Reminding Myself Why

by Lisa

For me, March, April, and May are the most trying months as an educator. At my school, we refer to this period as the testing season. Freshmen and sophomores are taking standardized writing and reading tests. Honors students are taking their AP and AICE exams. Math, science and social studies students are also taking EOCs (end of course exams).  It is also the time of year when almost every discipline and club take a field trip- or two. 

Okaloosa Island

Along with the multitude of tests and excursions, illnesses run rampant. Yes, flu and strep seem to be epidemics this year, but more than that Spring fever and senioritis have hit campus earlier than usual and plague the student body. Living 30 minutes from the most beautiful beaches in the world makes coming to school a challenge when the temperature is 78 in February.  

Nothing gets my cornflakes soggier than when a student comes in after missing a critical lesson or assessment with freshly sunburned cheeks and has the audacity to play the sick card. (I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday, Sweetie. Don’t forget that earlier this week you could have passed for a member of the Cullen family from Twilight.) 

It takes an overwhelming amount of patience and flexibility to maintain a steady pace with the curriculum when every day handfuls of kiddos are missing in every period. Even the ones present are more distracted than ever. Spring sports are in full swing, and summer break is nearing. The girls are talking about prom dresses, and the boys want to be outside doing something other than reading Macbeth or Animal Farm.  They are less focused on school than they were the first semester, but it is the most critical time of the school year for most of them. I am teaching like my britches are on fire, but all they seem to be worried about is finding someone in class with a charger so their phone doesn’t die. 

During this 3 month period, I am the most frustrated and the most stressed. I doubt my effectiveness in the classroom. I reflect on the year and become highly critical of all that I have done. I look over my past lesson plans and second-guess any value that I once saw in them. This time of year makes me crazy.  I have to double up on my supply of L’Oreal Excellence hair color, and chocolate must be an arm’s reach away from my desk. 

But even though it seems that this brief period takes years off of my life, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.  I am where I belong, doing what I love.

I teach because I love my students.  I end each school year thinking that I can’t get a better class of students than those who just left, and the next year’s group comes in and steals my heart. Literature and grammar and writing are all passions in my life, but I love all the kids who walk through the door of room 820. 

The sad thing is many educators don’t. Many got into teaching for the wrong reasons. Their parents were educators. They wanted summers off. They couldn’t decide on another major. They love their subject matter.  Most of those are good reasons to teach, but if students aren’t the first reason, then the others don’t really matter.

You can’t be an effective teacher if you don’t love each kid who walks in your room- even the tough ones to love. You can’t be an effective teacher if you don’t build relationships with those students.  Educational institutions were not built to employ teachers, but they were created to empower their pupils with knowledge.  We are there to serve them, but so many educators do not view teaching as a servant role.

As I drove to work the other day, I listened to a message on 1 Corinthians 13.  Most people know this to be the greatest chapter on love in the Bible.  I have heard plenty of sermons on this topic and know these verses well.  But on that day, the message didn’t make me contemplate the love I show my family and friends or even strangers around me, but it resonated with the teacher in me.

So as I begin the months of teaching that test my mental and emotional stability, I will remind myself that I am not in it for any other reason than to make a difference in the lives of my students.  If I make a difference with a few, the gray hairs and sleepless nights are all worth it.

What if all educators approached teaching with a 1 Corinthians 13 attitude? 

 What an impact we could make in the lives of our students! 

If I have a Master’s degree, but I don’t love my students, 

I am nothing. 

If I have effective lesson plans and engaging activities, but I don’t show love, 

what good am I?  

All of the knowledge of my subject matter and best practices are worthless

if my students don’t feel like I truly care about them. 

All of my Pinterest inspired bulletin boards and handouts are useless 

if I don’t have love.

What I Love About My Big School In Our Small Town

            As a high school English teacher with a class full of students first period, it is rare for me to find myself outside of my classroom when the morning bell rings; however, this morning, I enjoyed one such eye-opening occasion. I had gathered my belongings and was headed to the library for a fun-filled day of proctoring tests (insert eye roll here), when the intercom came on.  Every morning, Mrs. V, one of our attendance secretaries, recites the pledge and calls for a moment of silence.   This particular morning, I was caught in the hallway with a few teachers (who no doubt have first period planning, the American Dream of planning periods) and a number of obviously tardy students scattered up and down a very long hallway.  All the kids had that “man on a mission” look about themselves and were quickly trying to get to class.  Then, Ms. V came on the intercom like always, and to my surprise (although I’m not sure why), every single one of the kids stopped dead in his tracks, put his hand over his heart, and said the pledge.  Then, even though I’m sure they felt the urgency to get to the class for which they were already late, they did not even budge for the moment of silence, until Ms. V announced it was over. This may not seem like a big deal, because the kids were just doing what they were supposed to be doing, but something about it struck a chord with me. 

            I have been teaching at the same school for 14 years now, but sometimes I take for granted just how great our kids are.  Yes, we are a big school, with approximately 2,000 students, but our school is not like others in our district, even though we’re the same size.  I have taught at another school in our county and visited all the others, and I swear I am not just being biased when I tell you that our school has the friendliest, most polite student body I’ve ever been around.  When I first came to CHS as a 23-year-old, doe-eyed rookie, I was shocked even then at how considerate and friendly the students were.  And I know what you’re probably thinking, “Of course they were nice to you…you were nearly their age,” but to this day, if a kid goes in a door and sees me coming, he/she always holds the door open for me.  And I don’t get special treatment just because I’m a teacher.  I see our kids holding the doors for each other all the time, despite the pressures of getting to class on time or keeping up with their friends. And I am always so full of pride every time I see a student struggling in the hallway, because there is always another student (or three!) to come to his aid without my even having to say or do anything.  Just kids helping other kids.  The funny thing is, I probably would have always taken our students for granted had it not been for the compliments from so many of those who are on the outside looking in. They say things like, “One of your boys helped me get all of my workshop materials in because he could tell I was struggling. That would not have happened elsewhere” or “I couldn’t find the room, so one of your kids offered to walk me here. It was so nice.” Hearing things like this from people who do not have to say such things is always nice and makes me even more proud to be a CHS Bulldog.  Because at the end of the day, even if we are not always first in academics or athletics, we always seem to be first in something much more important, and that’s character. 

Confessions of a Foster Parenting Dropout

by Cari

            One day over five years ago, the hubby and I took the life-altering plunge into the wild world of foster parenting.  While I had personally felt the Lord’s calling in that area of my life, my poor, sweet husband had no doubt heard the calling of my endless nagging.  Only a truly selfless man would agree to such unknown terms, especially while already having two fully grown children of his own, and a third wild child, whose ridiculousness and shenanigans could pretty much only be attributed to me.  After all, his girls never once broke any limbs on a golf cart or shot at their basketball goal with a pellet gun “just to see what it would do.”  Nonetheless, he agreed, and so began a wild and crazy ride in the life of the Ruschmeiers, but one I would not take back for anything.

            Our very first placement was a sweet baby boy who stayed for only a week, and my biological wild child and I cried for nearly that long after he left us.  It was heartbreaking.  I was stunned at how quickly and completely we could fall in love with a child we had just met.  To be honest, I wasn’t sure my heart could take that kind of heartbreak again.  However, that feeling was quickly overtaken by the desperate desire to feel that kind of reckless love all over again, and we broke our own cardinal rule of foster parenting and agreed to take two kids.  And not just any two kids, but two boys under the age of four.  To this day, I am fairly certain that there had to have been some drugs in my system or I somehow got a hold of some bad meat or something, because what sane woman says to herself, “I think I need a three-year-old and an 18-month-old to go with the six-year-old that still sleeps in my bed and causes me to cuss in my head (if not out loud) multiple times a day.”?  In my defense, what sane husband lets her?  I’ll tell you what kind.  The kind that adores his wife and just wants her to be happy. The night that they got to our house, they looked like tired, dirty, little blonde-haired, blue-eyed angels.  Little did I know that those sweet angels would not only get me kicked out of the YMCA once, but twice, and that eventually, they would make me notorious in the annals of foster parenting history by getting us all kicked out of the county courthouse by hitting the panic button on the fancy chair in the visiting judge’s chamber.  Fortunately, to this day, that is still the only time I’ve been in a room that was swarmed by cops solely because of my parenting or the lack thereof.  Despite how it may sound, those sweet boys taught us more about love, acceptance, and resilience than we ever could have learned on our own.  We also learned a lot about our limitations, and to our own surprise, they weren’t as numerous as we had originally thought.   It is true what they say, that “When God calls you, He also equips you.”  I know for a fact that pre-fostering Cari could never have juggled three very active boys, a full-time job, and time as a volunteer with the youth at church.  But God makes all things possible.  He is still in the miracle-making business, and trust me, the fact that all five of us came out on the other side of that eight months relatively unscathed was nothing short of a miracle.

            In the five years that we fostered, I did things that definitely did not scream “Mother of the Year.”  During one especially exciting season in our lives, we had two 2-year-olds, a 4-year-old, and our then 9-year-old.  I have to be honest and say that from day one of that experience, I was in complete survival mode. We all were.  My boy became very independent in a very short amount of time.  It was either that or starve to death.  I think he chose wisely.   There were numerous nights that I would dress the baby girls in their clothes for daycare the night before.  I know. They slept in their school clothes. Appalling. But as it turns out, their “school clothes” weren’t that much different from their pajamas, anyway.  After all, it wasn’t like I was dressing them in tiny Catholic school girl uniforms and patent leather shoes; although had that been the requirement, I probably would have. With any kind of parenting, as with life, you do what you have to do, like giving your toddlers an astronomical amount of those tasteless little fruit puffs just to keep some semblance of calm and normalcy while out in public. You see, our two little girls were blonde just like me, so there was no getting off with the, “ Oh, those kids have a different hair color from her, so they must not be hers” justification for their behavior. Instead, I had the pleasure of knowing that any meltdowns that occurred in public or otherwise would be solely blamed on my genetics (my hubby has black hair, so he was off the hook).  I know you’re probably thinking that lots of Moms pacify their kids with food in public, but looking back on how many of those things I let them eat, it’s a minor miracle that either one of them ever pooped again.  But they did.  A lot.  I bet I easily changed a few hundred diapers as a foster mom.  I had it down to a science.  I shouldn’t be proud of it, but I once changed one of our sweet baby boys in the middle of the bleachers during a high school football game, without most of the people around us even noticing. I justified my behavior by telling myself that he had just “gone number one,” so it was fine.  As a foster parent, or maybe any parent, you find yourself justifying lots of things all the time in the name of survival.

            I’m telling you all of this to say that if I could do it, so can you.  I see my amazing friends who are still welcoming countless numbers of kids into their homes, and I am so inspired by them daily.  I would love to tell you that our time as foster parents made huge and lasting impacts on all the kids we took in, but we won’t know that for sure for a very long time, if ever.  I can, however, tell you that those kids had a huge and lasting impact on our lives.  A part of each one of their beautiful little souls is forever stitched into the tapestry of our lives and memories.  And while that season in the lives of the Ruschmeiers has come to a close, there are still multitudes of children who need their own set of “hot mess” parents just like we were to take a chance on what God has in store for them.  Now, they may get you kicked out of your local gym or personally escorted by cops out of your county courthouse, but think of all the character you will build as a result.  And I can promise that although loving a child so recklessly will hurt you a lot at times, that pain will not hold a candle to the amount of healing it will bring to the children you welcome into your life. 

Harboring Refugees

by Lisa As I scrolled through Facebook the other day, I came across a picture that I haven’t been able to get out of my mind.  Normally I scroll past everything but family pictures (especially political posts of any kind), but this time I stopped. On the left was a picture of an unborn fetus, and on the right was a picture of a child refugee.  At the bottom was a statement that I don’t remember word for word, but the message was that it was hypocrisy to be pro-life yet support the new immigration ban. The picture kept appearing in my mind, and every time it did, my heart would ache.  After a few days of being absolutely haunted by this image, I asked God to either help me forget it or help me understand why I couldn't. 

Ash, King and Liv

My husband and I love children and wanted to have several together (he got two when he married me, but we still wanted more); however, after a botched epidural, I reneged on my end of the deal. We still longed for a house full of children, and if I had my way, we would be overseeing an orphanage on some tropical island in the Caribbean. However, since that wasn’t a realistic option, we explored foster care. We felt God calling us down this path, and we wanted to be obedient. We didn’t get involved for the purpose of adoption, just to help kids who needed us for a short period of time. Six years later, we have a daughter and a son who we adopted through foster care and many other children who we get to love for as long as they need us— all because we chose to be foster parents.  

Currently, there are almost 500,000 children in foster care in America.  When kids are removed for whatever reason, less than 30% are placed with a relative. That means 355,000 little ones don’t have family members to stay with while mom and dad work to get them back.  Of those in foster care, over 100,000 children are adoptable and waiting for a new family to give them love and stability.  Although it can be shorter or longer depending on the case, the average stay in foster care is just shy of a year.  https://www.fosterclub.com/article/statistics-foster-care 

With this calling come emotional toil and great obligation, so many families burn out. Therefore, foster families are greatly needed. 

A refugee is a term used to describe someone who flees one place to find safety in another, usually to escape war or persecution. It most commonly is used when that person escapes his native country, and that is the only way I have ever used it. Until now.

Baby A

There are children who desperately need our attention, and they aren’t coming to our shores in boats because they don’t need to - they are already here.  They live in our neighborhoods and go to school with our children.  They may not be fleeing war or religious persecution, but they are escaping drugs, abuse, and neglect.  They don’t want to leave mom and dad because they love them very much. Most think that the lifestyle they were subjected to is normal, so they are confused as to why they even have to be separated from their parents. Most arrive sad or angry. They usually all arrive hungry. But they are coming. Every day more and more are coming, but there are not enough homes to shelter them. Siblings are split up, older kids are put in group homes- simply because people aren't truly aware of the need for foster families.

The intention of this post is not to negate the importance of the refugee issue our world currently faces or to lessen the significance of the right to life. Every single life on this earth- unborn or born, American or Syrian, Christian or Muslim, white or Black, male or female, young or old- is just as important as the other.  My God cares deeply about them all.

So I figured out why that picture stayed with me long after I saw it. It wasn't actually the images as much as it was God using the images to stir me to speak out.  You see, just like the maker of the picture that I saw on FB had a cause, I, too, have a cause. Mine is foster care, so I write this to bring awareness about children who desperately need our help. If you happen upon this post, stop and ask yourself if there is room in your home and your heart for a child (or two or three) for just a little while.  When you are ready, visit www.familiesfirstnetwork.org for more information on how to become a foster parent.

Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy. 

Psalm 82:3

Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for the orphans and widows in their distress...

James 1:27