God Winked

Sunday February 16, 2020

I was sitting at the kitchen table staring at the screen on my laptop and drawing a blank as to how to get started.  My part time editor, part time consultant and full time spouse was sitting directly across from me so I said to her, "For someone who can run his mouth with the best of them I can't get started."  "Why don't you remind your readers why you stopped writing a few months ago and then go from there," she said to me.  Sound advice from my part time editor, part time consultant and full time spouse so here we go.

I stopped for one reason.  After seven and a half years at my school and after five years writing this blog, I got frustrated with what was going on around me.  The negatives far outweighed the positives and I just couldn't get myself to write about all of those negatives so I stopped writing.  So what made me change my mind?

It started on Wednesday of last week if my mind serves me correctly.  T4 and I were sitting in our empty classroom talking as the scholars were at a specials class (PE or Art).  I mentioned to T4 that I was thinking about starting the blog again when OtherT4 walked into the classroom and it was obvious that she was agitated. "You don't need to write a blog, you need to write and entire (expletive deleted) book," she said to me.  I looked at her as she walked across the classroom and I thought to myself, "What set you off today?"  I'll be paraphrasing because I need to make adjustments to some of the descriptive terms OtherT4 used.

"I'm was giving my scholars a test when a parental unit, with a sibling that appeared to be around three years old, just walked into my classroom.  No one called me to tell me that this parental unit was coming to my room.  How and the heck can that happen.  A parental unit walked into the school, goes through the main office, asks how to get to my classroom, gets the directions to my classroom and nobody takes the time to call me.  That is ridiculous.  My scholars are taking a test and this parental unit sits down in the back of my classroom, opens up a bag of toys for her sibling to play with while this test is in progress.  Then my scholar sees her parental unit in the classroom and begins a conversation with her.  During the conversation, the parental unit pulls a cellphone out of her bag and hands it to the scholar.  All of this is going on with a test in progress."

One negative down.  Here is the next one.  This one happened in a meeting.  Sitting in the room was the BigB#4, LittleBigB#2, teachers and members of the school support staff.  One of the topics being discussed was school discipline.  Paraphrasing, "We need to start addressing the behavior issues that we are facing.  We can't continue to allow our scholars to behave in the way that they do.  Borders need to be established with consequences being consistently handed out when scholars are misbehaving."  There was no reaction from the BigB#4 and the LittleBigB#2.  NONE!  So being disrespectful, defiant, storming out of the classroom, and refusing to do any work will continue to be the norm.

Last one and given and what I just said above this one leaves me shaking my head.  I'm sitting at the half round table that is in the hallway outside T4's classroom grading papers.  The LittleBigB#2 was heading to the classroom that is right next to me as there was a behavior issue going on and the teacher called for help.  The LittleBigB#2 retrieved the misbehaving scholar from the classroom and was lecturing him about behavior in the hallway near me.  As I'm eavesdropping on the conversation I realize that the LittleBigB#2 was talking very rapidly to this scholar.  The look on the scholars face indicated that he had no idea what was being said.  Then a voice communication comes across to the LittleBigB#2 on the walkie talkie that he was holding in his hand.  The voice on the other end stated, "There is a behavior issue going on in another classroom and the teacher needs your help."

T4 happened to be in the hallway and the LittleBigB#2 looked at her and said, "Can you go down to the next classroom and see if you can help the teacher with a behavior incident?  I have so many issues right now I can't keep up."  The LittleBigB#2 can't keep up with all of the behavior issues and it's not just on this day, it happens multiple times a week.  And what gets done to address these behavior issues.  NOTHING!  No borders, no consequences.

My negative story list could go on.  There is an AK47 story, a two ounce confiscation of marijuana story, a scholar stomping on the body of another scholar story but I'm going to stop as you now have a feel for why I stopping writing.  Then the most unusual thing happened, especially in a public school, God winked.

The subject was social studies.  The objective was to create a wax museum of famous Hoosiers with the help of T4's and OtherT4's scholars plus the help of a gray haired, wrinkly faced, occasionally grumpy, old guy.  "Schultz, take these forty-two pictures of famous Hoosiers, cut out the excess paper around the pictures, bring them back to classroom and using three staples per picture, staple the pictures on the upper left hand corner of the poster board.  Oh, make sure, when you staple the pictures onto the poster board, they are on straight."  "Aye, aye, Captain," and off I go.

The scholars were about to begin one of the biggest, if not the biggest project, that I've seen since I started working with T4.  For the sake of space I'll give you the abridged version.  In this sequence, the scholars were told to; research your famous Hoosier, note the date of birth, city of birth, and date of death, if deceased.  Then, collect interesting events in the life of your famous Hoosier, write them on your poster board and then decorate your poster board as you see fit.  When all of this is finished transfer your notes onto a 4x6 note card so you can actually read what your wrote, practice reading your notes several times as you will have to give an oral presentation on your famous Hoosier in front of your parental unit and any other people that walk into the wax museum.

The scholars worked a little bit each day for a couple of weeks on their poster boards.  The classroom, more than once, got pretty chaotic as so many of scholars have the attention span of a gnat and the adults in the room had to work hard to keep their emotions in check.  I'm happy to report that the adults were fairly successful controlling their emotions.  Finally, it's time to go live with the presentations and the day to do so was Valentine's Day.

Approximately forty scholars were assigned a standing location in the Wax Museum of Famous Hoosiers (our library) and waited the arrival of the visitors to the museum.  When the visitors arrived they could circulate through the museum looking at all of the famous Hoosiers.  If they saw one that interested them they could step of a faux clicker that was on the floor in front of the scholar.  When the faux click was stepped on the scholar would start giving her/his oral presentation to the person standing in front of them.

I had to travel to Bay City, Michigan on Valentine's Day so I missed the event. When I knew the presentations were over I sent a text message to T4 to see how the day went.  The response I received was very favorable and the number of parental units that came to see their scholars in action was high and that put a smile on my face.  A short while late T4 sent me pictures of the scholars and a video of their presentations.  As I looked at the pictures there was a huge smile on my face as several of the scholars dressed up in costumes so they could look like their famous Hoosier.  Right after looking at the pictures I downloaded the YouTube video of the scholars giving their presentations.  As I watched the video of these scholars, some with so many home life issues, some with so much unnecessary baggage dragging behind them every day, tears started running down my face.  "They nailed it," I thought to myself and I'm sure T4 and Other T4 were very proud of them.

Later in the day I received another text message from T4 with a picture of a hand written note attached to the text message.  T4 told me in her text message that received a Valentine's Day card from one of her T4-F's.  Included in the text message T4 sent were these words, "God winked."  When I read those two words I thought to my self, "God winked" must be a typo and then I read the letter T4-F wrote.

Content edited by me.

Dear Mrs. T-4,

As long as I've been in this school you have been my all time favorite teacher ever.  You're super sweet and very generous.  I love it when you go out of your way to help and care for others.  I know this class is super crazy and loud but you always make it through the day.  I don't know how you do it so it makes me wonder if you are a Super Hero or not. If you are a Super Hero I know the perfect name for you.  It is Sound-O-Blocker.  I think it fits you pretty well.  I also love the happy personality that you have and other than that, you are an incredible teacher.

At the beginning of the school year T4 said this to me, "Schultz, if you thought last year was bad, this year is going to be worse."  She was right.  This has not been a very good year and I just couldn't continue writing about it.  Then it happened, on Valentine's Day, God winked at T4 and it couldn't have happened at a better time for her.  It's been a tough year but this one wink is all it took for T4 to realize that in the midst of the daily chaos someone is actually paying attention.  That is a huge positive.  One that will keep me writing this blog.

Thanks for following along.