"Music Always Round Me." Students Always Amazing Me. God Always Surprising Me.

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Photo by Marius Masalar on Unsplash

Some days, I spend a disproportionate amount of time confiscating student "science experiments" cultured in makeshift Pringle-can petri dishes. Or counseling students to make better choices than sticking their bare hands in the snow. And reminding myself that they are only nine years old, and their frontal lobes are still developing.

On other days, we explicate poetry. And I'm floored by the depth of insight in their young brains.

When I decided not to pursue a doctorate in literature at this time in my life (check out my letter for The Catholic Woman for more of the story on my discernment), I did grieve a little bit for my time in academia, for a part of my life I wasn't sure I'd see again. And some days -- on my "grass is greener" days, as a colleague of mine calls them -- I still grieve. Through rose-colored window panes, I remember my life as a graduate student, joyfully ensconced in literary conversations and weighty tomes. I spin fantasies of the professorship I could instead be working for right now, and I long for the elusive "what might have been" -- which ultimately boils down to simply thinking beautiful thoughts about deep topics, within ivy-covered walls.

And time and again, I tell myself I'm right where I need to be. Or someone else tells me so. Or God Himself does.

Over the last two days, my fourth graders have begun studying Walt Whitman's "That Music Always Round Me," (see the photo below) in preparation to recite it at our school's First Trimester Presentation of Learning Day next month. We read it through a few times before I asked them what Whitman was writing about there -- music like the kind we're familiar with (country, hip hop, pop, folk)?

No, they said. The music of everything. What the whole world makes!

Now we're talking. I sat up straighter in my chair at the front of the room, and my heart raced with the giddiness that comes when my students are on the edge of an epiphany. Tell me more. 

I asked them to turn to a partner and create a list of all of the sounds they hear around them on a daily basis, sounds that also "make music" in the world. The list in the space underneath the poem here captures what they came up with:



Their list left me awestruck -- and not just because they'd focused well enough and long enough in their partnerships (without descending into out-and-out chaos) to come up with all of these examples, but because the eagerness with which they took to the activity and shared their thoughts speaks to their earnest desire to listen to the world they're in. And ultimately, to look beyond what they hear to the reality of the One conducting the symphony, filling this world with light and majesty and movement everywhere they look.

If I'd been afraid that fourth graders couldn't ascend to the level of contemplation that the students I may sometimes wish I taught at the college level could, over the last two days, they reminded me I have no reason to worry.

I really believe that the human spirit is prone to wonder, to marvel, and to connect the dots back to our Creator. To yearn homeward, heavenward. And perhaps education is nothing more than the work of teaching us how to wonder well.

College students can do so with more articulation, perhaps, than fourth-graders can, but the latter are every bit as perceptive. Maybe even more so.

And as I turn all of this over in my head, I see God smile at me and hear Him say, "Do you see? Do you see what becomes of your longings when you just give everything to Me?"

I am not -- for now, at least -- on the road to becoming a professor. But I am leading my students to beauty, truth, and goodness. To Him. To wonder. And they are leading me in turn. It looks a bit different than I thought it would, this time last year.

But He is good. And I am grateful.

And fourth-graders? They are just amazing.

For the Fighters and the Figurers-Out: I'm With You.

Thursday, October 10, 2019

Photo by Liam Simpson on Unsplash

I haven't written here in quite a while, and if I'm honest, it has nothing to do with "not having the time" to do so -- though I could easily blame it on that if I wanted to. I'm a first-year teacher, after all. When I'm not feverishly lesson planning or desperately plotting new classroom management strategies (because a "class dance party" one afternoon yielded far too many students dancing "the floss" on top of their desks for me to be okay with the safety hazard that posed), I'm usually trying to steal a few minutes with a book, or else a glass of wine and a good friend. And also I have absolutely no stamina for anything that happens after 7pm anymore.

#adulting, am I right?

I told my friend Tracy tonight that part of the reason I've been silent here for so long is that, as a perfectionist, I'm not comfortable with a regular (as in, two or three days a week) posting schedule. There's not enough time, with that kind of frequency, to make sure things are perfect before they're released into the world! I'd rather take my time polishing and perfecting, but then, by the time the insecurity fades and I'm ready to publish, whatever it is I've been writing about has already passed the point of relevancy. And with an uncomfortable amount of pressure in the blogosphere to stay current on world and cultural events, and to post frequently enough to garner an audience, I feel I can't -- or maybe, I just don't want to -- keep up.

But this blog has always been less about profiting and popularity than it has been about simply... accompanying. Journeying. Letting others know they're not alone, and letting you know that you have a friend. A friend who is also just figuring things out one day at a time.

I closed a chapter of my life back in May -- that of being a student -- and now I am a full-time 4th grade Catholic elementary school teacher. And honestly, you could measure the interior movements of my soul over the last two months on an EKG (some super high highs followed by some very low lows, and then a plateau-ish period of relative calm and routine before another spike). I expect to share some -- or a lot -- of that experience here because it's central to my life now.

But this isn't a "first-year teacher blog", even though I am a first-year teacher.

And it isn't a blog "for women in their late twenties" -- even though I am technically one of those now, too.

It is, first and foremost, a place for me to tell my story, and to hope that you, dear reader, find something of yours here, too.

So maybe it’s okay if it’s not perfect.

Because we're all in this together, and transitions can be so scary, and change isn't a one-and-done kind of deal, but something we experience every day if we're doing life right, and you are not alone if, even after taking the next right step, you're still afraid you don't actually have a clue what it is you're doing.

But we are the fighters, you and me. We are the figurers-out. We will keep going.

And yes, I will keep writing.

...All this to say, I'm back! And I'll be posting more (semi-) regularly from here on out. Would love to have you along for the ride! :)