Finding My Joy

When I was younger I can remember thinking to myself that if I only had three things in life I would be happy. My list was simple: a wife, a house, and a job.  I wasn’t concerned much with the order that I got those things I just knew that I needed them. Anyone that knows my wife knows that I am a proud member of the “Married Up Club”.  Anyone who has seen the house I live in now and the one I grew up in can see that they are similar in size with the only major difference being lawn maintenance (sorry Pops).  What I don’t have though is a job.  I have something much more… I have a calling.

I grew up around people with jobs. People who spent hour upon hour in dyeing & finishing or the warp room producing some of the finest denim the world has seen. Folks that would bend over miles of woven fabric under UV lights looking for slubs and other minor imperfections. Hard working, salt of the earth people who perpetually kept their noses to the grindstone so that they could support their families and provide a future for their children.  With a little embarrassment I have realized that I am the first member of my family, in a line that stretches back over 100 years, that has never drawn a paycheck from a cotton mill.  I know what a job is and thanks be to God I don’t have one.  What I do is teach.

I often joke with my students that I teach for free and I get paid to go to meetings. Honestly, in the last 12 years I haven’t worked a single day and I’m proud of it. What I have done is impart knowledge and occasionally wisdom to the most confused subset of our population. Along the way I’ve cried for their losses and victories, placed flowers on their tombstones, and occasionally kept them from killing each other. I’ve even been able to convince some of them that an education is the key to their future and alarmingly a few have decided to become educators themselves. Oh yeah, and I loved them. And I told them that I love them. They are my kids.

If it ain’t broke…

The public education system is not broken. It isn’t perfect but that certainly doesn’t mean that it isn’t working. Can it be better? Of course, but tell me what human institution couldn’t use a little tweaking.  The people that I work with are the education system and they certainly aren’t broken. They have dedicated their lives to making other people’s lives better and when politicians claim that they are failing in their calling it brings a cold fury on me that I struggle to contain.  Education has become a political football kicked around between our two major parties in an attempt to score points with voters to the detriment of teachers and the children that they love.

I have a simple litmus test that I use to gauge every action of my teaching day and every thought about education policy; does it help kids? That’s the business I’m in and if that thought doesn’t guide your decisions about education I have little time and no tolerance for your ideas.  I heard a preacher once say that sitting in a church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than sitting in a garage makes you a car. Sitting in a student’s desk for 12 years does not make you an education expert either.  Who are the education experts? Teachers.

Only six states spent less on education per pupil than North Carolina but our students’ scores were 23rd on national tests.  That’s one heck of a return on investment for a failing system.  When adjusted for inflation, North Carolina is spending less per pupil than before the Great Recession and I can’t overlook how our General Assembly bragged about increased spending on education.  That would be like me explaining to EJ that I have increased spending on her birthday candles over the last ten years.  Sure you are 12 now but 9 candles will have to do.

Simply put, we need to build up the people who are in the trenches everyday with our most precious resource and not belittle or politicize their impact.  We need to settle on one effective curriculum and teach it with the proper support and stop testing our kids to death.  We need to fund education as if our future truly depended upon it and on this day especially we need to remember the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  

Intelligence plus character–that is the goal of true education.