The Adventure of My Job

   It's October.  One year ago this month my diagnosis of lymphoma was confirmed.  God has blessed me by allowing me to continue this earthly life a little while longer.  While I strive to be a good husband and father, I am not always.  I try to do my best, to make a difference, to represent Jesus and his love in everything I do, but I fall short...often.  But I so love being a dad.
   I am also a teacher.  "Oh, you're a middle school teacher," someone inquired of me yesterday.  "What do you teach?"  This question is asked with the assumption that it will be followed by a subject or two.  I really strive to teach students.  I try to do my best, to make a difference, to represent Jesus and his love in everything at do at school too, but this also is difficult.  Here I often fall short as well. But you see, I cannot teach subjects without teaching students, and students can be tricky.  My job description is not too specific.  In fact, no sane person has ever attempted to write one.  So what is it I do?  Just what does a teacher do?
   A teacher plans lessons, grades papers, writes stuff on the board, goes to parent meetings, goes to faculty meetings, works on special projects, fills out forms, hangs stuff on bulletin boards, meets with other teachers, runs copies, takes kids home when they miss the bus, goes into Plan B mode automatically when the technology goes funky, monitors detention hour, and takes out the trash when the kids dump their marinara sauce and applesauce from lunch time into the trash can that had lost its liner four hours ago and is now buried at the bottom.  But a teacher doesn't always just "do;" teachers also "think." A lot. When I think about my students, it is always about making their lives better. I think a lot about connecting with students as individuals, like the student who is shy, the one who is lonely, and the one who just cannot sit still.  I think about the one who cannot do 10 divided by 2 without a calculator, the one who is a bully but comes from a home that is unstable, the one who doesn't care about grades and his parents are too busy to notice, the one who jabs his neighbor with a pencil, the one who is getting good grades but shows no emotions at all, the one who is far too overconfident, the one whose grandma just died, the one who smells a little bad, the one who stays up too late, the one who sneaks in snacks when asked not to, the one whose locker looks like a war zone, the one who is emulating the characters from the R-rated movies he has seen, the one who isn't ever listening, the one who lies to his mother while I am standing right there, the one who is always making excuses, the one who either will not or cannot write even semi-neatly, the one who calls other kids names without knowing the definitions of the labels he uses, the one who knows the right way but goes the wrong way, the one who always forgets to sign up for hot lunch, and the one who is in need of a bathroom way too frequently.  A teacher's job includes making a large amount of long-range decisions, a vast amount of short-range decisions, and an infinite amount of reactionary decisions.  A teacher needs to be in several places at once, and one of those places never seems to involve eating lunch in the teacher's lounge.
   As as teacher I have the most fascinating job imaginable.  It's October, and that means I have eight more consecutive months to grade papers, go to meetings, and make lesson plans...and to think about how to make the lives of children better.