Sometimes, the need... urge to write is so strong that I can't do anything but, and yet, I never feel satisfied with my writing. I rarely consider my short stories "finished"... but more like continual works in progress. It literally makes my heart ache because I wish that I could write with depth and grace and understanding and somehow evoke every feeling that I'm feeling into my characters but I fail, miserably at it. I have so much to say and yet... can't.
It's like with teaching. There's this great passion in me to teach. I know it. Its been there ever since I can remember wanting to be a teacher -- no, being CALLED to be a teacher. It manifests itself through literature, the lessons of the great writers of the past merge with the writers of the present and I'm, floundering, somewhere in the middle.
How can I make them understand? And by them, its not the students that I want to listen to me... its the parents of the students I teach. I... it makes me cry, great buckets of tears because I can't do my job effectively and passionately for risk of ticking people off. Making parents angry with me. Is that something I'll struggle with forever and always? God, help me if it is.
Literature isn't weighed and measured and studied and chewed, the way some folks chew a piece of meat. I think it should be breathed in... invested... drawn in. And teaching literature - if only I could teach what I truly WANTED to teach... My Sisters Keeper would be first. There is so much emotion, so much love, hope, despair that just the words evoke thoughts, ideas, and develop the overall person.
So why can't I teach how and what I want to teach? Is it because I'm "young" and a first year? Is that why I am being persecuted for what I stand for? My God, I'm only trying to help... teach. Instead I'm getting hit and cornered and blasted from every side. If its not one thing, its another. If its not the vocabulary, its the essay assignment or the fact that I punished your precious baby boy by excusing him from my classroom for uncalled for rudeness. I don't get it. Just because the school that I teach at is founded on classical Christian principles, that somehow means that I have to teach only Christian literature? I'm sorry, but thats crap. How can my students be expected to stand for God when they can't even tell me where in the Bible it says that adultery is wrong, or gluttony is a sin. How can they be warriors for Christ when they don't know how to witness and to be a warrior?
I get that you want to "protect" your child -- but, as his/her earthly father, I know that its your responsibility to do that. And I am okay with that. But at the end of the day, isn't it God who protects your child from harm? Isn't HE the one who knows the plan, has written the plan, knows the words that you'll say before you even think them? Isn't it God who holds His children in the palm of His hand and protects ALL of them? Yes, He has given you earthly children, which are gifts no matter what form the come in, but isn't He the all-knowing protector of all his children? Do you honestly think that I would be here, in this school, if it weren't preordained by God's holy plan? Maybe you should consider that I might be young, and I might be a first year teacher but this is my God-given gift. And if I don't do as He has told me to do, then am I not doing what Gods plan is for me and thumbing my nose at Him? I think so. Which is why I can't sit idly by and allow the parents of my students to run all over me because they pay for the education their child recieves. I have to grow a backbone and stand up for my own beliefs.
"But its too hard." Life's hard. If it weren't hard, everybody would do it. And, I'll add this. I've got students who other teachers in their respective public schools didn't give a rip about, because they either had too many students or didn't have time to care or for whatever reason... they got lost in the shuffle. Their grades dropped. Their confidence dropped. They started to believe they were stupid. People, either by words or actions or by the grades they recieved, told them that they were stupid, which personally is a tragedy. Those same students that failed public school have B's or A's in my class. MY CLASS WHICH YOU SAY IS TOO HARD. How is that possible? Its not because they were given their grades, I'll guarantee that. You work for what you earn in my class. Students who came from the area public schools are doing better in my class than they did in public school... why is that? Is it because they have a teacher who cares? Or maybe its because the students who want to do better, to be better, are willing to work at it. They come after school, and during study hall and email me at all hours of the afternoon because of what -- because I care, or because they do? I don't know, but apparently my class is too hard. I require too much.
I just hope that when those children who say its too hard don't wake up 20 years from now at their 9 to 5 job at AFLAC and say to their boss... "its too hard. I don't want to work that hard to do my job, so would you mind changing the assignment so its not too difficult?" I just don't get it. Oh sure, and get to college, or even high school and tell your teacher/professor "um, this paper assignment is too long. Would you mind shortening it? Okay thanks." Ha. Yeah right. Its just all absurd to me.
I will never understand the apathetic youth of America -- God help us -- those same youth that will be running this country in 20 years, producing children, raising families. And I don't understand how parents can produce children and coddle them to the point where they are 12 and 13 years old and don't know how to do anything productive. How do you expect them to survive in this world without you? They won't -- so you're raising children who will stay perpetually mama's boys and daddy's girls (nothing wrong with that) but shouldn't there be a point where the madness stops? What if one of them is called to be a missionary in South Africa, but you won't allow them to go because 1) they'll be away from you and 2) it might be too hard. Thumbing your nose at God's plan for your child's life is not something I'd personally want to be accused of doing. How can you expect your child to live his own life? Don't the strings have to be cut at some point? Stop doing FOR them, and let them learn on their own. They are good children, responsible children (for the most part) who need to know how to type a paper on their own, without mama's help, or how to construct sentences without starting with "and" or "well." These are valuable skills.
Unfortunately, we live in a society where its less about character and more about "what can you do for me" - a kind of selfish, egocentric attitude that the world and sun revolves around you and your problems.
Let me just say also as a side note, that just because I show emotion does NOT mean that my emotion is about YOU. I do have a life outside of school and there are things that happen that make me cry, like one of my best friends being deployed to Afghanistan (God be with all of our men and women in uniform), or my own financial problems or just whatever. Its not always about you.
But its this wholly selfish attitude among Christians and non-Christians that "its all about me" which really isn't very Christian either. Neither is sowing seeds of doubt and mistrust and dislike. Aren't we supposed to lift each other up, to sharpen each other and help our brothers and sisters in Christ, rather than tearing them down, belittling them or questioning God's plan that brought those people colliding together?
I would rather have a teacher like the fictional John Keating, or like Julia Roberts character in Mona Lisa Smile than a teacher who had no passion, no fire, no life for what she chose to teach. But I can see why teachers like that can get burnt out on the hypocracy of it all, on the sheer exhaustion of always having to explain yourself, of why you've required certain things to be done a certain way. Of being questioned and contained in a neat little box. I won't fit inside your box. I can't. Not only would it destroy my foundation for what I believe, and have me question my place here in this world, but it would destroy my soul and that... that is something that I won't allow you to take away from me.
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