We were talking in my ninth grade English class about a writing prompt the kids had done last week while I was "evaluating" speakers at a speech run-off.
(As if I really evaluated anything. It was much more like two really brilliant ladies let me sit at the end of the table and smile. They know FAR more than I do about oral interp and original speeches.)
A student new to our school volunteered to share her response to this: What novel/movie that you have recently read/seen best represents the world in which you live? Having a life experience decidedly uncharacteristic of 98% of the rest of the students, she wrote about a novel that chronicles the experience of a teenager living in an American ghetto. Violence, addiction, and fear rule the protagonist's world.
I felt like I needed to validate what my student wrote because there's no way most of the other kids in my class will ever see that life for real. I wanted them to know that it IS real. I started sharing with them about my time teaching in the public schools. And then I cried.
I taught in a wonderful school, but it was a very real-world school. At least three students I knew from back in the day have lost their lives in drug deals. One was a standout swimmer. He was executed. The others were killed in "drug-related violence" ... whatever that means. Of those two, one was a writer. He took my Writer's Workshop class when he was in 10th or 11th grade. He loved writing. And he had so much to say.
I remember when I learned he had been killed. I read it in a newspaper. I sat there in shock and thought, "This can't be our kid. No way." But it was. Same last name. Same brother. Same high school. Same graduation year.
He was so smart and never ever disrespectful in any way. He had a tender heart. Drugs and guns ended all that.
And as I shared about him, my eyes started tearing up. Oh my word. It's been years. Why now? I have to teach the opening chapters of To Kill a Mockingbird. What on earth? I grabbed a tissue, and then it just came out...
"I'm so sorry guys. Sob, sniff. I am so sorry. We loved those kids so much. And they died. They would have been in their mid-thirties now. We poured out lives into those kids. Lots of times the Lord calls people to China and Singapore and other 'undisclosed southeast Asian countries,' but He called us for a time to the public schools. We loved those kids. We shared Jesus with those kids. It was our ministry.
"And I never thought I'd go back to teaching, but here I am. And I love you too. And I pray for you, and I'm so, so scared for you. I want more than anything for you to know Jesus and love Jesus and walk with Jesus, and you've all heard it before. You've heard everything and you know everything and it means nothing to so many of you. You're immune. There's no impact. You don't even hear the words anymore. And that scares me for you more than any drug deal going bad used to scare me for the public school kids. This is real. This is life. I want you to love Jesus because He is the only thing that matters. At all."
5 comments:
God has given you an incredible compassionate heart..thank you for serving Jesus.
oops...should read 'incredibly compassionate heart' because even this math person knows that adverbs modify adjectives. :D
... unless you count both words as adjectives and separate them by a comma. :) Thank you for the encouragement! I miss you!
I just re-read what I wrote. It sounded like I was going to teach the novel my student wrote about in her prompt response. Not the case. The prompt was actually a writing activity for the beginning of To Kill a Mockingbird. THAT'S the novel I'm teaching. There are lots of attitudes and words that are representative of the 1930s South in that novel. At this point in history we know those words and attitudes are wrong because of the harm they bring to others.
And I just cried reading this. Goodness, you'd think I'm pregnant with all the teary-ness lately! (And, no, I'm definitely not!)
I cried because what you shared was touching ... and because I thought of Orlando and Jesus and Jose and Roberto and Perfecto (yes, his real name!) in Texas and of Jamal and others here in NC. I don't know that any are dead, but several of my Texas boys who should be seniors in high school have gone missing and are probably part of one of the drug cartels on the border. Bouts of "drug related violence" don't even make the papers in south Texas, so I wouldn't know even if they had been killed. I cry the most for Roberto who told me during my first week of teaching that I shouldn't bother with him and his classmates because "we'll just grow up to be robbers and murderers anyway." I swore they wouldn't. But I'm only human, and Roberto did grow up to be just that.
Sigh.
There are several sweet children who I haven't prayed for lately who I'll be lifting up to our mighty King tonight. Thanks for that reminder.
Thanks for sharing this Norma. I just love you and your heart for serving Jesus and teenagers. And I miss you.
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