Searching for Ponies...

A person once defined positivity this way:  two little girls were shown two identical rooms filled with... manure.  One little girl folded her arms, stuck out her bottom lip, and began crying.  The other little girl gasped and jumped into the room, digging into the nasty-smelling stuff with joyous abandon.  When she was asked why she was doing that, she replied: "Well, with all this poo, there must be a pony in here somewhere!"

Sometimes in education, what we have is a lot of poo. We have meetings.  We have meetings ABOUT meetings. We have deadlines.  We have ofttimes conflicting standards coming at us from the local, state, and federal governments.  We have to have 100% of our children at or above grade level in all areas.  We have to follow rules and regulations set down by school boards or government agencies who often don't know much about the daily business of teaching.  We have to make sure that each of the students is testing at high levels, even when those students don't care about the tests, because those test scores may determine whether or not we get rehired.  We have to create life-long learners out of students who only live in the moment.  We have to... well, shovel a lot of poo.

And no one likes to shovel poo.  I guess there could be a few people out there whose job it is to shovel poo around and they wake up each morning thinking... "Hooray! I get to shovel poo!".... but on the whole, none of us like that job.  It becomes exceedingly easy to complain about the smell, the grossness, the very baseness of the whole thing.

I can look at the pile of essays on my desk, the inbox a mile long, the calendar overflowing with IEP or 504 meetings during my prep time, and various and sundry required trainings and think, "How can I possibly get this all done and still have a life?"  I can fold my arms, stick out my bottom lip, and cry.  (And, to be honest, I sometimes I do...I don't claim to be Little Mary Sunshine all the time.)  OR I can take a deep breath and plunge in to all the muck with the hope that all this muck is just covering up the very real possibility that I will find a pony (metaphorically).

The pony we find in that educational muck might be the student who changes his attitude from apathetic to interested because he finally has a plan for his future after doing that research project.  Or we might find the pony in the girl who was so standoffish and rude but who has since become one of the sweetest girls in your class because you took that extra time to find out what was up with her and helped her through it.  It may take a lot of digging through poo to find, but if we're willing to put on our boots (sometimes hip-waders) and grab our shovels, we will find that all that hard, stinky, back-breaking work was worth it.

Ride for Hailey

I was taking a Sunday nap today.  Covers up to my ears, pillows surrounding me, music playing softly in the background.  I was on my way to dreamland when I was awakened by the sound of growling engines.  At first I lay in bed, wondering what on earth was happening.  Was a giant plane flying too low?  Was someone in my neighborhood having some strange car rally?  And then I remembered a sign I saw yesterday when I was out driving on Scenic, right by the American Legion.  The sign was about a bike ride for Hailey.

Springfield has been in the news for various reasons, both good and bad, recently, and the bad reason of course is the kidnaping and murder of 10-year-old Hailey Owens this past week.  The atrocities humans perpetrate against each other is appalling and upsetting.  Why a person would do such a thing shows us that evil is actively walking among us.  There will be (and already has been) a lot of speculation about his motives or the whys and wherefores of police action or any number of other hard-to-answer questions.... I am not able nor qualified to speak on any of those topics; I don't know the man or his background or his mindset, and I am not 'in the know' about police standard operating procedures except for what I see on TV shows.

What I do know is that we have the choice to choose good over evil.  There has been an outpouring of love for the Owens family from all over this town (and from all over, from what I've seen on the news and the internet).  Porch lights have been turned on, purple and pink suddenly became the colors for everyone to wear, thousands more than expected showed up at a vigil to celebrate a life snuffed out too early.  And today, a drove or horde or hoon of motorcyclists wrapped purple or pink ribbons around their leathers and handlebars to show their support and raise money to help the family.

Back to the interruption of my nap.  Now, I live on the east side of Springfield, and my backyard is Hwy 65.  I hear highway noise all the time, and I usually don't really notice it because it's become the "white background noise" of my home.  It's a constant sound.  But the growling of thousands of motorcycles is no "white noise."  In fact, I almost felt as if my house vibrated with the sound.  As I realized what I was hearing, I felt I had to go to the window to, like the father in the Christmas poem, "see what was the matter."  What, to my wondering eyes...big grin, the matter was was motorcycles.  No miniature sleigh and reindeer...nope.  Big, beautiful, shiny, loud machines roaring with life and sound and fury.  It was amazing.  And the drivers of the cars seemed to know what was going on, too, for they slowed down, rolled their windows down, and waved (and not the one-fingered salute, either, that sometimes drivers--not me--give to motorcyclists as they roar past).  They honked, too, causing a cacophony of sound that somehow became beautiful and moving.

Here is a link to a news story about the Ride for Hailey.

So, in the wake of a horrible tragedy, we find that people come together to show love and hope and support.  And, despite the disruption to my nap, I felt peace and rest knowing that where evil abounds, grace and love abound much more (Romans 5:20).