Why I Love My Kids

I can’t believe how much I miss my beautiful children today. In honor of them and their wonderful passions I write this blog post to share with you what is so great and remarkable about them.  I can’t write about each one today because I also have to lesson plan but I hope the few you are able to read about give you a glimpse into my classroom.

If there is one thing I have been reminded of in my short time as a teacher it is that we are each truly fearfully and wonderfully made by our Creator. I praise Him for the privilege that it is to teach such incredibly beautiful people.

J.H.—Can talk my ear off like a grown man. He has so much to say and every time I am with him one-on-one after school I am so overjoyed to be spending time with him. He is considerate beyond belief and will always ask me if I need help carrying my crate of papers. His smile brings me joy every time I see it.

M.J.—Is my little helper. Every day after school she helps me sweep my floor, sharpen my pencils and wipe down my desks with Lysol wipes. She is such a busy bee. She is always so eager during class to answer any question and will jump out of her desk just so that she can get my attention. I am blessed to have her in my life and she is one of the reasons I am able to leave school at a reasonable hour once my kids are dismissed.

B.W.—Is my pouter. I forgot how much seven year olds pouted until I started teaching. Nevertheless, he lets me hold his hand when he’s misbehaving in line and I pull him out to walk right next to me. One day he even asked me if he could hold my hand before I had to pull him out. I have found the way to get him to stop his pouting: whispering in his ear how special and wonderful I think he is and then asking him to do his work. Flattery always works my friends, and it also helps that I am not lying.

K.P.—My sweet lil cuddle bug. She doesn’t like to play during recess and hangs out with me on the other side of the lawn while the other kids run wild. She gives the best hugs I have ever been given in my whole entire life. At least once a week while she’s hugging me she’ll look up at me and say with such sincerity, “You are the best teacher in the world.” Her laugh brings me joy.

A.G.—Is one of my most thoughtful students. I couldn’t get a word out of her the first few weeks but as time has passed she’s warmed up to me and has never given me a wrong answer; she’s so incredibly bright. I once thought to myself during a particularly hard day for behavior as I surveyed the room and saw her following my directions, “If only I had a room full of A.H.'s.”

T.T.—The spitfire of the class. She is smart, witty, thoughtful and beautiful. One day I remember thinking to myself, “This girl is way cooler than I will ever be.” She wrote me the sweetest apology letter one day after I disciplined her for misbehaving and I always appreciate how after I find myself having to apologize to the class for my shortness of temper she will come up to me and say, “Ms. Maxey, I accept your apology.” Words can’t describe how much that means to me.

O.M.—Wants to be president and is our resident class genius. He makes me laugh so hard and for a tiny person makes SO much noise. He is obsessed with WWE, Barack Obama and his nickname “Bulldog.” Thanks to him I have come to appreciate all the three things that he loves. Oh, and his smile is literally the best, that and his flexible glasses that he hands me before recess everyday. And did I mention he is an extremely talented dancer?

K.B.—Is my idea generator! One of my most humbling moments as a teacher came during my first few weeks when I was teaching a lesson on place value and K.B. raised her hand and said, “Ms. Maxey this is how I do it” as she showed me her paper. I immediately asked her to teach me and then come up to the board and show the class. She always has ideas for things to do in class and reminds me of all the things I should be doing but often forget to do such as pick the “secret walker” before we line up to leave the room.

A.N.—Has more personality than I can handle at times, but I love it, each and every day when she lets loose. Also, I should mention that she is almost as tall as me and only eight years old. She has shown me so many dance moves and makes me laugh each day with her goofiness. She loves to joke around with me and laughs at my jokes, which of course I appreciate because deep down inside I know they’re not funny to most people. Cool fact about my baby girl: She WWE wrestles with the boys during recess and beats them, the embodiment of girl power. 

In 2006...

In 2006 I read a book that changed my life titled And Still We Rise written by Miles Corwin, a journalist for the LA Times. It was for my ninth grade English class and my teacher recommended it to me as part of a year-long project. The book follows the struggles of twelve gifted inner city students growing up in South Central LA and the countless structural obstacles that they had to overcome in order to simply pass an AP English exam as well as gain college acceptance. 

Little did I know as I ordered the title I had been recommended over Amazon that this book would in many ways change me. Granted, I was fourteen and I wouldn't say that it changed me as much as it molded my passions. To this book I can attribute several things: my passion for slam poetry, my passion and interest in hip-hop and lastly my passion and interest in education reform. As a suburbanite fourteen year old this book awakened something in me that I had never really known before, it stirred my deep desire for change and I felt as if my eyes had been pried open. I had grown up overseas and while I witnessed disparity in the countries I had lived, there was something about inequality in America that I didn't understand. 

To me inequality was the sight of street kids begging for money on the side of my school bus, a lady selling fruit snacks at the stop light, and seeing prostitutes on the side of the road on a very late night ride home when I was in fourth grade. This was inequality and where I had grown up it was evident, it was there. I didn't have to work hard to find it. But in this country it's different. Depending on who you are you can shut out the rest of the world and just know what you know and never leave. There was something about Miles Corwin's book that shattered this in me and actually caused me to be repulsed by the thought of staying in what had become my familiar and comfortable existence. I wanted to leave and see more, learn more, grow more, and be more than just stagnant. 

Fast forward to now:

A few days ago at lunch my kids were talking about their birthdays trying to figure out who was older. "I am older than everybody up in here!" one boldly proclaimed. "Nuh-uh, I flunked so I'm older,” another said. "When were you born?" a third student interjected. A fourth chimed in, "I was born in 2006!"

All of a sudden I felt old to think that I could vividly remember 2006 as if it was yesterday. I thought back to 2006: I was in high school, I played field hockey, I sang in my school choir, I listened to Yung Juc and I would come late to school some days so I would have to walk and climb the back fence long after they had locked it. 

And then I also remembered, in 2006 I read a book that made me want to be here in this cafeteria in the first place. I read a book that made me want to learn, grow and be challenged and more deeply know and understand others. In 2006 my dreams were born and now they are sitting right in front of me busily chowing away at their school cafeteria lunches and noisily chatting about who is older. Because of them I can say that I did leave and see more, learn more and am more than just stagnant. They are my greatest lessons and have opened my eyes to new joys and sorrows beyond what I ever imagined.

Being Taken Care Of

I didn't become a teacher to be taken care of, but given my most recent life lessons, apparently that's the main reason I am here. But really.

Today after a particularly exhausting and humbling (in so many ways) day I rested my bones on our new set of beanbag chairs (THANK YOU TANYA, JOEL ZACH AND DADDY) and closed my eyes for about ten minutes. I wasn't asleep, but I so badly wished that I was. The day had been full of challenges, I can't even begin to articulate how defeated I felt. However, as I began to open my eyes and regain my composure I noticed that the students who were still in the room were furiously cleaning the classroom, which is normally my job after school.

Makea had swept the floors and wiped down the desks with Lysol wipes, Jose (who I normally have to beg to sharpen pencils) had not only already sharpened the pencils but he had also straightened up all of the desks and collected all of the extra work left over on the tables.

I don't know what really possessed these two seven year olds to take care of me in this way, but in this moment I felt loved by them and by my Maker. Praise Him for the moments that remind me it is not about me.

Complaining

Some days I look around my new home and all I feel is discouragement. Yesterday was one of those days of just complete down in the dumps disappointment and disillusionment not only with the social injustices I am witness to but also with the role of the Church in the midst of these broken and oppressive systems.

To say I am angry or sad would be an understatement, I feel like my heart is constantly grieving and lamenting the lack of this or the lack of that. In particular, yesterday I was upset to realize that the closest domestic violence services in the Delta are located in Greenville, Mississippi, a town around 40 minutes away from me. Having conducted research on and worked with victims of domestic violence last summer, this piece of knowledge concerns me for a number of reasons. The first being that in numerous studies the most highly correlated factor with prevalence of DV is poverty, which the Delta has a lot of, the second being that due to this poverty families may lack transportation and the resources to gain knowledge about these kinds of services, thirdly, families fleeing domestic violence (an already traumatizing experience) do not necessarily desire to uproot their whole lives, for a mother this could include having to find another job if the shelter is 40 minutes (or more) away from her workplace, if children are involved this could mean switching to a new school, adding a lack of instability to their lives. I mean really, the list could go on and I don't think it is really necessary for me to go ahead and list all of the possible scenarios and reasons why having just one shelter is problematic.

The point is this piece of knowledge pissed me off. It made me want to scream. It made me want to angrily ask every congregation in the Delta why more was not being done about this. It made me want to demand action. It made me want to do it myself. It made me want to complain, which I did. Unfortunately, it is all I did.

I've gotten rather good at it by this point, there is much to complain about no matter where you are. However I've begun to realize that my complaining is not  helpful. As frustrated as I may be with the lack of racial unity in my town, even within the Church (John 17, people!)  and as frustrated as I may be with what I perceive to be hypocrisy, my complaining really does no good. I had a humbling moment last night when after a round of complaining about the lack of Christian action that I was witnessing and criticizing and judging some other things I am frustrated with, I realized that I was a hypocrite.

It is the classic don't look at the speck in your brother's eye until you have removed the log from your own. I had to really assess whether my complaining was getting anybody anywhere or whether it was just pushing us further into a cycle of inaction, the excuse as to why nothing was getting done instead of doing something about it yourself. And I determined that my complaining was well on its way to becoming the excuse for my inaction, that it was becoming the reason why I couldn't do this or do that.

I think there is something to be said about righteous indignation and I think righteous indignation can be a good and holy thing. We should be angry about injustice. We need to and should want to be angry about injustice. However, the problem arises when this anger does not compel us to meaningful action. The problem arises when we simply allow this anger to fester and manifest itself in complaints. Complaining is useless. Complaining leads to making excuses, it leads to stagnancy and it is the way of hypocrisy.

This is not to say that we shouldn't talk about the things that bother us. We should talk, it is fine to talk, it is necessary to talk, but we should most importantly do. Doing should be happening a lot more than talking. A whole lot more.

As I teach I know that this will look like me throwing myself into the little things and hanging on to my Heavenly Father for dear life and sustenance. I pray that this will look not like a ceasing of righteous indignation but as a ceasing of useless complaining and as lovingly encouraging others to seek righteousness instead of pridefully judging them.

In the midst of it all I praise Him for this, Jonh 16:33, "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."

I praise Him for the promise to set all things aright and I praise Him that He is already doing so, and while it may not be on my time table I still have the utmost trust in Him.

A look back on lessons learned in the first three months of my Delta excursion

Moving to Mississippi was one of the strangest decisions I have ever made. In many ways I am still confused as to why I am here or why I haven't left yet but one thing is clear: it's not really about me and my own personal happiness, at least not at this point. As I have told my close friends, I have reached the point of no return. I have seen too much, invested too much and already loved too much to be able to step aside from it all with a comfortable ease. While many days I wake up exhausted from my five to six hours of sleep at 6:47 am on the dot (without fail) I could not walk away from my kids or from the life I am slowly beginning to build here with the fractured pieces of my old self. 

This week was one of those weeks that just wore me thin. But it really was nothing compared to the initial shock, pain and frustration that accompanied my move here a few months ago when my world unraveled and my life was altered in ways that I never thought it would be. Things and relationships that I thought would be the most stable points of my life were suddenly ripped from my foundation and I was left reeling. 

I had come in bright-eyed, in eager anticipation of inspiring kids in my classroom, of entering into America's underbelly and waging war on structural injustice and corporal sin. However all the reasons that I had felt inspired to join the movement to teach in a low-income area became distant and dim as I was met with the unraveling of my personal life and more practical and miniscule challenges such as: What to do about pencils and pencil sharpening in a second grade classroom. Will kids be allowed to sharpen pencils whenever they want? Will they have to ask you for a pencil or can they get one themselves? Will they have a special hand signal letting you know that what they really need is a sharpened pencil?

While these questions may seem utterly ridiculous to a person who has never taught lower elementary, the concern is completely valid, I can assure you. Worrying about pencil sharpening actually matters because twenty broken pencils can turn into a logistical nightmare if you are found in the middle of a lesson with no pointy graphite ammunition to replenish your kids' supplies should they all decide to break their pencil tips at once, which as far-fetched as it sounds, can happen. It has happened to me. 

The little things matter. Bathroom breaks matter, having a stock-pile of tissue matters, understanding my kids' accents matters, behavior charts matter, parent communication matters, crayons matter, books matter, having a set of dice matters. Literally any little thing that you could possibly think of matters. 

And so I have thrown myself headlong into the litte things. The laminating of number cards, the creating and decorating of writing folders, the mini-lessons on kindness, the mini lessons on Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King and the way my heart sings when Ariel asks me for "that book on Malcolm X." In the midst of this strange dedication to laminating and phonics activities I have found joy. I wouldn't call it happiness because that superficial feeling of bubbliness while it exists on certain days and in certain moments is gone in others, but I would call it joy because joy is deep rooted, founded in Christ's love for me and for my precious children, who are my undeserved gifts. 

In the midst of the little things I am confident that while I may not be "waging war" in the ways that I had imagined I am impacting change in my kids' lives by the mere fact that I am in it. And by sheer nature of the impact, I too am being molded and shifted into (what I pray is) a more Christ-like woman, a woman who lives selflessly and has her gaze set eternally on Him. 

Yes. My life was turned inside out when I moved here. Yes. It is hard to wake up some days. Yes. I feel like a failure when my kids talk over my lessons at times, quite a bit in fact. 

But a lesson I fast learned when my plans derailed and my strength was waning early into the journey was that not only could it be much, much worse for me but also and most importantly that I was eternally held by a love that will never let me go. And that because of this I can let my weaknesses be His triumphs, I can let my failures be His victories and I can let my frustrations be His opportunities to show up and He always does. 

Because of this I can freely throw myself into the little things and trust that the work I am doing is in some way waging war on the big things I came here to fight and topple. Because of this I can live in this strange place away from my friends and family and rest in the fact that it's not about me and that who it really is about is: Jervarious, Makea, James and the 17 other beautiful minds that fill my classroom every day by 7:50 am as they busily chat (they are supposed to be quiet) and hum away on their morning work. 

When I think of them and the little things they do such as, the fact that Omar has had Barack Obama's biography for at least eight independent reading periods now and that today he told me he wanted to be president and I seriously believe he could be, or the fact that my kids beg me to wear my hair down and when I do they insist on braiding it, or how my kids remember my lesson on Martin Luther King and the fact that he taught us to "love our enemies." Yes. Those little things, when I think of these I am no longer confused and being here begins to feel more like home. I am right where I am supposed to be.