For Those Days When You Don’t Feel Like You’re Making A Difference…

When my husband began medical school, I accepted a teaching job in a too-small-classroom with no windows where struggling students were sent to get their last required English credit before graduation.

 It wasn’t exactly the teaching position of my dreams. But it was a job. And it would pay the bills as my husband paid for textbooks and clocked endless hours of studying.

On the day before school began, I received my class list and wondered if someone had made a mistake.

According to my roster, I had been assigned thirty-one students in my senior composition class. But when I’d counted the desks lined up in my shoe-box-sized room, I’d realized that I had only twenty-four places for my learners to perch.I’d pictured near-grown boys and girls sitting cross-legged on the floor like kindergartners, and had promptly marched down to the principal’s office to alert him of my dilemma. 

When I showed the ruddy-faced man my class list and explained that I needed seven more desks to accommodate all of my students, he patted me on the shoulder like a wise father calming a cantankerous four-year-old.

 Then, in a strangely sanguine voice, he said, “You won’t need any more desks. Those kind of kids drop like flies. You’ll probably lose half of them before the month is up. Soon you’ll have plenty of elbow-room.” 

Infuriated, I stared the principal in the eye and said what any woman who believes in doing big things would say (or what any woman who is just plain filled with too much passion and pride might spout before thinking)—

“Well, I’d appreciate it if you’d round up some more desks, Mr. H., because I don’t plan on losing a single student from this list.” 

I shook the paper with the thirty-one names on it in front of his double chin, and I waltzed out of the office, my stomach flip-flopping from an unsettling potion of anger and fear.

 What had I gotten myself into? 

I missed my yellow schoolhouse in the Alps.  And my husband teaching science just across the courtyard from me. 

I hadn’t even greeted my new students and I was yearning for a new job. Or just for a return to my old one.

But despite my aching heart, I put a smile on my face and welcomed thirty-one seniors to my classroom the following day.

Two weeks later, my principal’s words proved unfounded.  My senior comp class still had thirty students. 

On day fifteen of my first school year in that windowless room, the janitor drug in a handful of desks, helped me to squish them all together, and apologized for the cramped quarters. 

I assured him that elbow-room was over-rated, and I tried to convince myself that I had the coziest classroom in the building.

By the end of the year, I’d lost three students.  One to a juvenile delinquent home, another to a drug rehab center, and a third to the local factory in town. 

 My principal ranted and raved about my amazing teaching skills, but his words fell on empty ears. 

 The truth of the matter was this: I may have retained more students than expected, but I wasn’t sure that I’d reached a single one. 

 I cried often over the sordid lives they willingly shared about in their writing journals, and I despaired over their complacency.

 I offered to help my students fill out college applications.

I created writing assignments meant to launch them into dreaming about how they might impact the world.

I talked candidly about my belief that we were all placed on this earth for a purpose, that each one of us has been born to carry out a plan that no one else can.

 And yet, most of my students donned graduation caps and gowns without any plans for their future.

I’d sat face to face with countless kids who would “just happen to drop by” my classroom at odd hours, and I’d listened like a mom might when her child walked through the door after a long day at school. 

 Sometimes my visitors would just want to make me laugh. Other times, they’d pour out a tale about their broken home or their fractured lives that left me speechless. 

 Ironically, these kids never ever asked me to fix their messes. They only sought a listening ear and maybe a piece of chocolate from my secret stash.

Still, I wanted more for those twenty-eight teenagers.  

But I didn’t know how to inspire them. Or help them. Or understand them. 

 By the time our school year was over, I was ready to give up. 

 I hadn’t become an English teacher because I’m passionate about launching kids into the world with good grammar skills; I had become a teacher to impact lives.

I had become a teacher in hopes of being the hands and feet of Jesus in the places where teens trod. 

But after nine months of sharing life in that crowded classroom, I couldn’t see tangible proof of anything I had done to improve a single student’s life.

As I looked around my window-less room on the last day of school, I wondered why God had even called me to teach in such a dark and desperate place.

I felt the heat rising from my neck to my cheeks as I remembered my haughty words to my principal at the school year’s start. 

I may not have lost many students, but I hadn’t inspired many either.

 And that’s when I saw it- a tiny triangle of paper folded in the fashion of a junior-high-school note, sitting on my cluttered desk.   

My name was etched in the corner In flowery purple writing.  I unfolded the curious mail and began to read….

Dear Mrs. Bruxvoort-

I don’t want to leave without telling you how special you are to me. 

Almost all of my life, I’ve heard about this one “special” teacher that everyone has. Almost everybody I know has one. After ten years of hoping in vain, I gave up looking for a special teacher my sophomore year. I thought maybe I was one of the “unteachables” or something…..

About two weeks ago, I asked myself, “Why am I doing so well in school this year?” Then it occurred to me… “I have a special teacher. There is someone at school who asks me every morning how I am doing, and she really does want to know if it’s not, ‘fine, thanks.’”…..

I have come to your class tired, sick, depressed, or just ready to give up, but I have always left with a smile, or at least the courage to put up with the next 23 hours and 10 minutes until I’m back in your class. 

You have one of those 100 watt smiles that nobody can help but smile back at. Your optimistic attitude and easygoing personality have cheered me up every day….

 In your class, for 50 minutes a day, we were equals. We respected each other and nobody laughed at anybody else. That has never happened in any other class I’ve been in.

I want to graduate, but I don’t want to just leave and forget you. You have taught me honesty…. you have taught me to be honest with myself….

You are my special teacher, but you are also a friend to me….

The name of a student I knew well, but not any better than the rest, was signed in bubbly scrawl at the bottom of the page.

 And as I sat in that classroom stuffed with too many desks and not enough light, I saw something clearly for the first time in my life:  Sometimes, the smallest things done in love leave the biggest imprints.

Then, before I locked the door and headed home for the summer, I grabbed a piece of paper to craft my own letter to that one dear student whom God had so graciously used to give me courage enough to sign a teaching contract for another year. 

 

 Once again, joining Ann for Multitude Mondays as we count His small graces and offer big thanks today…

2101. Hotdogs roasted over the bonfire for supper.

2102. Four girls camping out in our backyard- glow sticks illuminating the tent from the inside out.

2103. Lizzy and friends dancing and singing church camp songs in the yard as the sun sets–love these girls and their zest for Jesus!

2104. Children who create games that grow out of the books they are reading—Hannah and Issy dressed in my old homemade clothes, leading the barefoot little ones through the yard in a game of “Harriet Tubman”

2015. Never a dull moment when we host a play date! I glance out the window and see Hannah’s friend tied to a tree. I race out to see what’s going on, and she hollers- “It’s okay that I’m tied to a tree, because we’re just pretending I’m a runaway slave. Don’t worry, Harriet will save me soon!” Then I look to see Hannah racing across the yard with an unlit candle in hand and a big smile on her face. “Are you ready to ride the freedom train?” she asks her tied-up friend.

2016.Our  first boat ride of the season (without any glitches!)

2017. The Red Rock Balloon Festival: Balloons flying over our house, landing in our yard, and swooping down near our driveway. The kids’ wide-eyed wonder as they race from balloon to balloon meeting the flyers!

2018. A husband who dreams big dreams for me.

2019. Writing/praying out my manuscript in the lighthouse as the sun goes down.

2020. Friends on fire for Jesus! The sheer thrill of walking beside women who are passionate about their Savior.