Tag: students

Maybe Mercy

Maybe Mercy

What I really wanted to do was call the teenage girl out on her attitude.  Yes, I should have prepared better for class by having the questions printed out for them instead of having them write them out.  At this point, however, it was the end of the day and I didn’t feel like trying to convince my students why school required them to do schoolwork.

Instead of writing down the questions, this young lady was resistant.  Her face was one of annoyance that she would have to write down questions.

“Do we have to write these all down?”
“Well, I think you would want to.  You need to answer these questions over the movie we are going to watch and you won’t be able to see the questions when I pull the projector down.”
“So we don’t have to?”
“I guess not if you think you can remember all the questions and answers.”
“Cool.  I’m not doing it then.”

I was frustrated that something so little was seen as such a heavy burden.  She wasn’t the only one who was put out by this task.  As the students wrote down the questions, they would take time to heave a sigh or breathe deeply.

“I hear your sighs.”  I told them as I waited for them to finish copying the questions.

So while others were not enjoying the task at hand, this girl was the most vocal about it.  She has her days.  Some days she is bubbly and excited, calling me “girl” and sharing different stories.  Other days she has a bit of an attitude and looks unimpressed by nearly everything.  I was trying to decide how to handle her responses to me in the classroom.  Should I take her aside?  Should I give her a look?  How should I respond?

In the midst of my frustration, I remembered a personal detail she had written on an assignment at the beginning of the semester.  She wrote briefly of a family life difficulty and in that moment of her less-than-desired responses, I thought of it.  And I prayed for her.  I ask Our Lady to give me the patience to deal with this young girl who was struggling with things that I didn’t know or understand.  In a moment of clarity, I recognized her responses as being, at least in part, the fruit of inner turmoil and pain.  She was hurting and something she felt she had control over was complaining about a simple task in class.

I wish I could say that I have applied this merciful attitude toward all of my students all of the time.  I haven’t.  But it did make me stop and consider: why don’t I extend to those I meet the same mercy I would desire others to extend to me?  Of course, we all need to grow in not letting our emotions overrun us.  We strive to not take frustrations out on people who are completely removed from the situation.  But I know I have been unkind many times and what has brought me out of that rut before has been people looking beyond my ugly words or actions and treating me with kindness.

This brief interaction made me want to extend mercy, without being a doormat for my students.  Not everything in their responses is about my teaching or what they think of me.  Perhaps they just had a difficult test or a fight the night before with their parents.  It doesn’t make what they have said or done acceptable, but it can make them more real to me, people with hearts and problems, struggling to navigate the difficulties of life.

It was once again impressed upon me the need to pray.  I do not enter the classroom alone to fight in a fierce battle against teenagers.  Those would be rather bleak prospects.  Rather I go to them (hopefully) as a missionary and I go armed with the best of warriors–the universal Church.  Particularly during this year of mercy, wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could encounter my students and everyone I meet as a missionary of mercy?  How beautiful would it be if through an encounter with us, people could know that attribute of God in a deeper, fuller way?

Running for Them

This might be premature, but I find it interesting that what has motivated me to take up running is teaching.  More specifically, my students.  “Take up running” means I’ve gone for four runs in the past week.  It could all fall apart very soon (definitely has happened before), but I think this might be here to stay for the time being.

A couple weeks ago I came to a realization: I don’t sacrifice for my students.  They come up in my prayers and I hope the best for them.  However, I don’t often find myself tangibly offering things up for them, other than allowing them to keep living after a particularly trying class period.

I’ve realized this lack of sacrifice before.  This time I was compelled to do something about it.  Running is something good for me and good for them.  I find myself thinking about them as I run and offering up my labored breaths for them.

Yet the more I run (think: slow jog), the more reasons I find to keep doing it.  I’ve run twice through my neighborhood and while I don’t like it as much, I think I might keep it up because it gives a new perspective and new prayer intentions.  I run past a home and I hear the muffled sound of a man and woman arguing.  Or I run around a bend and see two kids in front of a house, a larger pre-teen girl slapping the head of a smaller pre-teen boy.  The girl looks belligerent and the boy has his defenses up but is angry.  She glances at me and there are no more blows while I run by the house.

I find myself praying for peace as I meander the streets of my neighborhood.  This little heart inexplicably finds itself aching for situations I will never know about, fights I will never see, hurtful words I will never hear, but that are happening in these places so near to me.  I prayed for peace to flow through these houses.  For homes to be places of peace, not places where we take up arms against our flesh and blood.  For parents to show their children how to love.  For people to experience the love and peace of Christ that I have experienced.

It is not that much, and I should in all rights probably be doing far more.  But for now, I am running for my students.  For their addictions, depression, relationships, struggles, and hearts.  When I nearly convince myself to not go for a planned run, I remember them and realize I’m not doing it for me, but for them.  And it makes me run.

The Love of a Father



“To the weak I became weak, to win over the weak.  I have become all things to all, to save at least some.  All this I do for the sake of the gospel, so that I too may have a share in it.”  
1 Corinthians 9:22-23
 
Be all things to all people.  That is a tall order.  An impossible order, I suppose.  There will always be a way that you fall short or don’t live the way someone expects or wants you to live.  Yet I saw this “all things to all” being lived out in a beautiful way.
We celebrated a large Mass with all of the Catholic students of our diocese.  In the thirty minutes following Mass, I watched the eager crowds of children gradually disperse.  While they waited, I watched my parish priest as he made his rounds.  He stopped by the section where students from his previous parish were seated.  A large group of them began to wave excitedly.  To them, he was a star and they were excited to see him again after his absence.  After a few minutes of talking to students and teachers, he migrated to his current parish and greeted the children.  I kept waiting for him to walk away, but he didn’t.  One-by-one as the students left their rows to go to the bus, he greeted them.  Some wanted a high-five, others wanted a hug, and some simply waved.
It was beautiful to watch them each pass under his fatherly gaze, often accompanied by a pat on the head or shoulder and always a smile.  This is not the first time I have been amazed by his fatherly care.  During his homilies at Mass, it is easy to get that sense that he is our spiritual father.  Yet the way he lives it out does not remain simply spiritual.  It is not just in prayers and sacrifices that he seeks to be our father.  Rather, he greets the people of his parish and goes to their homes.  His heart is filled with a tender fatherly love for his children, some of them biologically older then him.
My experience with priests has led to me to harbor a deep love for them.  While I would not relate to all of them in a fatherly way, I have found many who are living out the call to encounter people where they are “for the sake of the gospel” in order to “have a share in it” also.  The priest who instructed my summers of Totus Tuus also lived out the role of a father.  We were primarily young college students and he laughed with us, taught us, and loved us.  At the end of the first summer, he thanked us for “calling out the fatherhood” in him.
For all of the things that the secular media says about the institution of the priesthood and all the ways it seeks to change it, I am inspired to continually meet young, holy priests (or not-young, holy priests) who have sacrificed having their own families so as to welcome an entire parish as a family.  Regardless of your upbringing and family background, in the beauty of the Catholic Church, everyone has a father who reveals to us, in part, the person of God the Father.

Semester 1–done!

My first semester is officially complete–grades posted and all!  In less than one week I will again be in a classroom, surrounded by some different seniors and the same sophomores.  I dream of doing things perfectly, of using this new start to be better than I was before, to truly excel.  I hope this zeal to improve will continue through the entire semester and not simply fade away when I get tired.  Prayers would be appreciated. 🙂

The Battle of the Droid

“Droid.”

The sound came from the midst of my students as I was in the middle of a discussion/lecture about abortion.  I was already giving far too little time to such an important topic, but I had miscalculated with the semester.  As I heard the sound I briefly thought of my nephew and how I had heard that sound come from his phone many times while he was at our house.  Now, though, it was in the middle of my class and school policy was that the phone was now confiscated for a week.  The first time this had happened in my class was on day two of teaching.  My students were looking at me and while part of me questioned if I had heard correctly, the looks on their faces reconfirmed my hearing.

“Alright.  Give me the phone.”

Then it happened.  I watched the students, one in particular, lean back in their seats, cross their arms, and give me that smile that aroused every stubborn fiber in my body.  Suddenly it was them against me.  They were unwilling to give up the phone and they wondered how I would get it from them.  It was an implicit challenge.  I’m not entirely certain what their perception of me is, but they didn’t think that I was as stubborn as I turned out to be.

“Come on.  Just give me the phone.”  I waited, letting the silence extend, showing them that I wasn’t just going to brush off this incident.  The students began to look at each other.

“OK.  If you don’t give me the phone, I’m just going to have to check your bags to see who else has their phones.”  They didn’t look very perturbed, but after a while longer they began to tell me that it wasn’t their phone, that they didn’t have a Droid, that their phone was off/in their locker.  As time continued, though, the individual with the offensive phone didn’t come forward.  I was remembering what I had overheard other students say about phones going off in other classes and how when they simply sat there and didn’t give it up, they left the classroom at the end of the period with the teacher simply saying that what they did was very rude.  Rude, perhaps, but that didn’t bother them too much when they all still had their phones at the end of the class.  I decided that I wouldn’t be one of them.

“You’re right–I’m not going to check your bags.  But if I don’t get the phone that went off, then you all have detentions.”  Their faces changed a little bit with that.  It wasn’t that I wanted to give them all detentions (they would be my first of my career) but I figured that would be enough of an incentive for the person to come forward.  Who would be willing to give the entire class a detention simply so they could keep their phone?  In my mind, it would be a few moments before I would have the phone in my hand and class could carry on as it should.  A couple of the girls were uncomfortable with the situation, as displayed by their red faces.  When a couple of the boys found out that these girls had never had detentions, they riled the class to take the detention.

“Guys, let’s take it!”  “Yeah, its just a study hall in the morning!”  “We can talk with Mr.— about bringing donuts tomorrow!”  Their excitement wasn’t what I expected or wanted.  I didn’t desire them to be miserable, but I was hoping the peer pressure would make the person step forward and surrender the phone.

That didn’t happen.  Instead, I waited for them to give me the phone.  When I pressed them more for the phone, one student got up and handed me his phone, telling me to just take it.  I knew it wasn’t his and although it was an act of valor, I was unwilling to allow that one person to avoid punishment simply because a classmate of his was sacrificial.  With the one phone stowed in my podium, I told them that I wasn’t going to waste any more class time over this but that if I didn’t have the phone by the end of class then they would all have detentions.  And then I continued with class.  I ended five minutes early, on accident, but I thought it would be a good time for them to think about it and then give me the phone.  Perhaps they thought I had issued a simple harmless threat, but I fully intended to give them what I said I would.  No, I didn’t want to give them a detention, but I wanted to be true to my word and I wanted them to know that I meant what I said and should be taken seriously.  When the bell rang, they all walked out and I never got the phone.  I was amazed that the person never came forward and that the class didn’t pressure them to do so.  While I didn’t want them to rat the person out, I was hoping that the disgruntled class would impel the person to honesty.

I didn’t think I was over-reacting.    After e-mailing the principal the list of people in the class, I waited for him to come and talk to me.  Somehow, I knew he wouldn’t like that I had given all twenty-four people a detention, but I thought I had sufficient reasons.  He came just before my third period class and asked if I could locate the area of the room the sound came from.  Over the next couple periods he called discreetly into his office a couple trustworthy people in the class to ascertain who let their phone go off.  By fifth period he came and told me who it was and their punishment.  What I didn’t altogether expect was that the rest of the class would no longer have detentions.  A student came and asked me at the end of the day if the detentions still stood and I told him that as far as I was concerned, they did.  I had said I needed the phone by the end of the class and since that hadn’t happened, I intended for the consequences to stand.  The next morning a had a couple visits from the administration explaining to me why they did what they did and how to handle a situation like this in the future.  I understood where they were coming from, but I still think my method was better.  I heard from several people that my students were complaining about the detention for the rest of the day.  By the time 8th period walked in on that same day, they were smirking and saying, “Droid” and laughing about the incident.  I wasn’t offended.  Now they knew I was serious and that I meant what I said.  Too many high school teachers of mine made empty threats that nobody listened to because they knew they would never follow through.  I was determined to not be one of them.

In an e-mail to a parent, I told them that one thing I desired the students to learn from this was that they are an individual belonging to a community and what they do as individuals does affect the rest of the community.  So perhaps it was one person’s phone that went off.  The rest of them were complicit in the act by not speaking up or encouraging the person to be honest.  Whether or not that explanation was sufficient, I don’t know.  But it makes sense to me.

And that, dear readers, is the story of how this young teacher gave twenty-four detentions in one class period and had them all overturned within twenty-four hours.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh.  Blessed be the name of the Lord!

Just that kind of week…

Last week was just one of those weeks.  The kind where I gave a detention to the entire class that doesn’t really care for me, only to have it revoked by the administration.  The kind where I walked around feeling dumb for doing what I did, yet not regretting it in the slightest.  The kind where I felt like a first year teacher with no experience and little knowledge.  Where I felt like I was doing absolutely everything wrong and I wondered why God placed me in this job.

This week was just one of those weeks.  The kind where I successfully complete my first semester of high school teaching (minus grading the final exams).  The kind where a veteran teacher said, “Good for you” for giving the entire class a detention when they wouldn’t hand over the phone that had gone off in class.  The kind where a senior thanked me for teaching them and told me that he had learned more in my class than in any other theology class thus far.  The kind where I made bon-bons for my classes.  The kind where I felt that I wasn’t doing absolutely everything wrong.

Praise the Lord.