It's NOT!!!

This weekend I went to Peace River. One of the churches there is doing the Focus on the Family Truth Seminars. I needed groceries and decided to stay and go with one of my coworkers, who regularly attends that church. This week's topic: History. His Story. Not Jenstory.

It was rather humbling to remember that I am not in control. Somedays this is a relief. Other times it is a struggle. Right now, this week and month and school year, it is more on the relief side. There are things going on in my student's lives that I can not solve. I get the fall out of that in my classes but I don't have to solve it.

It was even more humbling to remember that it is not all about me. We are a part of a larger story. At our break out sessions though the conversation revolved around me, me, I, me. Every person who talked, talked about themselves and their story and strugles.

How do we make life not about us? How do we put ourselves in the frame of history and God's plan? How do we remember that we are not the center? How do we live it out? I look at history's figures and the pain and anguish they went through to bring glory to God. I get lonely and grumpy and think that I must be out of God's will.

Remembering that there is a metanarrative is rather hopeful. In the quest for life's meaning, there is a paradox. We can only find importance if our story loses importance and becomes wrapped up in God's plan. That is when our lives have meaning. Without that metanarrative, we are just clouds of breath and beautiful piles of dust. How depressing.

I understand it but how do I live it. I need some tips here.

P.S. Why oh why does this have to occur a 2.5 hour drive away? Once again it is all about me.

Teaching the Isrealites

This school year for my devotions I am trying to read through a chronological version of the Bible. I highly recommend this as it gives a new perspective on the events in the Bible. I am at the part where the Isrealites escaped Isreal and are wandering around the desert grumbling and complaining and trying to make deals with God. Reading through some of the stories made me chuckle today because I swear that the Isrealites were a bunch of adolescents and I swear that some days I feel like I am teaching the Isrealites. I don't mean to equate myself with God but sometimes I act like him. I never really understood God much in the wandering episode. He seems a bit vindictive but now I understand. Maybe He was just trying to get the teenaged nation to GROW UP.

For example, the Isrealites were given manna everyday. A miracle happened every morning in order to feed and nourish them and what did they do? They complained. "Why can't we have meat? We had meat in Egypt." My students . . . Well I don't mean to say that my lessons are miraculous but I try my best to make them as interesting as possible. And what do my students do? They complain. "This is boring. So and so's class is so much more interesting. I wish that we could just do worksheets."

God's response was often to give them what they wished for and let thenm deal with the consequences, even if it involved big piles of rotting quail. Sometimes I take great vindictive joy in making my students' wishes my command. "You want more worksheets. OK. Here is a 3 pager. It is due tomorrow. If you don't get it done, you will have DT. Have fun." I don't think that God took vindictive joy in his actions though.

Another example is when the Isrealites were supposed to move into Canaan and didn't out of fear. God was upset. He made their wish his command. "OK you are too scared. Well then you won't take possession of the land. Your children will." So then the Isrealites feel bad and try to attack the Canaanites anyway to disastrous effect. AHHHH How often do my students do this? They misbehave, swear in class, give attitude, talk back and when I try to mete out a consequence they get all repentant. "I am so sorry. I will do better." And for the three seconds that are left in class, they are perfect angels and are surprised when the consequences don't change.

There are days when I, like God, feel like stiking my students down. Today is a case in point. I had some canteen items in my room for a math project. I went to put them away today and discovered that a whole box of gum and a whole box of rice krispy squares are missing. I am angry and feel like revenge. My students will come up with excuses. "You shouldn't have left them out for anyone to take. They aresn't worth that much anyway" I will angrily reply, "It is stealing. Just because something is left out in the open it doesn't mean that you have the right to take it." I will explain to them how they lost my trust and how that is invaluable.

But eventually, some student will appeal to my character. They will appeal to the fact that I am compassionate and that my whole job as a teacher hinges on believing in and trusting my students and that someday they will leave this stage of adolescence and grow up. I will start to trust again and my anger will dissipate. Until next time. For I know that there will be a next time and that is so frustrating and disappointing. But I can not stop loving and trusting.

Now I understand how God feels when he deals with me.

Creative Saturday

On Saturday I decided to be creative instead of lolling around procrastinating the short journey to the school. So I pulled out my sewing machine - made out of all plastic parts and designed for a child- and started sewing. I am not going to paste pictures of my creation because I have a cousin who does lovely sewing projects and posts pictures all the time. My creation is not lovely. It has visible and stray threads, crooked lines of sewing. pieces that don't match up in size. It looks rustic. It looks like a child on a child's sewing machine created it. I would blame the sewing machine but that wouldn't be fair.

Nontheless I am proud of my creation. It is a green, rice bag snake complete with a red mouth, button eyes and a tail. Today I gave it to the ECS teacher so that her students can cuddle with it and be grounded with its heaviness.

I have forgotten how much joy one can get by creating and giving. I read an article this week in Reader's Digest about the health benefits of gratitude. I am making a pledge to find three things that I am grateful for everyday and writing them down. Here is today's list.

1. I am grateful sweet potatoes soup and corn bread. Good home cooking.
2. I am grateful for the joy that giving gives the giver and the reciever. Giving makes the world a better place.
3. I am grateful for the internet and how it can connect people together and can help us pay our bills on time. Honestly I don't know how I would have survived in Trout Lake prior to the age of internet.

Still Alive . . .

It is almost the end of September. The "honeymoon period" of school is over. We are in for a shock. There was no "honeymoon". It has been a struggle since day one. So many changes. So much miscomunication. So much truancy and lateness. I have to keep on reminding myself that we are doing a good job. That we have made positive change. I have to keep the waves of bitterness away from the shores of my soul.

Exercises

This year, we are trying to get a library for this school up and running. All of the books are in the old NLC trailer. On Friday evenings, the four of us go and sort the books. We went last Friday and this past Friday. It is slow going but we hope that by having the books accessible to students, they will read more often. Often we wonder if it in exercise in futility.

After spending 4 plus hours in the library last Friday, we ran into a depressing road block. I was working at the the school Sunday evening when I started to hear dogs barking, kids running and general commotion. A student knocked on the school door, where I was talking to some teachers. "Some kids are in the library." One teacher took off to chase the culprit down. The rest of us went to go check out the damage. Inside the library we saw carefully stacked books toppled over. In a clearing by the library, we saw charred remains of books. Later we heard that some of the students thought it would be cool to pee in the corner.

We found out later that one of the doors to the library doesn't lock properly. So the kids did not break and enter. Yet they did not use their common sense and used their discovery for chaos, vandalism and evil. It was very frustrating for the 4 that had worked on the library. We had to spend the rest of out evening transferring a lock to the culprit door and phoning parents.

However, we refuse to let that keep us down and this Friday we were back in the library sorting books once again. I got the picture book section all sorted alphabetically. Now we just have the novels and non-fiction to deal with. And the fact that we don't have enough shelving space. I never realized that opening a library is such hard work. On Saturday morning, I woke up in pain. My thighs were so sore. I realized that Friday evening, I had to put books on the top shelf and then the bottom shelf. I don't know how many squats I did but I sure felt it the next day.

Science

There is a science experiment growing in the science cupboard. It is an inadvertant experiment - definitely not part of the curriculum. But the Science cupboard ceiling is the part of the school that always leaks. It has been "fixed" many times but every time it rains, or the snow melts, a slow drip starts forming from the ceiling to the floor. It would be cool if the slow drip formed stalicites and staglamites. It looks like stalicites but unfortunately it isn't mineral in nature - more biological. It started as a gross brown stain on the ceiling and now black protrusions are growing from the ceiling and releasing spores into the air. It is not my job to fix it. I have told the powers that be - a few times now. I have taken to wearing a dust mask whenever I need science supplies.

There are other science experiments growing in my class. Again inadvertant and biological. I am expecting to hear of the safe arrival of a baby - a former student is the mother and the father is a current student. Another student (both mother and father attend school) is also expecting. Little beautiful biological miracles. I am reminding myself that all babies are miracles and I am praying that these young children will be able to become good parents. My question is: Why are the parents so surprised at pregnancy when their kids are having sleepovers? What do they think are happening at these sleepovers? Not movies and popcorn.

And we're back

Last week, I had a former student come and visit me. We were chatting. I was telling her that I was impressed at her influence in Trout Lake. Her friends do other things beside drink. Then I mentioned that on a whole I see way less drinking in Trout Lake. It makes a good story that these words were no sooner out of my mouth when we heard a thud. Probably the sequence wasn't that close but . . . it is funnier.

So no sooner were those words out of my mouth when we heard a thud. For minutes afterwords we heard a truck with a real loud engine sitting outside of my house. Then we noticed the lights shinging through my window and the infiltration of other voices. We checked out the window and sure enough a truck was really close to my house. In fact it had hit my house and they were trying to back up, with my car right in line to get hit. Of course I was more worried about the car then the house.

After sneaking peaks out of the window for awhile and ensuring that one of the teachers was also out there, I decided to go check things out and move my car out of harms way. Sure enough, the truck was full of intoxicated males. (One of the males knew me and thought that a hug was in order. I was like, I haven't been hugged by a guy in a LONG time and then I get hugged by a drunk guy who drove into my house!!!). Besides being drunk and driving, the boys were in trouble. They had blown the transmission of their truck and could not put it into reverse or neutral. Plus they had not only hit my house; they hit the pipe that brings propane into my house. So every time they started the truck to see if it would go into reverse this time, they pushed my propane pipe a little bit more.

Eventually the male teacher with a truck decided that he had had enough and hitched their truck up to his truck and sent them on their way. It sucks when the only out you have with drunk drivers to allow them to continue to drive. YIKES but with the cops an hour away and the danger of an immenent propane leak, what were we supposed to do?