My new teaching job has gradually been giving me a new point of view in life that I don't think I've ever had before. I've worked in strange situations before, dealing with families and loads of kids, but this is something different. Yes, my first day on the job, I walked in and got completely overwhelmed, leaving with the feeling that I couldn't see myself doing this for the rest of my life. I don't know that this has changed, exactly, but right now that is just not something I can even think about - it's what I'm doing now.
To get to know some of these kids, though, to have an insight into some of the families, and to feel like seeing some of them is actually the highlight of my week ... it's something *real*. And, within a mixture of experiences along with this last Friday, I'm just finding myself feeling fairly thoughtful about it. The campus building we are using is one in which there used to be an alternative school. I did get my new piano classroom yesterday - which, will be nice. The Dean asked my husband if he wanted to paint the room and our first reaction was "are you kidding me!? We are so busy!" I mean, he didn't say it like that, but that's how we feel. The walls were not too clean (I won't go into details) and, they will get washed and freshly painted. But, when I arrived there, somebody had washed the carpet and had taken all of the pianos and stands and some chairs into that room for me ... I had thought I would be carting them all in there myself.
Would you like to know who spent time doing that? A woman who has three boys attending this school and who has a diagnosis of two years to live - the father is not in the picture and no other family is there for the boys when she passes, so the Dean's family has agreed to adopt the boys into their family of already 5 children. They walk around with amazing attitudes about it - both those boys as well as the family who will be taking them, as well as the mom. She spent her time, cleaning my room, and offered to keep her eye out for stuff I could decorate it with. She can't work and they have next to no income.
The principal also came in and asked sincerely if there was anything else that I needed, and my two requests he did himself, very graciously, without any kind of sense of being better than helping me out. It was real. I could tell. He loves the school, he loves the kids, and he loves to be a part -however difficult it is- of something good and real. And, so do all the people I have run into who work there - they all work unbelievably hard and long hours. And, while there are challenges to be sure, and there are times where it's all much to deal with, they do it with love. That is something real.
I accidentally made a guy in a wheel chair (and who is considered special ed), in one of my piano classes cry, because week after week he comes to class without his music and I was asking him (nicely, but still) what we could do to get his music there each week. He felt so badly that he cried. I felt horrible. Later that day, his amazing resilience within which has not been an easy life at all, for him, had him wheeling by me, giving me a special bag of chocolates for Halloween. I truly felt touched. I thanked him sincerely and he said "no problem" and was light-hearted despite what had happened in piano class earlier that day. I went home thinking about all of this, but also thinking about him, and for the first time in so many years, I myself was in tears for feeling a sense of compassion for this person, wanting to help him in ways that I just don't know how. That was real. I've been in some kind of teaching position for quite a few years now, I've dealt with so many youth, and so many people in various situations, that I feel out of necessity, have had to become somewhat hardened.
It just seems that it is very easy to become caught up in pursuing things that don't have the substance of true love in them. That makes me sad.
Topic: Say It. I Dare You.