Life Lessons

Well, this week has certainly been action packed with enough drama to start my very own telenovela (soap-opera) entitled, “How Many Outrageous Things Can Happen in Seven Days?” My childhood dog of thirteen years, Daisy, died on Monday, I found out that one of my best friends is stranded, homeless, and penniless in Taiwan after a truly disturbing peeping-tom scandal happened at her not-even started-yet teaching position, two of my cousins were in the hospital with life threatening illnesses, and the roughest student in the fifth grade was switched into my classroom after making completely false claims of inappropriate sexual conduct from his old teacher. When it rains, it pours. These things refresh my consciousness with focus; focus on what things really matter in this life. The “big teacher” in the sky is sending us messages, and if we listen closely enough we might just discover the value in those lessons.

Loosing Daisy was really hard. She was a member of my family, and brought us all so much joy. Thinking about never being able to see her another time makes me tear up all over again. She truly was one of the last things that tied my newly empty-nester parents to my finally-freed college freshman brother and myself, “the-newlywed.” Loosing her was loosing someone, and something that we all shared together. It feels like Daisy took a piece of all of the memories that we made together as a family with her when she left. As my Dad put it, “From now on any dog your mom and I get will be our dog, not yours and Nick’s too.”
The focus I gained from this: Daisy made me remember the importance of love and joy in everyday. She always managed to bring so much joy into my life, in the short visits that I had with her, simply because she loved me so unconditionally, so completely, so fully. I can only wish to be as devoted as she was towards my friends and family.

My best friend began her adventure to teach in Taiwan almost two weeks ago now, and has gotten more than her share of surprises. It seems that the house in which she, as well as other foreign teaching staff, was living was being secretly videotaped by their peeping tom headmaster, who was in charge of running a school full of children! When does this sort of creepy bullshit end? How does a person do something like that? At my own school, it seems that the accused teacher actually did all of the disturbing things that she was accused of with the fourteen year old boy – she plead guilty to the charges and is prison. It seems that perverts in education are all around the world. How is that for a warm fuzzy?
The message I got from this: Be aware that not all people are good intentioned. My innocence and the innocence of others is worthy of protecting. After hearing from my friend how backward the foreign police and courts are in Taiwan, I am again grateful for the rights and protections that I am given in the United States. The privileges we experience as simple realities were not always so secure, and are not so secure in other places in the world today. I am grateful for a system of justice that puts away criminals.

Two of my cousins were in the hospital this week for life threatening situations brought on by serious illnesses. One was sick after a nurse decided to forgo the prescribed immune-booster shot she was supposed to give before administering chemo to my twice-breast-cancer-warrior-cousin. The other was rushed to the hospital after doctors realized that her attempts to self-medicate her diabetes through a restrictive diet had left her anemic to the point of near-death. Thankfully they will both be healthy enough to go home from the hospital soon. As for the cancer and diabetes – only God knows.
The focus from this: Thank god for health. Thank god for the time we are given.

As of today, I have a new student in my classroom. He didn’t come in as a new student to the school – he has been here from day one - and I have had my eye on for a while. He has been in another fifth grade teacher’s classroom, and he comes to my classroom after his grandmother wrote the longest complaint form in our school’s history, accusing his teacher of intimidating, humiliating, discussing religion, cursing, and finally “putting his private areas close to his face” on purpose. Holy God. The things that she is claiming in order to move her grandson into a new classroom are shocking! The other teacher is completely baffled at all of her claims and says that none of these things are true. He believes that the grandmother or the student made up all of these stories just to get their wish of switching into my classroom (I have this student’s younger brother in my classroom right now, and have had a very good rapport with Grandma. Apparently, this other teacher does not.) It is very scary either way. The things that they are claiming require an investigation! If I have learned anything this year, it is cover your ass – you cannot get your name or reputation back once it has been questioned, and some people will say anything to get their way. As a teacher all that you have to work with are the relationships and trust that you build with your students and their parents. Without that, there is no learning.
This new student I have in my class is just twelve years old but has already developed the life outlook, “I’ll get you, before you can get me.” It is written all over his every gesture and every smirk on his face. His personal history gives him every reason in the world to believe that this is the only way to survive in this world. In his young life he has been beaten by a drug addicted mother, witnessed her death, watched his father go to jail on a fifteen year sentence, and been shuffled from house to house, and state to state, as an unwanted burden to unstable relatives who were barely able to care for themselves, let alone him and his two younger brothers. Needless to say, being the oldest brother, he bore much of the burden of their tumultuous childhoods (which are still in progress – they are only ten and twelve!), and the effects are plain. I have seen two things in his eyes; an eager to learn little boy who distantly remembers hope and believing in himself, and an angry, weathered, and wild boy who has given up on the world and himself.
The message I see in this: I will accept him in my classroom as a challenge. If any of my students ever needed someone to believe in them, it is him. Whether or not I can convince him to believe in himself is not up to me, but I will do everything in my power to change the cruel hand that fate has dealt him.
More than anything all of this reaffirms my belief that life is about the little things in everyday. It is the precious impermanence of life, our mortality, the losses, challenges, and victories that make our little insignificant lives passionate and beautiful. Until next time, we’ll see what God has in his divine lesson plans. (How’s that for teacher-glorification? Ha-ha!)