Questing Parson

For Them It's Just A Day's Work

This Wednesday, at the place where I live, the schools will dismiss for the summer. This is the column that will appear in the local paper that day.

It was a normal day. Nothing in the course of things would have given hint of what was to come.

She was providing the class with a review in preparation for the exam that was scheduled for Monday. The student sitting in the fourth seat back in the second row from windows was staring out them. He didn't seem the least bit interested in what was going on in the classroom. She called his name. He continued to stare. She called his name again. He turned with a disinterested look on his face. She asked him to please pay attention. He looked back out the window. She could have disciplined him. She could have sent him out of the room. She could have challenged him in a dozen different ways, but instinct, born of years of experience whispered to to take it slow. As the class ended and the others filed out she told him to wait. It was during the after class talk he gushed out his despair at the things happening at home. She listened. She supported. He went home, to the same turmoil, but he went home knowing someone understood.

Down the hall a math class was plugging away at an accumulation of problems that needed solving before the end of the period. The teacher asked if the student was still having problems with what they'd been working on last week. The student said she did. The teacher smiled, walked to the desk at the front of the room and returned. The student was handed a piece of paper with an internet address on it. The student was told it was a site that was free but where help was available with math assignments. The student smiled and expressed thanks while tucking the address into a book bag.

In another part of the school a teacher sat in the teacher's lounge, a place designed to give the faculty a small respite from the stress of the day. Here, in quiet, some coffee or other drink and a snack could be consumed as they conversation was exchanged with peers. Today only one teacher was there, not resting, not consuming, but plowing through a pile of test papers, taking time to mark each one with praise or words of encouragement.

All through the day teachers are doing these kind of things, tasks not in the lesson plan, tasks that don't show up on the principal's evaluation, tasks that were not even considered when the decision was made to teach.

And when the day's over, there's bus duty, there are rooms to prepare for the next day, and then there's the rush to get home in time to spend a little time with the teacher's own kids before rushing back to the interscholastic activities like the football game, the soccer game, the chorus concert, the band concert, the school play.

On the weekend there are the trips to the store to purchase the classroom supplies the board of education doesn't provide in the budget but which are essential to teaching.

You know, the really sad thing about teaching is not the extra things listed above. The sad thing is not the pitiful salary or the long hours or even the undeserved frustration. The sad thing about education is that when classes are over for the year today, most of us will not take the time to say, “Thank you for caring about my child.”

Is My Baby Boy a Revolutionary?

So, here's the thing. I was pursuing the Huffington Post last week, and, lo and behold, there was an article about my baby boy, the high school English teacher.

That kid has this crazy idea that even though the classroom has looked the same since the eighteenth century there's no reason it should not change. Basically, he putting forth the idea that education should enter the 21^st Century.

You decide. Read the article. And be sure to click on the link reading “A Revolutionary Classroom” contained in the article to see a video with a virtual presentation of his ideas.

Full disclosure: The link also lets you contribute to making his ideas a reality. But don't let that stop you form clicking the link. You can help his a lot if you forward the article to someone you think might be interested in his concepts.

Read the Huffington Post article HERE.

Impressive Fundraiser

The parson’s old friend Buddy “Roll Out” Hathaway had invited him to speak at a community meeting. The parson had readily accepted, mostly as an excuse to travel halfway across the state to visit with his former high school classmate. Now, the morning after the speech, the parson was walking to his car from Roll Out’s office at the school where he was a part time teacher and part time administrator.

Roll Out had convinced the parson to talk a longcut through the campus in order to show him the new athletic field.

“Look at that,” said Roll Out, “this new artificial turf makes this school the envy of every sports program in the area.”

“It looks impressive,” said the parson. “How did you get the board to approve this expenditure.”

“Oh gracious, Parson,” said Roll Out, “the board didn’t put a dime toward this. We raised this through private donations from businesses in the community and through some fundraisers by the football and soccer boosters. No, sir, this was done with a dime of school money.”

“That’s really impressive,” said the parson. “What did this cost?”

Roll Out broke the numbers down for the parson, the turf, the installation, the markings so it could be used for both soccer and football.

“Have you ever seen a high school athletic field any better than this?” asked Roll Out.

“I truly have not,” said the parson. “Let me ask you something, Roll Out. How many furlough days, without pay, were the teachers required to take last year because of the economy?”

“Let’s see,” said Roll Out as he closed his eyes and mentally calculated. “I think it was six.”

“How many will they have to take this year?”

“Oh, this year it’s ten. Why do you ask?”

“I’m just thinking how it the booster clubs and all these local businesses had a fund raiser to supplement your teachers. How many furlough days do you think this field would have covered? You know, Roll Out, doing that would really have been impressive.”

Here's To The Teachers

I write a weekly newspaper column in The Calhoun Times, Calhoun, Georgia. Today, I’m sharing that column here.

The school year is over in the county and will be over in the city at the end of the week. What a year it has been.

For a week or so the teachers will be doing those necessary things to finish out the year. The students will be sleeping in, complaining of chores, reveling in the freedom of summer vacation and showing no evidence of the boredom with summer that is to come.

Picture if you will, then, an almost empty school. Walk down the hallway with me. Hear the echo of our steps along the empty corridors, tapping out a cadence of solitary progression.  Look into the rooms as our progress continues along the empty passage. See the teacher in that room, compiling the report.  Look in this room where he’s reading an assignment written by a student as an end-of-the-term requirement and smiling at the improvement over the course of the year. Over there, in the lab, watch the teacher inventory the chemicals and pack them away for the summer break.  And there, see there, pay attention to the teacher looking out the window, staring toward the horizon. That’s the one who is thinking about calling it quits, getting out of the contract, and going to work for the father-in-law. Peer with me into the seemingly endless hallway of classrooms where lessons were taught, students challenged, tests given, and lives changed.

The school year is over. Deserved vacation has arrived. Some will head to the mountains, others to the beaches; some will stay home and attend to needed projects; others will take summer jobs to supplement their devalued effort.

All will look back on the year and marvel at the things that happened, and smile at the memory of laughter reverberating from a hundred shared moments of frivolity. All will leave this past academic year and step into the summer months having touched lives in thousands of ways that were often unseen and without a doubt underappreciated.

This past year a second grader with green snot dripping toward a puckered lip had his face wiped by a dedicated giver. A middle school child was pointed toward a course of discovery that will someday lead to new inventions and a better society. A high school girl was encouraged to step beyond the present day into a future ripe with opportunity. This past year countless teachers in countless ways embraced, encouraged, and empowered a new generation.

It takes a special person to be a teacher. It takes an even more special person to continue teaching year after year, class after class, matriculation after matriculation without receiving proper recognition, thanks, and certainly adequate compensation.

To the teachers who labored with such dedication this past year, please receive our thanks. Receive our thanks now which should have been given day-by-day as the past ten months progressed. Receive these, our belated thanks. And please accept our apology.

Accept our apology for standing silently by as our government treated you with distain. Accept our apology that we spoke not a word of protest as our governor forced you to take days off without pay and in doing so treated you as though your task is no more important that the most menial state position.  Accept our apology that we asked you to stand before that classroom without our support, without proper appreciation.

Accept our apology, and please show up next year, for without you our society is doomed.