked them about their greatest joys in teaching, about their biggest challenges, and what we needed to know about their situation so that we could best serve them. As we shared in our group, Jenny, Anthony, Benedict, Arkie, and Alvin shared their teacher-hearts with me – they said they love seeing a student finally get it, finally understand something they’ve been struggling with. That moment of success, that moment of breakthrough – that’s what I’ve described as my favorite part of teaching since I was a tutor in middle school. That was the first of many times that I realized, even though we are in such drastically different situations, we are so very similar. And those similarities are, in the end, far more important than our differences.

            They also shared their challenges – not enough funding to buy books and other materials. Not enough funding to pay teachers. Sounds familiar, too, huh? And yet I tried to be very careful to acknowledge the drastic disparity in their lack versus our lack here. The words we use may be the same, but the gravity of the situation is certainly different.

            We spent the rest of the day and the majority of the next two days separated into grade level groups for our training. Two of our teachers, Jeremy and Tanya, led the kindergarten through third grade group; Carol and I led fourth grade and up group. Some of the teachers taught the same class of students all day, like our elementary teachers here; others specialized in math, science, French, or reading like our middle and high school teachers. Their primary teaching method is direct instruction – teachers write on the chalkboard, while students silently copy it all down in their notebooks. I call that “sit and get,” and in my classes, it doesn’t happen much. Less than half my lessons are days when students take notes, and even when we do take notes, I have students collaborating and talking with each other throughout the period. So our training focused on ways they can help their students collaborate more, do more hands-on work, and generally be more engaged than just writing down information. Carol and I read stories that they could read with their students, and then we talked about how to connect lessons in other subjects to those stories. Our first book was about two friends who travel to visit each other, so we talked about social studies lessons on map reading, math lessons on calculating distance, speed, and time traveled, and science lessons on land formations. I taught them about studying four representations of a single math concept – graphs, equations, numbers, and words – and we worked together to adapt the idea of deepening their students’ understanding to English, French, and science classes. We taught how to ask students to graph numbers and functions by standing in different places in the room, and we played card games to foster number sense. I also taught about brain breaks – little exercises that we do with our kids when they get lethargic or overwhelmed or just because they’ve been working too long and they need a break. I love studying how brain research can improve instruction and learning, so this was one of my favorite activities.

            Later, Carol and I discussed another book on music and emphasized having students read dialogue aloud, and I tied it to a fractions scavenger hunt lesson. We finished our training with a book called What Do You Do with an Idea?, and we asked the teachers to use something we had covered to create their own lesson plan. Carol and I gave them time to work and helped them write lesson plans that they could implement in their own classrooms. Some were excellent, and some needed extra help, just like in any classroom.

            Between sessions, the teachers often broke out in spontaneous praise and worship. They’d come back from break or lunch, walk up to the piano and drums, and just start singing. Some songs were from their Liberian tradition – ones with lyrics that said,

“God you are able, you are able, God.”

“Jesus, we just want to say thank you…for our friends, for this day.”

“Good morning, Jesus, Good morning, Lord. I know you come from heaven above. The Holy Spirit is in control. Good morning, Jesus, Good morning, Lord. In the morning, I will rise and praise the Lord.”

Other songs, though, were familiar to me after singing them here, in this very room – “I Surrender All” struck a particular chord in me. Our friends were passionate – they weren’t just singing to sing along. They were really giving everything over to God – everything.

Singing alongside our friends, praising God with them, helped me realize something – there’s a difference between singing because it’s Sunday morning and praising Jesus because you know He’s God, because you know the Holy Spirit is in control. “Know that I am God,” from the Psalm took on a whole new meaning in Liberia.

            As the trainings wrapped up, Bunny took pictures of students who attend the schools on a scholarship sponsored by the Illinois Great Rivers Conference. Dozens of students filed through to have their pictures taken, and even more milled around asking how they could get a scholarship, too. I’ve been giving to this scholarship advance for five years. Right now, $175 sends a single child to school for an entire year – it covers their uniforms, their books, and their tuition. If you’re interested in helping students like these attend school in Liberia, there is a way to give directly to schools through the Illinois Great Rivers Conference. Just contact me if you’re interested in supporting that mission financially.  

Each morning with breakfast, and each evening after dinner, Bunny led us in a devotion and prayer. During some of those times, she reminded us that we don’t arrive in Liberia, or anywhere else for that matter, assuming we can change the entire culture or the entire country, much less solve all their problems, fix their entire school system. We can’t do it in the mere three days we held the trainings, and we certainly can’t in a single trip or even multiple trips. We emphasized this idea in our lesson planning session, too – not everything we discussed would be applicable for everyone, but that’s okay. We just gave them the tools to make one change, and we had to trust God would magnify and multiply it as He sees fit.

            Bunny emphasized that idea during our closing ceremony, too. During our last afternoon with the group, we gave another devotion and gave each teacher a bag full of school supplies and a certificate of completion for them. Bunny talked about how we didn’t come with all the answers, but instead we came to be their friends who worked alongside them – not ahead merely leading, not behind just telling them what to do, but alongside collaborating with them.

As we were getting ready to serve them, before we could even give them what we’d brought them, they told us of their gratitude – some teachers stood to tell us how thankful they were for our help, for our sacrifice of traveling so far to join them there. And then, before we could offer our gifts, they gave us gifts – beautiful shirts made there in the city. Each gift was selected specifically for the recipient – and we knew what kind of sacrifice they had made to give us these gifts.

            And in those moments, I know, we were living out God’s intention for the church – in Acts 4:32 it says, “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had,” and that is what we were doing. We came together as a family of faith, and we shared what we had. I just so happened to have educational background to share with them. They shared finances that were already more limited than I can imagine, and more importantly, they shared their deep understanding of praising God and going to God in prayer honestly and humbly about everything.

***

Interested in how this trip started? Check out the first post in this series.

My Liberian God-Adventure: The Prologue

          Some journeys begin long before you leave. 

         This blog series started as a sermon that told of my recent trip to Liberia. I've adapted it a bit to fit a blog format, but I'm sure some of it still reads more like a sermon. This won't be like the previous blogs -- not the ones about literature, not even the travel entries about China. This one will be different. Everything about this trip has been different, so the way I share it will be, too.

          I’ve been teaching high school math ever since I graduated from college with a BS in Secondary English Education and an endorsement in math. I’ve taught Algebra I, Algebra II, AP Calculus, and behavior interventions for kids who are at risk of dropping out – all while acting as department chair the last four years for our nine-person team. While that timeline was moving forward, I also started attending Springfield First United Methodist Church – the big one on the corner of Koke Mill and Wabash, if you’re familiar with the city. For several years I sat in the back of the traditional service and kinda kept to myself – and then I started taking classes on prayer and served on the Staff Parish Relations Committee and then the Prayer Leadership Team, and then I got involved in the Young Adults ministry and started co-leading that, and then I helped launch a new contemporary service that we treated like a whole new church plant – and now I even preach in that service every couple of months or so. 

            I took a journey earlier this year. I’ve been calling it my God-adventure. On July 10, I flew to Monrovia, Liberia, with a team led by Bunny Wolfe, the mission and outreach coordinator for the Illinois Great Rivers Conference of the United Methodist Church. We spent two weeks there, and we held two trainings for teachers who work at United Methodist schools – over six days, the five of us American teachers worked with over 60 Liberian teachers on engagement strategies, classroom management, and lesson planning.

            But I’m getting ahead of myself. This journey didn’t start July 10. In fact, the seed was planted in 2012 when a friend of mine who is a United Methodist pastor told me that our conference sends teams of teachers to train Liberian teachers. The idea caught my immediately attention. Then, a few months later I heard a woman from Springfield First talk about her medical mission trip to Liberia, and as I sat there crying in the pew listening to her story, I knew God was calling me to go. But…the conference didn’t send a team that summer, and the next summer I spent every waking moment writing my AP Calculus curriculum…and the next summer I worked on my thesis for my master’s degree at UIS…and then the next summer my school asked me to chaperone a German exchange program….The timing for the trip just wasn't working out. But Liberia always stayed in the back of my mind, tucked away in the corner of my heart. I prayed for the country during the Ebola crisis. I gave scholarship donations for students going to United Methodist schools. Whenever anything came up about Liberia, I responded, “You know, my church conference sends teachers there to train other teachers – and someday I’m gonna go.”

            But life just kept rolling on – and in 2015 I moved from Springfield to Jacksonville, and I found myself in a much quieter, much slower paced chapter in my life. I had finished my master’s degree, I was settled into teaching calculus and leading as department chair, and my social scene had drastically changed with my move to Jacksonville. I had no idea what might be next for me – and that made me worry. I worried a lot – I worried that I didn’t know what goals to pursue next, what direction to take as I moved forward, and I even worried that maybe nothing new would be on the horizon for me. Eventually, I started praying, “What’s next, God? Use me – just point me in the right direction.”

            And in that season, God told me to, “Be still.” Really. Psalm 46:10 started following me around – it says, “Be still and know that I am God!” It showed up in my devotions, in sermons at church, in videos that came to my email, in my newsfeeds on Facebook and Instagram (I kept half a dozen screen shots from my phone during those few months as a reminder), we talked about it in my small group at church, and most importantly, it came up in my quiet time, alone with God – it just kept echoing in my heart. “Be still and know that I am God.” Now, remember the litany of activities and responsibilities that I rattled off earlier? The ones that kept me crazy busy while I lived in Springfield and then all of the sudden all wrapped up at the same time when I moved to Jacksonville? Yeah, I’m not good at being still, guys. I’m terrible at it. It makes me anxious and uncomfortable. But God knows I needed it, that I needed an extended Sabbath to slow down…and so I eventually started focusing more on being still and knowing that God is God, and that I am not. I kept asking God what was next for me, but I stopped trying to figure it out, stopped trying to do it all by myself. I even decided that for 2017, instead of making a New Year’s resolution, I’d focus on the word surrender with God – surrendering to His preferred future for my life instead of desperately trying to be in control when I clearly was not.

            So last spring, I found myself facing my first totally free summer vacation in six years – no grad classes to take, no curriculum to write, no exchange program to coordinate. And I was actually okay with the idea.   

            And then on March 24, I got an email from a friend of mine – well, she and I went to college together, and she goes to Springfield First, too, and we’re friends on Facebook – that kind of friend, you know? She emailed me because she’d heard about a mission trip our conference was taking to train teachers in Liberia. And even though she doesn’t know me very well and we don’t talk very often, she thought I’d be interested. Me. God put it on her heart to contact me. I read that email before going to work that day, and I remember thinking, “I’m going to Liberia this summer.”

            Over the next few days, I told my sister and a couple friends – and they all agreed right off the bat, too, that it was time for me to finally go. But my old ways of worrying came creeping back…how would I pay for the trip? How would I plan for it in just three and a half months? What if God wasn’t calling me to go on this particular trip? What if, what if, what if? So, I started praying, and I asked my small group at Springfield First to start praying, too. You know, sometimes it’s hard to hear God in the still, small voice…but it’s even harder to ignore God when He talks through your loved ones. “Go,” they said. “You know this is the right time. Get more information. If God opens the doors, you know it’s the right time to go.” It’s also hard to argue with doors that are not only opened but completely blown off their hinges – and that’s exactly what God did. In a matter of three days, I found out it wasn’t too late to sign up for the trip, that the conference offered a grant to cover half the cost, and that the next informational meeting was a just week away in Springfield.

            So I jumped – I took a huge leap of faith, and I went to the meeting, ready to go to Liberia. I sat in the room with the rest of the team who had been planning the trip for months, and I cried as Bunny showed a video of the students and teachers we partner with in Liberia. Bunny flipped on the lights and asked us to share why we wanted to go – and I could barely hold it together long enough to say, “God is calling me to go – to help these people somehow, the best way I can, as a teacher promoting education.”

            And at the end of the meeting, Bunny needed the rest of the payment for the plane ticket that day…and yet again I had to take another leap of faith. I had no doubt about God’s call – but I had planned to do some fundraising first to cover the cost, and instead I had to pay first and trust God would cover the finances, too. We all know that’s one of the hardest areas to surrender to God…but somehow I did. And God showed up in a huge way – He sent generous people my way to help me cover the rest of the trip. He even convinced the insurance company to cover all six vaccines I needed before leaving – and we all know that’s a miracle in and of itself. But that’s not the only way God sent support – so many people prayed for me and emailed me and encouraged me before leaving. That support was so incredibly valuable.

            And after three and a half months of planning and praying – far more of the latter than the former – I boarded the plane to Monrovia, Liberia, on July 10. We arrived on a Tuesday, and the next two weeks were some of the most transformational experiences of my life.

Why I Continue Teaching

NPR recently posted two articles about the decreasing number of people going into the teaching profession, and ended with a call for why current teachers continue in such a difficult career. Here are links to the articles and my response to NPR.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2015/03/03/389282733/where-have-all-the-teachers-gone

http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2015/03/03/389282733/where-have-all-the-teachers-gone

I just read your articles, "Where Have All the Teachers Gone?" and "There Are Fewer New Teachers. And No One Seems Surprised," and as a high school math teacher, I wanted to weigh in on why I continue teaching. 

My answer is simple and yet increasingly complex: I stay for my students. 

Every day I enter my classroom with plans to help my students improve in one way or another. They deserve to have someone in their lives who is dedicated to fostering their improvement. Over the last eight years of my career, I've found I'm good at that, and I don't want to let my kids down. They need me. 

When I think of the big picture, my students need me for far more than answering questions on study guides, helping them graph polynomials and calculate their derivatives. They need me for far more than helping them prepare for the next Common Core assessment or the ACT they'll take as juniors. 

They need me to help them understand how to problem-solve, how to think for themselves, how to take responsibility for their words, their actions, and their lives. They need me to coach them in persevering through whatever problems they face; they need me to remind them that their self-worth is not tied to a test, but that not giving their best on any assignment is cheating themselves out of the rewards of triumphing over the challenges of life. They need me to hold them to high expectations and help them believe they can actually reach them. 

The students I teach today will change our world tomorrow.  By committing to fostering their success and improvement, I have hope that the change they bring will be positive. 

So I suppose I stay for more than just my students. I stay for the future of our society.

The problems we face as teachers -- aligning to new standards, spending an inordinate amount of time testing when we could be learning, working 10+ hour days even during our vacations for pay that is a mere fraction of other professions' -- may plague my colleagues and me for my entire lifetime, or they may change. One facet of our career will remain steady, though: our students will need us. My students need me, so I stay.

Words by My Students

     I've been reading a lot of words written by my students lately. No, much to my kids' relief, I did not include essay responses on their Algebra II final exams the way I do on their unit summative assessments. Instead, each year on the last day of class, I ask my kids to give me feedback. My first year, I made slips of paper that said, "Something Ms. Arnold did that helped me learn," on one side, and, "Something Ms. Arnold could do differently to help me learn more," on the other. That first year, I stood in awe of the responses I received; very few mentioned specific learning activities, but many mentioned thoughts and attitudes that I encouraged in my classroom. After taking a Quality Tools class the following summer, I started making the feedback slips into Plus/Deltas -- "plus" for the positives, things that went well, and "delta" for the changes that could be made. I always tell my kids that the feedback can be anonymous, unless they want me to know the comments came from them. I give these slips to my students periodically throughout the year, sometimes asking for feedback on a specific unit or activity and sometimes opening the floodgates and asking for any comments they'd like to share.

     My first general request like this is usually the last day of first semester, and the feedback this past December was mixed. Some students liked the way I ran the class; some students gave excellent ideas for ways I could change my approach second semester; others took advantage of their anonymity and gave me  negatives instead of deltas -- things they didn't like but for which they had no solutions. Now, in my mere five years of teaching, I recently realized that the mid-year feedback is always the harshest; I've often said that the majority of my students aren't "my kids" until a few weeks into second semester. I'm not sure why, but the feedback this year certainly supported that theory. Knowing this doesn't change much for me, though...even though the pluses and deltas outweigh the negatives by a landslide, even though I know I'll win over some of these students in a matter of weeks, even though I know that some of their complaints attack what I know are effective teaching practices and are merely uncomfortable because they are unknown, even though I know some are simply bristling at the disjoint between their personal expectations and the high ones I set for all my students, even though I know I'm not supposed to be their friend...I still struggle with the knowledge of those negative thoughts.

     But, life and lesson plans go on, and I made changes second semester that my kids suggested, continued practices that they appreciated, and, I admit, dug in my heels and continued some practices I know are worth it even though some students spoke out about them.

     And then May arrived, and it's not quite like the arrival of spring in Bambi. Yes, there is love in the air with prom around the corner, and yes, there are flowers in corsages, but that's the end of the analogy. There's also stress of ACT and other standardized tests as well as the most intense apathy of the year constantly colliding with the knowledge that final projects and exams require more than a little effort. Sometimes I can't tell who is more affected by these two stressors, teachers or students. And smack in the middle of it all, I found in my school mailbox two essays written by two of my students. About me.

     Two of my students had taken time out of their busy lives to nominate me for a "Those Who Care" certificate, which required that they write 50-100 words about how I make a difference. Needless to say, reading both makes me tear up every time I read them. And yes, I've read them several times. I was floored by the details they included, the things I do daily that apparently have far more impact than I realized.

     A few days later, I handed out my end-of-the-year plus/deltas, and I again faced an awesome surprise. The plus/delta/negative ratio changed drastically from December. Many students told me that the environment we create, the activities we complete, and the discussions we have about learning and success made it a class they will miss. A few kids even told me I made the class fun. Yeah, me, I make Algebra II fun. Booya.

     Some of the most inspirational comments, in both the essays and the plus/deltas, talked about the discussions we hold at the end of each chapter, discussions about the data that our assessments give us about the learning that occurred, about the practices that fostered learning, and about how we will change to improve as we move on. These discussions are a new component to my routine, and I was ecstatic to hear that students found them not only worthwhile but also motivating.

     So, as I end my fifth year of teaching, I'm looking back on all of the student quips that I've recorded, all the notes and unique plus/deltas I've received, and now the two short essays my students wrote, and I am glad. I am glad to know that I am doing exactly what I should be doing. I am indeed making a difference in students' lives, in my kids' lives. This will certainly be material I read again and again.

     I hesitated to write this post, even though it's been on my mind for several days. I was afraid it would seem that I'm simply "tooting my own horn," bragging about my sense of success. Although I like to share my happiness with those around me, that is not the drive behind this post. I want those who happen to read this to know that despite all that we hear in the media about our current educational system, classrooms with caring environments that foster learning -- both of standards and of life lessons -- do exist. Moreover, not all teenagers hate school and spend all of their time texting and facebooking, ignoring their responsibilities to do their part to better themselves and society. If you need proof, just talk to my kids.

May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be. ~ the Prayer of St. Teresa

Poetry Slam!

So, tonight I competed in the second annual Poetry Slam at the high school. I had so much fun! Sharing wonderful poetry, laughing and reflecting with great people, and being overly animated (aka making a scene)...good times. :) I was thoroughly impressed with the students and their unique voices, and how they so courageously stood in front of their peers to show everyone their thoughts and feelings. Awesome.

Here are the three poems I shared tonight (yeah, you read it right -- I got to the third round!), in the order I shared them. Hope you enjoy.

From Behind the Big Desk

From behind the big desk,

I can see you texting.

From behind the big desk,

I can see you doodling on your notes.

From behind the big desk,

I can see you typing notes on the graphing calculator and showing your friends.

From behind the big desk,

I can see your mouth move as you “don’t talk” to your friend across the room.

From behind the big desk,

I know I’m not the only teacher who asks for your ID.

From behind the big desk,

sometimes you hurt my feelings.

From behind the big desk,

sometimes I can’t wait for the weekend, either.

From behind the big desk,

sometimes 809 is the last place I want to be, too, but I’m still working.

From behind the big desk,

sometimes I can’t wait until you graduate, too.

From behind the big desk,

I can see when it doesn’t make sense,

and I do all I can to reach out to help you,

but I need you to reach back,

to bridge the gap between you and me, behind the big desk.

What I Want for You

Four times now,

I’ve stood before 100+ students

for the first time,

their names still crisp on the Skyward roster,

my voice steady, poorly camouflaging my butterflies.

Four times now,

these students have become my kids,

Mine.

Some like me; some don’t. That’s not required.

Over nine months or so,

we get to know one another, the good and the bad,

and the crazy woman up front

develops not only expectations for you –

but hopes for you as well.

This is what I want for you:

To know how nice it feels to hear someone genuinely ask how you are today.

To learn how you’re wired, so that you can use your strengths and improve your weaknesses.

To always, always, know there is room to improve, to grow.

To live life full of joy and find ways to pass it on.

To respect everyone, even (perhaps especially) those you don’t like.

To realize you are more than capable of success, and to see that the effort really is worth it.

To find your passion, what makes you want to get up every morning, just as I have found mine.

 

Ode to Spell Check

How I love thee

When I write letters to send home to parents

And emails to my boss.

How I wish, though, that you could recognize my dyslexia

And tell me when I’ve typed “put” instead of “but.”

Quick Book Update

This summer I'm completely incapable of actually finishing anything literary, so I don't have much to update on...but I have been finishing listening to Matthew Pearl's The Last Dickens, which I started listening to on my drive home from work in May and simply hadn't finished. If anyone out there in BlogLand can give me some encouragement on that one, I'd appreciate it...the plot is interesting and I'd like to know "who done it," but the writing simply wasn't made for audio...to the point that I've fallen asleep listening to it poolside recently. It doesn't help that I know I have an audio Erdrich book waiting for me on deck.

Upon lots of encouragement, I also finished Ron Clark's The Essential 55, which is a book about making rules for a classroom. I think anyone into education and/or working with kids (including teenagers) would like this book.

On a side note, at least I'm learning one thing this summer regarding my writing: texts must be 160 characters or less in order to count as a single text; thus, my concision is improving exponentially. :)

When I started working on poems for the poetry slam a few months back, I joked with my students that I should write a poem of only the little, quirky sayings I often use in class. Several students kept asking for the poem, so I wrote one up for their last day of classes. I projected it so that they could read it as they were coming into the room and getting settled. It was so much fun watching them read it, nodding and chuckling when they recognized one. A couple students commented on how this is a little like my script for the day -- I start at the beginning, put in math wherever it fits, and just keep going through the list until the end of the hour. Perhaps I could give this to the administration as my general lesson outline.

Ms. Arnold-isms

Hello! How are you today? It’s my turn!
You have something you should be doing.

PAUSE.
Volume, please.
No, thanks for asking.
Is it do-able?
Zero to five?Thumbs up/thumbs down/ishy?

-ish...
All that jazzIt’s just a little plastic surgery

Difference between lightning and lightning bug…
I'm a math teacher, and even I don't want to do it.

I'm an English teacher -- why are you asking me?Halleluiah!

It's my dyslexia kicking in.
That's a lie.
I need more working and less chatting.
That's grand.
Any questions before the next step?
That's a good question.
What are my expectations with a test?No communicating whatsoever, at all, period, until the last test is in.
I need people in desks, not on or near them.
Thanks for working so hard for me today!
Do the homework!
Have a good day!

JHS Poetry Slam Poems

A few weeks ago, I competed in my school's first poetry slam. I was the only faculty member to compete, but I had such a blast! :) I even made it to the second round of competition, which essentially means the crowd liked my first poem far more than my second.

Here are my poems from that evening, including the one I didn't get to read. Keep in mind my audience consisted of my students, so they're not my most serious work. ;)

Dear Lesson 6.2
Dear Lesson 6.2
"Graphing Polynomial Functions:"
I can't stand you.
Period.
I don't even remember learning you,
So you're obviously useless.
My students hate your guts.
Most can't even remember how to start your problems,
And several don't understand why we do your steps.
How do you expect me to teach you
with all of this loathing around?
I think I'll cut you from my curriculum
and just teach my kids how to graph with a calculator
instead.

Sincerely,
Ms. A


An Ode to My Facebook Inbox
As I turn on my laptop
I sign in and see
I have a new message
Waiting for me.
I get all excited --
From whom could it be?
I hover my mouse
Over the link
To discover the sender
And I stop and blink --

That's who sent me a message?
That's who thought of me today?
That's who took the time to write?
That's who I'll have to respond to?

That's who I'll be avoiding today...


Third Round Poem
I tried to write a poem,
But none of the rhymes would fit.

I tried to write a poem,
But all the rhythms were out of wack.

I tried to write a poem,
And all my ideas came out like blobs.

I tried to write a poem...

And then decided I probably wouldn't
make it to the third round anyway
So no one was going to hear it
So what was the point anyway?