An "Alarming" Number of Adolescents Are...

Dear Church,

"Alarming" is a reflection on you, not the statistics. You knew this would happen; 2 Cor 4.4. Please find a different word, and then we'll save the world, shall we?

Sincerely,
Piqued in Pew

That is not to say those statistics aren't important. What is happening around us is truly tragic. You do not have to be sitting in a pew to see that; on any given evening the nightly news reports the hell and horror our world sustains.

However, it is more important to note the murmers and gasps heard around the room after hearing those statistics. You would have thought Armageddon were upon us. Why were those numbers so surprising? Where have we been, that we have not already witnessed what the speaker was telling us? And what did we expect? Honestly? Does "the salt of the world" mean anything to you?

--NOTE: If you are merely looking for another grievance against the Church, stop reading here. If you are discontent with the state of things and don't mind a few, paltry thoughts, read on.--

Let's face it: the world is going to hell in a handbasket. This is a biblical principle. Since the Fall, Creation has turned against itself. Nothing goes right. People go hungry. Mothers forsake children. We all die. It's why Christ came. Even now, sin ravages Outsiders and Christians alike. The only difference is, sometimes Christians win. It's still a struggle though; few would deny that. (By the way, there are Bible references for all these points if you're interested.)

Two things here:
(1.) If it is still a struggle for us, why don't we admit it? To each other? To the world?
(2.) If it is still a struggle for us, who have the Creator of the universe on our side, why are we surprised when the world struggles even more?

If those gasps were part of the holy horror of God, great. More power to ya. But if that's the case, you are not going to be content to listen to statistics on Sunday morning and then push the snooze button on Monday.

If those gasps were merely from the fact that the numbers offended your sensibilities, let's go back to one of the first questions: where have you been?! These numbers are commonplace! The world is falling to pieces, and you don't know it yet?! (Says the cynic in me: Oh, I see, you were at Bible Study.)

Christians, we are called to be ministers! To wash feet, to serve, to bind up the brokenhearted and to release captives. To be the salt of the Earth!!! Where are we, Christians? Why are the statistics so high? Where have we been, we who can truly help?

As the pastor said, no amount of book-learning is going to change these lives; only experiencing God will. We know this God, Christians! Do we also know these people?

'Jumped' Is a Noun

... and other tales from the 7th grade classroom.

It's been a month an a half since I started a field experience in an urban middle school. Overall, it has been a a great experience; the kids are sweet (something I did not anticipate after a previous observation in a suburban school); and the teacher is warm and eager to explain policy, procedure, and other forms of pandemonium. She has also been selected to pilot a new writing curriculum, which I find fascinating.

Most of the time, I really like what I see. With a low-income / often mobile student population, it is hard to nail down even basic skills, and watching the kids improve in their writing so much is inspiring. The hands-on approach to writing really works, and it stands in stark contrast to the other English teacher's rigidly traditional class (in which they silently take notes on figurative language for an hour).

But.

Sometimes there are moments that make me cringe.

Like Monday. It was one of those rare days devoted exclusively to grammar. She was teaching reflexive pronouns and paused to point out that they generally modify nouns.

"What's a noun?" she asked.

Silence.

And more silence.

And then one small voice asked timidly, "A person, place, or thing?"

The teacher nodded and asked the next person to identify the noun in the sentence.

"Jumped?" he guessed.

"No, what's a noun?" she replied.

He shrugged.

She did a valiant job explaining and started them on the lesson. I must have looked a little shell-shocked, because she came over and explained that they have extremely short memories, and that the stuff they learned from 6th grade doesn't make the jump from summer; heck, they barely remember the stuff from last week. They just can't keep it all in there.

Can't they? Really? Really?? How is it, then, that they come in singing the latest hit on the radio? How is it that they can recall the details of last night's football game perfectly? Is it a memory problem?

I think not. Let's talk about teaching. Let's talk about expectations. Let's talk about the definition of education and the measure of success and the validity of test scores. And the fact that students spend seven hours in the classroom. And that many teachers can't speak properly themselves. Let's look at ourselves.

Are nouns going to define these students' future success? Probably not. In fact, parts of speech don't even show up on state tests. But it's not about nouns, is it? It's about the fact that these kids have made it to 7th grade without even a basic understanding of 2nd grade skills. Is it their fault? Is it the teachers' faults? The administration's fault? Is it ours?

I don't presume to know. But explaining this phenomenon away and promoting mediocrity isn't going to help anyone, especially the students.

So let's stop making excuses, shall we?

After all, we only have seven hours in a school day.

The What-If Game

I haven't left church feeling so exhilarated and yet so frustrated in a long time. Usually, it's one or the other, but not both. I knew it was going to be a good one when the speaker apologized in advance for stepping on toes.

The message was entitled, "Can You Spare Some Change," but he quickly explained that it had nothing to do with money or poor people. He then opened up to Exodus -- which, if you know anything about the Bible at all, and in case you haven't been tipped off yet, you'll realize that this is going to be a bizarre sermon.

We covered the part when Israel forgets that they just walked through the Red Sea, narrowly escaping from their Egyptian captors, and suddenly turns mutinous because they haven't found water in three days and now they're thirsty. It makes sense, right?

"If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death" (Ex. 16:2). In other words, it was better back then. It was more comfortable. Nevermind the fact that we pretty much built the pyramids.

He quoted some famous guy: When we realize that we are, in fact, on a journey, we realize how ridiculous it is to argue that we've 'never done it that way before.'

At which point he gently pointed out (okay, maybe not so gently) how many of us are uncomfortable with.... drum roll, please... change. If there is one thing that would characterize my church over the past two years - shoot, even the past 5 years - it's change. And while we've weathered it pretty well, many have been pulling out hair (sometimes theirs, sometimes not) wondering when it's going to stop.

The point: change is never going to stop. Israel wandered 40 years because they didn't trust. They wouldn't change.

It was here that he brought up sacred cows and tradition. And he said: No one wants to talk about these, so neither am I.

Instead he made a powerpoint :)

The questions started innocently enough: What if we moved the alter table? What if we took down the enormous cross at the front of the sanctuary? What if we put a screen there instead? Some of us younger whippersnappers snickered.

But then they started getting more edgy:

What if we stopped calling it the 'sanctuary'? What if we did some remodeling? What if we moved into a warehouse?

What if a person with purple hair and body piercings walked in?

What if s/he sat next to you?

What if you heard someone curse in the hallway?

What if a same-sex couple started coming?


The silence was profound.


It was a challenge to re-evaluate the status quo, to re-examine our own hearts, to return to the important things.

And for one, small moment, I felt a glimmer of hope. Maybe this time, maybe now that we are asking the truly important questions -- not just playing numbers games and asking whether a cafe would attract more people.

Afterwards, I gave him a hug and said thank you, maybe we should continue this conversation sometime. I hope we do. I hope he really ticks some people off. I hope they can't sleep at night because they're so mad. And I hope we're all forced to change. But no more of this rhetoric, please; I am tired of hypothetical change.

Another Blow

Fact: in 3rd grade language arts, we began class by correcting the capitalization, punctuation, and other syntactical errors in a sentence written on the chalk board.

Fact: the 7th graders I'm observing are doing the same thing... and struggle.

I initially justified the activity itself as test prep. CRTs and PASS tests use that format, so why not practice?

Then I noticed they forgot to add an apostrophe here, and an -es suffix there.

Unbelievable.

America, I salute you for your SmartBoards, but not much else.

It's that Time Again

Cloudy weather with a definite chance of rain, a biting wind, and traffic crawling through town, all at an unreasonably early hour on a Saturday morning... oh, yes, it's soccer season!

I also noticed an unprecedented spray of orange wherever I went. SUVs with orange flags toodling up I-35 to Stillwater, orange shirts cheering at the soccer fields and dashing out of McDonald's, and yes, there were even orange cleats. It really gave me the warm fuzzies to see. It should be noted, however, that this is NOT symptomatic of any sort of OSU fettish. That would be my father's fettish, not mine. Orange is so much more than football, just like soccer is so much more than... well, soccer.

It's community. It's tailgating. It's childhood memories - orange slices at half time. It's rivalry. It's standing on the sidelines in freezing weather, screaming, completely oblivious of the elements. It's culture.

And most importantly, it's Zac Robinson. Er, at least, the football part is...

I love fall :)

Despairing Idealizm

I guess I've been cursed with good teachers. Teachers who managed to inspire their students to do the homework and come to class [mostly] prepared. Teachers who taught whatever the hell they wanted without regard to the administration. Teachers who shunned worksheets, and teachers who taught more than mere themes - teachers who taught life. Teachers who pursued and expected Excellence.

Add to that Jim Burke's books, as well as Rafe Esquith's tendency toward tenacious, and you can probably approximate my outlook for life with one word: Idealistic.

Enter good friend and recent graduate: the First-Year Teacher. She had the same types of classes and teachers. She read some of the same books. And she's tanking. Well, not exactly. From what I can tell, she's doing a fantastic job, but she's painting a vastly different picture for me: bad attitudes, poor readers, students who come to class wholly unprepared, and a 16% pass rate for pop quizzes.

"I can finally appreciate worksheets," she says. "I hate, hate, HATE them, but I get it now. At least they get the kids into the text, answering questions. Because otherwise..." her voice trails off with a note of defeat. It's the third week of school.

How? HOW? How do teachers achieve anything, against such odds? How did my teachers do it? Is it all an illusion? Are Burke and Esquith and all those other good teachers anomalies? Well, I know they are, based on the number of bad teachers I've also had. But HOW? How do you face a class of apathy and eventually change the world? Oh, and, while we're at it, let's add PASS standards and NCLB to the equation. And yet, they manage to do it all. Obviously, they're not first-year teachers.

Great. How do you handle the first year, without being a 'first-year'?

How do you hold a problem in your hands?

Dear Elementary Ed Majors

Dear Elementary Ed Majors,

It has come to my attention that the rest of the world can - and does - profile you on sight.

This is unacceptable.

We are one big, happy, dysfunctional family - you and us in English Ed (after all, you are the saints who tamed those teacher-eating pygmies for the six years prior to when we received them), and so I feel a great responsibility to apprise you of the facts.

Now, please know up front that I greatly respect what you do. Elementary Ed takes a special kind of person. That is why the rest of us do other things. Although I do not really care if they know their times tables by the time they hit middle school (or ever, for that matter), it is quite useful that you have trained them so nicely to sit in their chairs. That is huge. Really.

That said, there are a couple of things you should be aware of.

First of all, there seems to be a misconception among you that the world will fall to pieces if you do not have every detail clarified and repeated twice. This is unnecessary. Let me reassure you, if you can read, you can probably find the answer. (Note: I’ve heard this is sometimes problematic for some of you, which explains why you’re in literature classes, among other things. Don’t worry. Critical reading is a skill. The syllabus is a great place to start.) So just sit back and relax. You might surprise yourself how much you can infer from syllabus, professors’ commentary, other people’s questions, etc. Questions are okay. But do not, under any circumstances open your mouth. It is a dead giveaway. When in serious doubt, ask a classmate.

Secondly, your anal retentive tendencies toward small-mindedness. Well, those are hardly your fault. Let me explain. I have long heard of the cultish indoctrination that the College of Education seems to indulge in so liberally, and I have at last experienced it myself. That’s right: brainwashing. I firmly believe that you began on your career as a bright-eyed, idealistic free thinker intent upon saving the world one child at a time. Bravo! We share that in common.

But statistically speaking (please don’t comment on the irony of an English major citing statistics), very few of you reach your second and third years of education with that same luster and passion. Instead, it would seem that those have been replaced by Piaget, manipulatives, and classroom management, not to mention those excruciating PASS standards. Like I said, it’s not your fault. Those are all noble aspirations. However, surely they are not your only aspirations? What about the overall picture? Surely you have not lost sight of that? Oh, you’re really going to love these literature classes.

On a related note, we must also discuss Excellence, and the pursuit thereof. As you already know, not all children are created equal. Some of them are incredibly intelligent. Your dogged efforts to make them appear to be so are exhausting and mildly nauseating. I just don’t understand it: If there is one thing the Education field loves, it is the idea of diversity. Make no mistake, I wholeheartedly support this crusade in all its many guises, but I find no reason to suspend this idea in reference to learning styles and aptitudes. Yet they (yes, they; it is purposely ambiguous) staunchly refuse to acknowledge minorities in learning, especially those on the upper end of genius.

Those children in your care – the intellectual troublemakers and sidetrackers that drive you crazy because they insist on drawing abstract references and asking ‘inappropriate’ questions … those are the kids we really love. Why, you ask? Because they already know how to think, and moreover, they seem to enjoy it. Most of us have to learn to do that.

I do not expect you to understand this, but trust me on this one. (We’re family, remember?) Let me repeat: these kids are important to us. Please do not harm their minds, and for heaven’s sake, stop expecting them to color barns when they really want to know why Sarah, Plain and Tall is considered ‘plain’ when beauty is subjective. Take a moment celebrate excellence every now and then, and the rest of the class will still be there. Pinky promise.

And finally, there is one more small, touchy point. You tend to share an unreasonably high-pitched voice. Believe me, the world already knows you are here. (See above for further explanation.) While said pitch is appropriate for children and dogs, the rest of us would prefer if you toned it down a notch or two… or three. Now, I know this has been an extensive list, so if this is not possible, I understand. The other items are much more important. It is merely food for thought. If nothing else, learn how to write, and we will overlook this part most graciously.

You know, looking back, none of these qualities are particularly obnoxious; I don’t know what the world has been complaining about. Much ado about nothing, as they say. But regardless, I feel much better for having completed my duty... almost like Gulliver taking on the giants! Thank you for listening so earnestly. What’s that? No… no, you may NOT ask a question!! We’ll discuss it at our next family reunion, Ed Psych.

Much love,
An English Education Major

The Drunk of Legend

Junior year in high school, first week of English class.

He tells us to underline items of interest as we read a short story, "Drunk of Legend," or something to that extent.

It is the account of the artist as a young man, scrounging a living in squalor by his pen, interminably interrupted by the ruckus downstairs where a habitual loafer sits by the bar, demands more alcohol, and goes about his day in a contented, placid sort of way unless someone interrupts him - at which moment he erupts in a magnificent show of slurred emotion.

It is this sort of interruption that bothers the young man, not only because it irrevocably interrupts his only source of income, genius, but more than that, he has this nagging feeling that he cannot fault the drunkard. The man is, after all, only pursuing his passion - just like the artist. Can he, he wonders, dictate what passions are worthy and which are not, especially given his current situation?

And he finds that he respects the man.

Sitting on the front row with a few timid strokes across my copy, I found myself in complete awe. You see, I saw myself in that story, raucous and discomforting though it was. I understood clearly the position of the young man and the other tenants - their irritation and impatience with the man.

And yet, more clearly, I understood the drunk. There he sat, ritual in hand, and people felt the necessity to bother him - to preach, to sush, to parry... alas, the world must be peopled. It was his passion and his world, and it consumed him.

And no one understood.

Funny, isn't it?


*Drunk of Legend is a short story by Ralph Ellison