Vindicated

As most of you good readers know, this year has been sort of a baptism by fire for me. While the year has had its good points, often it has been easy to be dragged down by the negative aspects of a school where discipline, by and large, is not maintained.

A lot of the high points of my year have centered around my work with student council. I've been fortunate to work with a great group of kids and often wish I could spend more time doing that and less time doing the regular part of my job. Over the weekend (Saturday morning to Monday afternoon), I took four of my boys to Lake Charles, Louisiana, for the Louisiana Association of Student Councils' Annual Convention. We all had a blast.

It would be laborious to go into every detail, but some of the highlights were:

1. We brought a video camera from school and shot a lot of great, entertaining footage of the guys goofing around. We'll be able to edit it and present it in segments on the school tv station.

1.5 We ate some good seafood with a very good friend of mine who reads this blog.

2. One of my students won FIRST PLACE in the middle school essay contest, competing against student leaders across the state. There's a great story behind it, one part being about him being "the only African-American in the room," and the other being that he made up the content of his essay right there in the room. It was supposed to be about an activity that the student council did this year that was special. He made up something about bringing canned goods to a nursing home or something like that.

3. My boys all came back excited and hoping to get more involved in the state organization. I hope that they will be able to do this. I told them that I would not be able to see it through personally, as I plan to move, but I know they are resilient enough to find someone else to take my place... or at least I hope so.

4. On Sunday afternoon, I went to a luncheon/business meeting for advisors, where we each received an envelope. I opened it to find notes that my students had written to me in a session the evening before. I nearly broke down crying in front of everyone as I read the four notes, but caught myself as I was tearing up and did not make a fool of myself, thankfully. I never had realized just how much I am appreciated.

One of my students wrote, "you are my friend," and that really hit me the hardest. I know the "experts" tell you that the object of teaching is not to "be their friend," but in my eyes, "friend" is the highest compliment one of your students could ever give you. Given the adversarial nature of our public education system, it's special when you turn the system around enough that even one person sees you in a positive light.

For that moment, all of the bitterness and resentment that had been building up all year disappeared, and for that moment I had NO REGRETS. I will carry that feeling with me through the next forty days of school because in spite of the challenges I continue to face, there's no place I would rather be, and I finally understand why the Lord put me here. This sounds kind of cheeseballish, but the fact that I have touched a handful of lives far outweighs the inconveniences of my struggle.