Magic and Miracles

     Yesterday was my twentieth last day of school and it was hands down the best last day ever!  In fact this last week of school has been such a wonderful experience with little celebrations happening every afternoon.  I am not exaggerating when I tell you that these kids were the best group of students in my twenty years of teaching.  There was a little bit of magic in this group.  Everyday they showed up with fantastic attitudes, smiles on their faces, and ready to learn.  They vocalized their appreciation every day.  They gave hugs and high fives freely to each other and to me.  If one student was having a struggle, two others would come around them with encouraging words and a readiness to help.  Every where we went, teachers and administrators complimented them.  Like I said, there was a little bit of magic in the combination of this group and I will admit that I needed that magic.  I needed that magic- to see it, feel it, learn to believe in it again. I need it like I needed air to breath.  That magic is what made brought me back to life.

     I would be lying if I said the last two and a half years were not a struggle.  I would also be lying if I said that teaching was a breeze before Covid.  It wasn't. Before Covid I could see that things were changing and that the changes were making it harder to do the job I love.  The behavior in the classroom was getting harder and harder to manage.  The list of to dos were only growing longer and time to do them in shorter and shorter.  Then Covid happened.  As teachers we had to learn new ways of doing things, almost overnight.  We had to be virtual teaching experts and let's state the obvious here....teaching children is NOT done best in a completely virtual format.  Yet we persevered and I am glad that I have technology skills that I didn't have before.  In some ways, the era of virtual teaching allowed me to breath easier.  While it was a challenge to keep kids engaged through a screen, I enjoyed finding new ways to engage them and be creative.  If I am truly keeping it real, I could breath easier and be more creative because I wasn't dealing with the grind of disruptive behaviors that derail a lesson, a morning, an afternoon, or even a day! Teaching during Covid made me see that class size does make a difference.  The AB schedule where I was teaching only 12 kids at a time was much more successful for kids than being all day everyday in a small classroom with 20-25 other students.  I could do more for them and with them.  Downfall, those 12 students only saw me in person two days a week.  It was hard to make the personal connection students and teachers truly need in just two days a week.  

    I think the worst of the changes in teaching that happened since March 2020 has been the strain on the parent teacher relationship and the decline in teacher morale.  Parents held the burden of being a parent, working during an extremely difficult time, and then coteaching with us at home.  It was overwhelming and I get that, I'm a parent too.  It was not fair to them.  It is our job as the teacher to motivate students six hours a day to meet their learning goals but not being with them in person made that a huge struggle.  Now that job fell to parents and they struggled with managing the pushback from their kids to do the work at home.  In reality they should only have to manage the pushback from their kids about chores and such so again that was not fair to them. Sadly over time, this struggle created an absenteeism crisis.  Students wouldn't come to virtual sessions, didn't turn in virtual work, and there was no way to really hold accountability so kids missed more and more.  I will say that the remnants of this crisis has rolled over to this year as well, even though we were in person all year long.  Motivating students feels harder now than ever.  Getting some students to come to school is a struggle.  It's like school for some, has become option not a requirement.  I know of students that missed almost the equivalent of an entire nine weeks this year.  That's 45 days!  Motivating them to persevere and complete work can be an uphill climb some days.  Difficult behaviors have increased. Paper work is through the roof! Then you add in the rhetoric and behaviors that have swirled around about everything from masks to book content and the attitude towards teachers and their profession feels like it is worse than before.  The pressure for teachers to close the gap for students is at an all time high.  On top of that it feels like in every direction our hands are being tied while we are being scrutinized, devalued, and judged.   Now enters the teacher retention crisis.  Teachers are exiting this year in droves and the number of newly graduated teachers waiting and excited to take their place is shrinking.  Sadly, no one has good answers to either crisis we are facing. So those who stay are left to continue working hard and will pray and hope that consistency with in person learning, good communication, and partnership with families over time will heal the wounds on all of our hearts.  

    So when I say that I needed magic, what I am really saying is that I needed a miracle.  At the end of last year, I brought all of my teaching stuff home and decided I would look for a new job.  I applied to jobs.  I went to several interviews over the summer.  I didn't get the jobs.  I began the 2021-2022 school year ready to give a new crop of first graders what they needed but with the heaviest of hearts.  Then twenty one little people entered the door of my room and brought with them a freshness.  They were little blank slates excited to be in school for the first time in a long time. They worked hard all year and always had the best attitude. Their attitude affected my attitude.  These twenty one little souls showed me the magic again.  They were the miracle that God knew I needed.  I will be forever grateful for them and for their parents.    I know I am a lucky teacher for having known them.  I feel even more lucky that I ended my years of teaching on such a wonderful note.  I have accepted a position as Instructional Coach in my building for next year.  I will still see kids and work with them but it won't be in the same capacity that I have the last twenty years.  I understand now that the applications that were rejected and the jobs I didn't get were all part of the plan.  I would have missed my miracle, I wouldn't have seen the magic. Nora Roberts has said, "Magic exists.  Who can doubt it, when there are rainbows and wildflowers, the music of wind and the silence of the stars?  Anyone who has loved has been touched by magic.  It is such a simple and such an extraordinary part of the lives we live."  Thank you little ones for loving learning, loving me, and bringing the magic.  Thank you God for the miracle.  

    

To Know and be Known- a look at the woman at the well (John 4)

     Preface:  I have to say that I wrote the first half of this post in June of 2020 and saved it as a draft.  I totally forgot that I stopped when I got to writing part 2 because I felt like I didn't quite yet know what to say.  When I checked back in today, I saw that I needed to finish so know that this post is officially one year and 6  months in the making.  It probably shouldn't have taken this long but here it goes....

John Chapter 4:    This chapter has taken me a while to digest.  I have read it before and heard sermons on the woman at the well.  Those experiences left me with a sense that the topic felt both familiar and unfamiliar to me.  Familiar in that the main focus of this chapter always seems to be on the woman, her five husbands, and the separation from her community that her lifestyle has created for her.  Unfamiliar in that it seemed there was something bigger than her sin , and Jesus' acknowledgment of it, to focus on bubbling under the surface of the text.  As I read and reread day after day, something was saying look deeper, see it  with new eyes, see it from the heart, ask "why is this moment in Jesus' ministry important enough for John to write about?"  I read, I thought, and I have sat on it for well over a month.  I don't know if I will do my thoughts, feelings, and insights justice but I have to start somewhere.   

Part one: To know

        What jumps out to me is this idea of knowing and being known.  Here we see Jesus at the well, resting from travel.  A woman comes up to draw water from the well for her own water jug.  Jesus says to her "Give me a drink."  Immediately, she rebukes him for asking her, a Samaritan woman, for water when he is a Jew.  She seems suspicious of his willingness to see and engage her.   He responds to her by rebuking her, he says that if she had KNOWN who was asking her for water, she would be asking him for a drink.  At the onset of the meeting,it is clear that this woman is well aware of her place.  She is aware of what makes her undesirable, what flaws her in the eyes of others.  Instead of accepting that Jesus sees her without judgement, she is up front immediately about what makes her less than. She is pushing him away before he can insult her, she has her guard up. She KNOWS who she is and how she is viewed and she wants him to KNOW the same.  In response, Jesus wants her to KNOW him and to KNOW what it is that he offers.   

       

        Isn't this a perfect reflection of what we do when we meet Jesus?  Whether it be the first time we meet him or after years of sitting in a church pew as a devoted follower, when he shows up to engage with us isn't her reaction exactly how we react?  I know it's been mine.  When Jesus shows up with his grace and love, my first reaction sometimes is a bit of a "talk to the hand" one.  I try and shut him down.  If he persists, I go into telling him exactly why he shouldn't love me.  I explain why he needs to just move on to someone else better.  I tell him my long list of flaws and mistakes, all the things I think he should KNOW about me that make me unworthy of what he is offering.  I am completely honest with him, fully expecting him to agree with me about how bad I am, judge me, and then reject me. But just as he did not reject this Samaritan woman, he does not reject me. 

Part two: To be known

      Jesus tells the woman to go and get her husband.  She replies that she has no husband.  He looks right at her and says "You are right in saying 'I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband."  Can you imagine that moment?  Can you see the two of them, together at the well, she just having tried her best to slight herself in his eyes and then he straight forward looks right at her and tells her the truth about herself.  I imagine that he held her gaze with loving intensity.  I imagine that she saw in those eyes all that she had ever wanted to see in the eyes of each of her five husbands but probably never did.  I imagine that she held her breath from the shock of the pureness of being truly known.  You see I think Jesus revealing and John writing about her five husbands was not to shame the woman.  I believe it was to show the rest that comes from the realization that in Jesus we are truly known.  Going through five husbands had surely taken its toll on the woman.  For whatever reasons that those marriages had failed, the very fact that this woman kept marrying shows that she desperately wanted to be known and loved by someone, anyone, maybe even the wrong one.  She needed someone to see her, live with her, walk along side her to give her life validation, meaning and purpose. Five husbands and currently living with a man tells me this woman was desperate for another person to look into her eyes and SEE her.  For someone to look into that place inside her where all of who she is bundles together and actually KNOW her and value her.  That day, she looked into the eyes of Jesus and there it was, the truth and rest of being deeply known and on top of that being accepted as valuable, as worthy.

        She replies that she perceives he is a prophet.  She is making an admission that he is someone more than just a man.  As the conversation continues, she tells him that she knows that the Messiah will come and tell all things.  Jesus replies to her knowledge "I who speak to you am he."  Now imagine with me the joy she must have felt in that bundled up place inside of her.  This man whose gaze and words were holding her heart, making her feel like something bigger was happening, just revealed who he was.  He made himself KNOWN to her.  Her response?.... she left her water jug.  She was at the well for water but the truth of being truly KNOWN left her so satisfied and excited that she left the very vessel that was supposed to hold the thing she had come for.  She had been filled instead with a spiritual water that was seeping into the driest and deepest parts of her, in fact seeping in so deep and quick that it felt like it was overflowing and she just had to let others know.  She went into town to tell others of Jesus and how he KNEW all that she had ever done.  Because of what she said, what they say on her face, and heard in her voice others came to see Jesus for themselves.  They asked him to stay just based on what the woman had said.  I imagine it was because they too deeply wanted to be seen, known, and valued.  Jesus stayed with them two days and at the end of his time with them the people said they no longer just believed based on the what the woman at the well said but because they had heard themselves and now believed that this was indeed the Savior of the world.  They had become KNOWN by Jesus and his identity and truth had become KNOWN to them.  What absolute joy!

        Jesus wants to be KNOWN to us in the deepest part of ourselves.  He wants to be known for being the Savior of the world, the creator of our hearts, the lover of who we are in the quiet parts of our soul.  He wants to be KNOWN and accepted as the sacrifice for our sinful self and that when we look at him, we see that sacrifice as a worthy one.  He wants us to follow him and develop relationship with him from this knowledge. Of course he KNOWS the list of things that make us unacceptable but when we look into his eyes I believe we will find ourselves KNOWN for not just the unacceptable but all the things that are lovely and acceptable.  We will be KNOWN for our whole selves and loved for all the parts of it.  There is a rest in that.  

        This chapter made me think that perhaps I still reside most often in the place where I am pushing him away rather than letting the truth of his love seep in.  It revealed my need to live more in the realization that I am fully KNOWN and accepted in his presence.  When I can learn to live more often in that space, it is there that Jesus becomes fully KNOWN to me.  Then that bundled up place where the threads of who I am were knit together become flooded with the spiritual waters and I feel free satiated and free, just like the woman at the well.