Category: Family

Dear Mr. Teacher Man

When I emailed you last week about the art project/book report, it was hard not to put my teacher hat on. I know I am not your regular parent, so I feel I owe you a better explanation.

There’s not much I know about teaching fourth graders. I have one, but he’s my first so I’m a rookie. When I called into question the project that seemed heavy on artsy and light on standard mastery, I wasn’t questioning the teaching.

I know you do what they tell you, mostly. So did I, mostly.

I’m not even questioning the status quo in education. I was there when it broke. I understand what went wrong.

Except for this one part.

What the heck happened to the boys?

Go look at a first grade classroom and you’ll see them. They’re bright eyed and excited. They can’t sit still because everything around them is SO. AMAZING. They leap out of their socks to answer questions, shouting over the quieter kids. At recess they explode out the door and barely make the grass before falling into a laughing, pushing, wrestling mass. They kick balls over the fence. They can’t wait for math after lunch. Adults say things about them like “He is so smart. If only we could bottle that energy.”

Ten years later, when they spilled through the doorway of my high school classroom like a pack of puppies headed for the food bowl, they were still bright-eyed. They still shouted over the quieter kids. They still kicked balls…over the fence. They wore uniforms on Friday nights in the Fall and letterman’s jackets through the Winter.

And learning was dead to them.

I always assumed that it was the black hole of middle school that did it.

But these last six months of fourth grade have made me wonder. It’s all become very feminine.

Cooperative learning, heavy in social interaction and emotional language skills. Gabriel told me how he had a right answer very quickly one day, but you made him conference two more times before you would accept it. I’m sure that you have a good reason, but here’s what he said: “I kept thinking I was wrong mom, every time he sent me back.”

(By the way, there was a time we used cooperative learning in high school. I stopped doing it in honors classes though, because a right answer is a right answer is a right answer and honors students will tell you to take your extra conference and stuff it. Just in case you ever think high school might be for you.)

Then there was Shelter Day. A fourth grade rite of passage: researching and building a replica shelter of a Native American tribe. But you made them do it for six hours. Six hours of popsicle sticks, glue guns and construction paper. Gabe was done by 10 am, and no wonder. When was the last time you crafted for six straight hours?

His grade reflected the fact that he “didn’t use his time wisely”.

At our parent conference you compared one of his lit circle posters to another student’s to show that his wasn’t as well-planned as hers. While you stayed on that point for more two minutes, I took a closer look at the content of the posters. Gabe’s demonstrated mastery of what he had been reading, a deep and rich understanding. Hers had half the words, half the depth and twice the pronouns.

But it sure was pretty to look at.

Which brings us to this particular project. The book report with the one pager and the list of very feminine art project choices to choose from. A poem. A collage. A mural. A video. A map.

He read the book in three days. He passed the test with 100%. The one pager took two days, with multiple drafts. You better believe Mama runs a Writer’s Workshop at home.

Everything that had to do with the book and the report, he nailed. But the map was a wall he crashed into at 75 miles per hour.

So I asked about a rubric. Maybe it was a unit on cartography masquerading as a book report. Or an art lesson on perspective and spacing and not a language arts assignment.

But there was no rubric. And all he kept saying was “it has to be neat, it has to be perfect”.

When he looked at me and said “I’m going to fail”, I sent you the email. Because it hit me like a punch to the gut: This is it. This is where we start to lose him.

From a collaborative point of view, I’m here to help. It’s as hard to come up with ideas to fit every child’s learning modality as it is to admit a long-time traditional assignment needs an overhaul.

From my mama’s heart though, I’m telling the collective educational environment this right now: You are not turning my joyful, self-motivated, sponge of a learner boy into those teenagers who used to explode through my door and settle for Cs. Upper elementary school will not teach him that just because he is coming into his physical maturity and is the very blessed opposite of quiet and patient, he isn’t “right” for school.

I know you work your butt off for these kids and that you believe in what you do and are called to it. Your work is sacred.

But I also know that sometimes, we stop seeing the edges.

So I’m shining a light there and showing you there’s something to look at, something to consider.

Thank you for all that you do. But maybe it’s time to do it differently.

12524240_1048678305201166_5669608110862457374_n

 

No Excuse for Relative Pronouns

IMAG0132

I read a post the other day about the North Carolina transgender bathroom bill.

A mom in the comments said she stood in support of the bill because her young girls shouldn’t have to see THAT. And after she took a solid challenge from other readers, she signed off by saying that we are really screwing our kids up and IT is sad.

THAT and IT.

They jump off the page at me. Old habit. All English teachers know what I’m saying here. In the beginning of my career I would write little notes to my students in the margins, encouraging them to be more precise. By the end, I just circled the words, and drew a big question mark. On a poster board in the back of the room was a key to my corrections:

? = WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU SAYING???

When I read her comment, I thought What the heck is she saying? What is THAT and what is IT?

I played it out in my head:

A transgendered woman comes into the women’s room to pee. Regardless of how long she lived as a he, someone taught her that it’s not polite to pee in the sink. So off to a stall she goes.

How does my daughter even know what is happening behind those closed doors?

Or a transgendered man comes into the men’s room. The urinals are not an option—I actually know this from personal experience, it’s a physical impossibility—so off to the stall he goes.

My son would assume one thing: serious business. And he would get out there as soon as possible to avoid the smell.

All good so far.

What WOULD cause an uproar is the reverse of that. There’s a McDonald’s in Redding where the bathrooms are reversed. Usually the women’s room is on the right. THE RIGHT. Annie had to pee and the door needed a token and no, I didn’t look at the sign.

The guy at the urinal sure did shriek like a woman when I rolled in there with my preschooler. Safe to say that he didn’t want to see me any more than I wanted to be there.

In my world, it will be a few more years before my little people notice things that may be seem different to them. I stand firmly by my “Need to Know” style of parenting. I’ll find the words then.

Because I have never once thought how I would explain transgendered to my kids.

There it is.

Maybe this mom who commented was her older self, with kids who are asking questions that need answers. Maybe she’s watching her babies take giant steps towards adulthood and suddenly all  those hard words she was going to find on a far-away tomorrow have to be in her head today.

So she’s freaking out and using relative pronouns.

Sister girl, I can relate to THAT.

But I don’t want to live in a relative pronoun world. And I need to stop punting to my older self because I’m tired now and my older self, the one with teenagers, will be tired and old.

So I’m going to remember that we are people who believe where we stand on the important things in life is not as important as how we stand. We stand in love.

Then I’m going to call my girlfriends and invite them for coffee but really it will be a brainstorming session called “What to tell our kids when”. Together we will buck up and find the hard words because fear is no excuse to use relative pronouns.

But also.

For the love of God, can we build children with hardier hearts? Children who aren’t so fragile that they will need twenty years of therapy at the sight of a woman peeing standing up? Or whose faith in all that is good and holy will not fall to pieces in the face of a man who appears to have boobs? That’s a house of cards built on shifting sands and I am not interested in that.

I want mighty warriors.

If I’m doing my job well, they will see things different from their idea of right and wrong and say “Huh.” Then go about their holy and sacred business of standing in love.

 

 

God, Love and Rock and Roll

If, when you think “Christian music concert”, you see lots of guitars and banjos—then we need to talk.

Four years ago, I was you.

Then a friend suggested I try the Air1 radio station, at the same time I was struggling to recover from my postpartum anxiety. I turned it on, figuring that melodic, folksy guitar music would be soothing, if nothing else.

Yeah it was soothing. But not folksy or melodic. Hip hop. Rock. Pop.

The same types of music on any top 40 station, except clean, faith-filled, uplifting. That was the end of secular radio in mama’s car.

Our kids really like music. Kate loves to sing along and Gabe is interested in drums. So last summer, when Toby Mac was coming to town, Shea got us tickets.

I didn’t know what to expect. My first concert was Bon Jovi in 1989. I’ve seen Pearl Jam and U2, Pink and Lenny Kravitz.

Can Christian concerts be that big, loud, fun?

Yes they can. Minus the pot, liquor and boobs.

And—they’re cheaper.

Last weekend we took our kids to Toby Mac’s Hits Deep Tour in Eugene. We saw 8 top artists in 4 hours. We got churched up. We danced and sang til we were dripping sweat. I may have cried once or twice.

The place was sold out. Easily 10,000 people. Lots of kids of all ages. Lots of smiles and hugs and manners.

Not one curse word. Not. One.

These artists—they are amazing live. Dancing, standing on tables, jumping into the pit. They could be making so much more money in the secular music world. And instead, they use their gifts for God.

That’s the kind of role model I’m talking about. Not to mention, these are grown men and women testifying. They are walking their talk.

You better believe I want my kids to see that.

The tour has partnered with Food For the Hungry, so at one point, an African pastor came out and talked to us about their mission. His story went like this: If all of the people in the world could be represented by 100 people standing in a line, then we are all at the front. And at the back are children who are starving to death. One child dies from hunger every three seconds. 1-2-3. Another one gone. We may wonder why we are lucky enough to be at the front of the line. It’s because we have the power to make a difference for those at the back of the line. We can’t fix it all, but we can fix one. And God will see us fix that one and He will know we did what we could.

At the end, he counted again: 1-2-3. Then he shouted “Who will help save the ones at the back of the line?!” and Kate shot out of her seat with her hands and voice raised: “ME!!!!!!!”

So we adopted another African child. His name is Kirodunge and he lives in Burundi. It costs $35/month, but there’s no way to put a price on my little girl using her tithing money to help another child.

IMG_20160315_073217
Annie getting her worship on for Capital Kings

For more information on the Hits Deep Tour, visit tobymac.com. For other tours and events, visit http://www.air1.com or http://www.klove.com.

 

 

10 Years

It was a Monday. I was scheduled to work for three more weeks. And my department was having a happy hour baby shower for me. So twenty minutes after the bell rang, I left the piles where they lay, grabbed my things and headed out the door.

I tried really hard to get the waitress to serve me a margarita, but the belly gave me away. “How far along are you?” she asked.

Thirty six weeks, on the button.

I had onion rings for dinner. I laughed with my colleagues about how the room wasn’t painted, the baby clothes weren’t washed, the bag wasn’t packed and we had two more childbirth classes to go.

“Cutting it close” one of the guys said.

“Nah, we have time” Shea told him.

“Are you ready?”

“I was born ready” I said.

Before I left the restaurant, I hit the bathroom. My chones were wet, which was weird because I had not been a leaker up til that point. Last month, I thought to myself.

Except on the way home, I felt some more leak.

So I called my sister in law, who’d had my nephew 9 months previously.

“What does it feel like to lose your mucus plug?”

“Like a glop.”

“Let me go check.” I handed the phone to Shea and went to the bathroom. When I sat down on the toilet, there was a whoosh of liquid and I yelled.

I could hear her yell back at Shea “DID HER WATER JUST BREAK?????”

I went upstairs, sat on the bed and started to think of all the things left undone on my desk.

180 essays. A stack of homework. Lesson plans for the next twelve weeks.

I’m not ready.

When Shea came out of the closet with a duffel bag, he said “Are you going to take a shower?”

No.

“Are you going to change your pants?”

I already took my pants off.

“Are you going to put some new pants on?”

No.

“No???”

No. I’m not ready. I’m not having a baby tonight.

He got my mom on the phone. She called me Jennifer Margaret and told me to get in the car. She said she’d be there as soon as possible.

Right, then.

I toyed with the idea of delivering naturally and made it all the way to 7 cm. That’s when we found out that I am one of those people whose blood pressure bottoms out with anesthesia. I revisited my onion rings. I pushed for three hours before calling it quits. I was occasionally awake.

Gabriel was born by c-section at 7:54 am, 7 lbs even, 21 inches and with a giant bruise around his right eye.  He’d been trying to see his way out.

Yesterday, he turned 10. My preemie boy who struggled to eat for the first month of his life, is now 5’1” tall.

That younger me on the night of March 6, 2006, the one who felt not ready—she was ready and Gabriel’s early arrival was only the first lesson in parenting. All of the medical issues we faced in the two weeks after his birth, the jaundice and the weight loss and the blood tests and the weigh-ins. They were our parent bootcamp.

They taught us that life wasn’t going to look the way we imagined.

Life was going to look the way it was, every single joyful, messy, scary, exciting, daunting, exhausting minute.

And now I know I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Cheers to ten years of parenting.

IMG_20160308_080608

Come Outside The Walls

cropped-img_20150201_154100.jpg

Did you know that when St Francis of Assisi got serious about his ministry, he left the Church?

True story.

Francis was a young man born to wealth and privilege in Assisi. At the urging of his father, he pursued glory for himself and his family. Then one day he found himself in a crumbling church outside the walls of Assisi, called San Damiano. The Christ on the Cross spoke to Francis, calling him to “rebuild his church”. Francis of course thought it was a call to rebuild San Damiano, which he did before realizing that the call was about something much bigger.

During Francis’ life, the Catholic Church was overrun by greed and power. Francis, once consumed with greed and power himself, founded an order of friars who believed that poverty was sacred and necessary.

He never stood actively against his beloved church.

But his order stood in stark contrast to the opulent church culture in a way that was unmistakable. He founded his community outside the walls of Assisi—outside the traditional ways and protections. And he held to it, even after criticism from the people of Assisi, even after questions from the Vatican, who worried his order was too simple, too spare, too poor. And eventually, the people came to him.

It was a revolution. It was one man’s attempt to make his church great again.

But it wasn’t like revolutions before and since, too many of which operated within the existing structures and served only, as Richard Rohr says, to “rearrange the furniture on the deck of the Titanic”.

Instead, Francis worked after Jesus’ example and “built a new boat”.

And that’s the key to any revolution—it has to look and sound like Jesus building a new boat.

If it doesn’t, then it isn’t.

So I want to share with you how our family is set to handle this election.

Like Francis, we’re going outside the walls.

We’re going to vote, because our church tells us to vote. But we’re not going to become our vote. It will not define us.  It certainly doesn’t need to be defended. It’s ours. It’s ok.

We already know for whom we’re voting, so we’re going to cut down on our exposure to the talking heads. God bless them, but they make money off our emotions. If we aren’t scared or outraged or spiteful they aren’t making money. We get it. We just aren’t going to play.

We’re not going to let the data tells us anything about our friends, neighbors and countrymen and women. We’re going to remember that we don’t know what we don’t know, and at the top of that list is what is in someone else’s heart.

We’re going to keep doing what we do, which is loving and living and praying and meeting God in all the places we see Him.

We aren’t going to lose faith. Outside the walls is a more peaceful place. It’s grass roots. It’s people helping people. It’s simple. It’s less. It’s easier to see what really matters here.

It’s not ignorance, or blindness. We’re participating. We’re just not being loud about it. Plus, we can see the walls from here. We can hear the noise.

We just don’t need the noise. We don’t need the spectacle.

Can you imagine what would happen if everyone walked away? If everyone said “We’ve had enough. We’re good. We’ll just be over here getting back to real life”? What would happen then, if people left their seats at the circus and came outside the walls?

That would be a revolution.