INSPIRATION FOR STARTING SCHOOL [T, 8-3-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

I was walking by Mattie’s house Monday morning, a little before 7:30. She was pulling out of her drive to go to the school where she teaches 4^th grade. First day of school for teachers. Kids report tomorrow [W].

I said, “I hope you don’t have to hear an inspirational speaker.” She lilted back, “Oh, I do. Someone who’s never taught…”

She’s young, but she’s been through first days before. She knows the drill. So do I, because I am married to a woman who was a classroom teacher.

It’s bad enough when you have to teach during a pandemic--in a state that thinks teachers like Mattie are overpaid and underworked, and that no one should get vaccinated or wear a mask—but it adds insult to insult to have to listen to an inspirational speaker on your first day, when there are a hundred things you could be doing in your classroom that would be more productive of good education. At least, that’s what Helen always said when she came home from that first day.

The most inspirational speaker at Helen’s high school was the otherwise not particularly noticeable social studies teacher, Pierce Pickins. The teachers would gather in the office in the morning before school, getting coffee, checking mail, chatting. Anything to avoid going to their classrooms. Finally, they knew for whom the bell tolled, and Pierce would say, drolly, “Well, let’s go stamp out ignorance.”

So they would go off, each alone, to a separate classroom, but also as part of a team, the team that would stamp out ignorance.

Paul Baker is now a Distinguished Professor, Emeritus, at IL State U, but he started there right after he finished his PhD at Duke, just as I started there as the Methodist campus minister. We’ve been friends all these years. Paul’s field was the sociology of education. He says, “Teaching has the highest dropout rate of any profession. It’s so very hard, and so undervalued and appreciated. But there is one thing that keeps teachers in—the comradeship of their fellow teachers. Better pay is nice, supportive administrators are nice, but they won’t make the difference. If teachers feel like they’re on a team, that does it.”

Helen was blessed with a teaching partner for the last 20 years of her career, the years she taught high school. She was 20 years older than Kathy, who had just started teaching. Helen had lots of experience, but it was in university teaching, which is quite different from high school, especially Home Ec, where you are also a social worker, dealing with all the pregnant girls who are afraid to tell their parents, and the boys who have been thrown out of their house by their mother’s new boyfriend. It was a highly productive partnership. Kathy furnished the enthusiasm, and Helen furnished the experience. Together they were a formidable team. There was no problem that together they could not solve… until the school day started. But each time they ran into a brick wall—recalcitrant parents, uninterested students, neglectful administrators—they would look at each other and say, “We’re still good people!” They were a team.

I think I’ll see if Mattie can get me on as the inspirational speaker for her school next year. It will be a short speech. I’ll say, “You’re still good people. Now go stamp out ignorance.”

John Robert McFarland