Words from WW Blog

In this unexpected year of teaching 8th-graders about essay construction and American History, I’ve also been doing some non-textbook instruction on how to be responsible, what it means to be a decent human being, and being a person who is willing to give.

A couple of weeks ago there were three broken pencils on my classroom floor at the end of the day. Someone, or someones, had purposely broken them. Perhaps it was meant to be a show of strength, a moment of impressive brute-ness that would shock the knee-high socks off the young lady sitting at the next desk. Or maybe it was a contest between two entitled thirteen-year-olds who believe the world should come behind them and clean up their chaos.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t happening for me! I did a mini-rant the next day to indicate my confusion about the purpose of such an act and to make the point that it was not to happen again. If it did, there would be consequences.

But you know how eighth-graders are. Some have short memories. Some of them like to test the currents, sticking their finger into a light socket and then doing it again two weeks later to see if the result is the same, kinda like a bad science experiment. So…on Wednesday morning, what did I find on the floor? A pencil broken into three parts. Someone hadn’t gotten the memo, or had buried the memory underneath their pile of meaningless meanderings.

“Tomorrow,” I announced in my most judicious voice, “we will have a Thursday fast. No food will be consumed in the classroom for the whole school day.” I held up the broken pencil pieces. “Someone left this in the back of the classroom this morning. A pencil. A broken pencil. A broken pencil that never did anything but be there to help you put your thoughts on paper. A pencil willing to have its head ground to a sharp point so you can be clear on the point you are making. A pencil whose bottom has always been there for you to erase the mistakes you’ve made. So tomorrow we will fast to signify that it is a day of classroom mourning for the loss of something that was taken from us at such a young age, barely out of the pencil box, just beginning to realize its purpose. So sad and so unnecessary.”

Some were on the verge of tears. I could not, however, discern whether the possible moistening of the eyes was about the pencil or the realization that they would not be able to consume their Ding-Dongs and beef jerky the next day. A few eyes rolled to express their displeasure in the group penalty because of the sin of one. What were they to do with all those Jolly Ranchers weighing their backpacks down? One student, half-jokingly, said I should be charged with war crimes.

But I wasn’t done making my point. The class is in the midst of analyzing and writing argumentative essays. Why not make it a teachable moment that, back in our day, used to make us cringe. Why not give them an assignment in which they could make their argument for the reason food should be allowed in the classroom? Why not have them do an “argument organizer” work sheet to help them clearly plan their flow of thought?

Some pounded their keyboards, attacking the letters to form expressive words and unpunctuated sentences. Others stared in disbelief that a broken pencil was coming back to haunt them, as if it was a bad sequel to a Halloween movie. But for some students, the best writing comes as a result of being outraged. A moratorium on Airheads has the potential to bring increased intellectual functioning.

P.S. Each day in my classroom I put a question on one of the whiteboards for students to freely comment on. Friday’s question was “If in Mr. Wolfe’s high school class he was voted “Most Likely To…”, how would you complete the statement?”

One anonymous student’s reply caused me to chuckle: “Most likely to get mad over a pencil!”

Our dear friend, Janet Smith, passed away a few weeks ago. We had a long history with us, going back to when she served on the Search Committee of the First Baptist Church in Mason, Michigan, who called me to be their pastor. My “rookie pastorship” went for 15 years, 1984-1999. It was a time of learning, being extended grace and patience, and blossoming into a minister of the gospel.

Janet guided me until I was able to be a guide for her. She and another seasoned saint, Lorraine Demorest, were my first Worship Design Team. We’d meet once a month to plan out the coming Sunday services, a time of thought-provoking dialogue, punctuated with fits of laughter.

Janet, an elementary school teacher, had been mentored by others in the First Baptist family. Marie Lyons, another elementary teacher from the generation of Janet’s parents, had been that calm, wise voice who had been a guiding and shaping influence long before the age of social influencers. Marie was an authentic and real influencer. The last time I saw Marie was at an ice cream shop in Mason, and Janet was there also. The three of us enjoyed some late-night dessert together and talked about the blessings of life. Marie’s celebrated her 3rd heavenly birthday this past week.

More times than not, we are the result, the effect of the ripples on our life. That’s what resonates with me about Janet, who was who she was as result of Marie and others. A number of others, including myself, can see the handprint of Janet upon us. In her passing on she has passed on her impact.

This past summer we were blessed to have her come and stay with us here in Colorado Springs for a week. My adventures in teaching these past few years were blended in with her experiences and we laughed innumerable times about what students had said and done, failed attempts at trying to educate our students on certain subject matters, and the moments that we experienced breakthroughs. We talked about the past and the present as we took day trips to ride the Royal Gorge Train and visit Fossil Beds National Park. She shared conversations as we sipped on coffee at Starbucks and razzed each other as we played cards in the winding down hours of the evening.

And I’m sure there had been similar conversations years before that Janet had shared with Marie Lyons.

Carol and I will be flying back to Michigan for her funeral next month. In Janet’s final hours, I was able to talk with her on the phone as she neared her entrance in Glory. Her chuckle, slurred some by the pain medication, was still distinctly hers. Although I did not know it at the time, she requested that I conduct her final service of remembrance and celebration. As her longtime friend, Becky Murthum told me, “Janet, what if Bill can’t do it? Who is your second option?”, and Janet replied, “There is no second option.”

I’m honored to do it. She’s an important part of my journey. She was our kid’s babysitter when we moved to Mason. She led me as I led her. She loved Jesus, was loved by Him, and was loved by others. In her passing on she has passed on what I hope I can pass on.

Parent-Teacher Conferences are revealing times. As the familiar Christmas carol, “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, reminds us, “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight”, so it is with the parents who gather for progress reports on the kids.

For some it resembles the announcing of NCAA Basketball Tournament selections. There are the shoo-ins, the ones who know the report is going to be a thumbs-up; the ones who are borderline, could be positive or could be a disappointment; and the ones who already know it’s going to cause them to develop migraines.

As the teachers of their kids, we try to soothe the wounds in the midst of the misery and offer words of encouragement that little Johnny may not be a future president, but he also isn’t destined for Prisoner #123456.

After all, little Johnny may not understand Exponents in Math, but he does Excel in Kindness. He may rarely remember to capitalize “i”, but he understands the world doesn’t revolve around Him. The parents who are wringing their hands over his lack of academic performance are suddenly lifted out of the dark abyss of uncertainty by the story of how their emerging adolescent helped a classmate handle an incident of devastating defeat.

After all, in a few years these sons and daughters will transition from school hallways and assigned desks to a world that is depending on their character, reliability, and ability to adapt. Whereas knowing the differences between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches is important, being a good citizen is essential. The worry lines forming in parents’ faces smooth out when they hear that their kids are going to be okay. They may be challenging in some ways, but they’ll figure life out.

And then they receive the encouraging words. Their kids will be okay because they have parents who care, parents who have not given up hope that the struggles and mediocrity of the present will get refined to success and awesomeness.

It’s the students with the absentee parents or parents who don’t give a rip…those are the kids I develop worry lines over. Years later, they’re the kids that teachers, school counselors, and administrators think about and hope, in the midst of fears, that they’re okay.

I recognize that at my advanced age I may not be hearing as keenly and clearly as I used to, although I always seem to CLEARLY hear the neighbor’s dog at 5 in the morning!!! There are many excuses for not hearing well: I’m a male, I was chewing, my allergies were ramping up, I was focused on the problems of the world, and other mentally draining issues.

But– and that ‘but’ indicates that the most important reason is about to be written– announcements voiced in airport terminals are like a foreign language. Sometimes it’s as if you are in a room where half-a-dozen conversations are going on at the same time, a jumbled conglomeration of gibberish resulting in confused looks amongst the hundred people standing around trying to understand what is being said.

Last week, as our gate agent began to announce the latest delay for our flight, a louder voice boomed through the terminal corridor to remind us, in case we had forgotten, that no smoking was allowed in the terminal or the restrooms. I wondered if a cranky airport employee had discovered the volume knob and given it a half-twist clockwise. After all, we were already biting our fingernails in anticipation of when the actual updated, updated, and updated departure time was going to be. Did our latest anticipated news need to be preempted by a reminder that tobacco products were taboo?

A while later a different gate agent, three Red Bulls into the day, made a speed-reading announcement that was faster than a test car speeding down the Bonneville Flats. It was like a disclaimer sprinted through at the end of a TV commercial that has to fit into five seconds or less.

The non-smoking announcement drowned out the fact that the departure gate for our non-stop to Cincinnati had been changed from A44 to A36 to make room for another flight that was going to Cleveland. It was like the Bengals’ game being preempted by the Browns, and when was the last time the Browns were in the Super Bowl???

In a time when confusing messages seem to be proliferating faster than the rabbits in our neighborhood, airports are following the trend. News I need to hear gets drowned by the the loud drivel of the irritated. The most soft-spoken has the most important words to share, while the things we’ve heard a thousand times gets pounded into our brains.

Wouldn’t it be great to get this unexpected announcement sometime? “Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! Your Frontier Airlines is scheduled to leave on time at the very gate it says it’s departing from!”

Am I hearing things?

It felt a little bit like being the new kid arriving at a new school on the first day, except I walked in with my wife who has walked with me for the last 43 years. Coming back together with the men and women, who used to be the guys and young ladies, I had graduated from high school with was a “new experience in oldness.”

The last class reunion I had attended of the Ironton, Ohio Class of 1972, was 25 years ago at, coincidentally, our 25 year reunion. My family was still living in Michigan at the time, still two years away from taking the family van and possessions to Colorado Springs.

What an awesome experience it was to gather with those I had roamed the hallways with, attempted to be educated with, and circled the high school track with. Despite our advanced ages now, most of us had the remnants of our youth still rising to the surface of our faces. The waist sizes of a long-gone day had disappeared, but not our enthusiasm for being back together.

Two of our classmates wore their high school cheerleading and majorette jackets. As I stood for a picture with them, arms around each other, I said it was closest I had ever been able to get to a cheerleader and a majorette. They thought about punching me in the arm, but considered my fragileness and just hugged me instead.

Classmates who had gone to the same elementary school (Back then there were 7 of them in Ironton!) together gathered to reenact their grade school class pictures. Stories that are now golden in years were retold, hugs held onto, and two-person selfies were the thing. Two of my classmates whose wedding ceremonies I had officiated in the distant past, and who had both been standing next to me when I was saying my wedding vows, were there. I get choked up just thinking about it. It may have been 40 years since the three of us had been together.

As I had hoped, at this reunion our conversations did not dwell on achievements, popularity, and how important each person was, but rather how important relationships are, the memories of our teachers, and how blessed we are to be able to gather together. We talked of those who had passed on and the disappointment of not seeing some of our formers who hadn’t made it to the festivities. Two of our classmates had joined together in marriage about four years before. The husband of one of them had passed away. Some time after his passing the other former classmate had contacted his widowed classmate. As they told me of their journey, tears began to come to the brims of our eyes. With total sincerity, she looked at me and said, “He saved me!”

It epitomized the weekend. Two people reuniting, one in need of a hand to grasp and one willing to lift her up from the wounds of the journey.

Reunion-ed.

In our middle school we have pretend desks. They became a thing a few years ago, shaped like a triangle and doubling as an ideal way for students to play cards with three people, not that we ever play cards in school.

The pretend desks are versatile, able to be maneuvered to form larger quads with four of them fitted together, or put into pairs with two desks either facing one another or side-by-side. Each desk is on wheels that can be rolled into position and then locked. They offer a bored teacher the opportunity to reconfigure a classroom in ways that leave the students confused and anxious.

The pretend desks do not have any enclosed storage area underneath, although there is a hook that no one can see, or pay attention to, underneath the pretend desk top that they can hang their backpack strap from…although no one does!

It’s difficult for pretend desk to be scratched up and graffitied, although I see the wheels spinning in a few suspect students eyes, as if they are devising a master plan of destruction. So far no one has been able to leave messages like “Billy Bob sat here!” or “Johnny and Jenny Forever!”

Pretend desks are not like the desks we had in a long ago time in uncarpeted classrooms, governed by silver-haired ladies wearing wing-tipped glass frames, toned-down dresses that no one noticed, and uncomfortable footwear.

Those desks, constructed of wood and metal were nailed to the floor to keep nicely-neat rows that communicated order, discipline, and the seriousness of education. After all, we were there to learn our ABC’s, theorems, and how to tell the difference between an adverb and an adjective. No time to waste on the dilly-dally of useless laughter and idle chatter.

Our desks were strong, like a Mayberry jail cell that kept its occupant corralled and out of circulation. We’d have to resort to slipping notes to one another if we needed to get a message to one of our classmates. We became sneaky before technology ever entered the classroom.

In elementary school, our desks had tops that opened up like a Tupperware container. We were able to store all of our earthly school possessions inside: textbooks, pencils, notebooks, crayons, and a few trinkets. We’d still lose things, but we rarely heard the words, “Someone stole my notebook!” If it was inside your desk it was as if there was a “No Trespassing” sign on it. Plus, there was that nicely-contoured groove at the top that you were able to place your pencil in.

Of course, it also allowed us to hide a few things from our teacher, who would be consumed with the teaching of how to identify a dangling participle. In the newer pretend desks with no covered space, students have made their laps and the underside of a pant leg as the go-to spots of cell phone secrecy.

I’m torn between the advantages of present flexibility of moveable pretend desks and the stoic strength of the old. My traditionalism draws me toward what was, the memories of my youth, but our pretend desks tell me of new possibilities and the potential to rethink, redo, and move ahead.

In fact, as I head over to my classroom this morning I’ll be moving pretend desks to new spots as a new week approaches. It gets me slightly excited. Just call me weird.

It began with something like this:

My face was buried into my cell phone as I turned the corner and headed into the classroom. My friend, Snow, stood there, a startled look frozen in her eyes. That’s when I saw him. Our substitute teacher, Mr. Wolfe, standing behind his desk and sipping on his coffee. His lips were parted as he raised his mug. It’s at that moment that I saw what had frozen Snow. There were two fangs peeking out from his upper teeth. He looked at me and said in a creepy sort of way, “Welcome to my class.” It sent goosebumps cascading down my arms.

That was the beginning of a writing assignment that I gave them. The 60 eighth-graders were to write the rest of the story. Word range: 400-800. No profanity, drugs, alcohol, or anything that would shock the socks off their parents.

The backstory of the story: I had suddenly been asked to help the middle school through a transition situation. The language arts classes had been studying short stories and story plot lines and I needed an assignment that was still connected to the topic, but could help the students move on. Quite honestly, I needed something that would give me a couple of days to figure out the road ahead, while keeping them engaged in the hour-long class period.

Most of them surged ahead, typing furiously on their laptops as if they were writing Stephen King novels. One girl emailed me on the evening of the first days and said, “Mr. Wolfe, I’m at 2,000 words. Is that okay?” Usually, students are much more likely to say, “I’m at 350 words. If that enough!” I responded to this young lady that it was fine as long as it kept me interested and, more importantly, followed the short story flow chart of “problem, rising action, climax, falling action, conclusion”.

As I’ve perused some off the submissions, I have found myself turned into a werewolf, a vampire, a creepy, and (my favorite) “The Creepy Flaming Hot Cheetos Teacher”. I have met my demise multiple times, which I gave them permission to do. I only asked that they not bring me to a sudden, uneventful end simply because it was time for lunch.

It has greatly helped in the easing of the week’s uneasiness. They are a group of diverse personalities, some full of themselves and others overflowing with self-doubt; some edging toward the cliff of bad decisions and others wise beyond their years; some academically-motivated and others more spellbound by the charisma of their friends.

And so now that many of them have killed me off in print, I’m being resurrected to walk with them for the rest of the year’s journey, minus the Flaming Hot Cheetos.

Last Sunday as I was standing with a church congregation to sing the opening praise songs, I realized something strange. I wanted to sing, but found it difficult TO sing. The main reason for my vocal limitations was the range of the notes of the songs. They seemed to have settled on the higher range, like a kite floating in the wind out of reach, and stayed there. I could feel the stress on my vocal chords, as I strained to reach them and offer my voice in musical praise.

After a while, I went to the grounded range and, in a quieter volume, sounded like a frog trying to blend in.

There have been many reasons spouted as to why men don’t sing in church, such as that it doesn’t touch their hardened emotions, they don’t like to even go to church, they are unfamiliar with the rising number of praise songs, and they get tired of singing the same words over and over again.

For me, it seems that too many times, churches are trying to recreate the Chris Tomlin-type worship music. Although I enjoy most of his songs, they are just a little bit out of my reach. Perhaps my voice, just like my knees and hips, is showing the effects of my age, losing its flexibility and becoming less reliable. Maybe there needs to be a new type of music that is elderly-friendly!

The church does not need my voice to offer musical worship. After all, I’m sitting here in Starbucks with my cheap knock-off ear buds listening to praise songs on one of the Spotify channels. The song that’s playing right now is like a constant high-pitched siren with the same words that keep going and going. If only I could have had that few amount of words to learn in the latin college class I took, I may have passed it.

Without a doubt I’m showing my bias here, but some old, old hymns were more sing-able for men. After all, some of them were taken from German tavern songs and revised with a Godly-emphasis. I can’t see some of the melodic praise songs we sing in church today being echoed by a tavern clientele as they house their beer steins in the air.

Generalizing in a sarcastic sort of way, most men would rather yell at the refs than sing to the Lord. the thing is, God would hear, and be pleased by, their slightest offerings, while the referees are deaf to the crowd. Of course, that brings in another biblical theme: blessings and curses.

I had primed the pump this past Tuesday when some of our middle school parents walked into the classroom where their sons and daughters have been educating me on the Spanish language. On Friday, our Spanish classes would be having “Fiesta Friday”, a time of tortilla chips, salsa, and guacamole. I urged them to have the kids bring bags of chips and whatever else they would like to contribute. Several of them followed through, loading their young adolescents down with bulky bags that, thankfully, were not crammed into their already-jam-packed backpacks.

In mentioning the fiesta to the students, several of them wanted to jump from chips and salsa to a buffet table of an interesting combination of food choices: shredded cheese (OK!), Mexican desserts (OK!), horchata (OK!), chicken nuggets (NO!), gummy bears (NO!), Cheese Whiz (NO!), pizza (NO!), mozzarella sticks (NO!), edamame (WHY???).

Friday arrived and the bags filtered in. And you know something? Middle school kids eat a lot of tortilla chips, and even more salsa (unless it’s mango salsa), and are not afraid of suspicious-looking guacamole. I filled, and filled, and filled the extra large bowl that was meant to feed a battalion. They attacked the salsa as if it was some weird Halloween candy offering. Rationing was not rationale. One girl brought a gallon of Hawaiian Punch, which suddenly had become a Mexican drink, and was drained by the 24 students who had just walked through the dry desert of their first two classes of the day.

One amazing young lady had made sopapillas at home with her dad. I need to give her some extra-credit points. They were awesome!

Several students regarded me as the restocking person, and would look at me and say, “There’s no more guac!” To which I would reply, “Did you put your guacamole out yet?” “I-I-I didn’t bring any.”

One boy had tortilla chips trying to escape his mouth. They glittered his lips and creeped up his cheeks. Another treated the chips like they were crackers to dot the salsa with. His bowl resembled salsa soup. Somewhere he found a spoon.

They enjoyed the day. The day before they had taken a test. On Friday, they tested me. I even had to run to the local grocery store during my lunchtime to buy a few more bags and a couple of additional salsa jars. I discovered…it is never enough!

And then we played Spanish Bingo, where they filled spaces on their card with words from our Spanish vocabulary list from the first three weeks. I said the word in English and they had to figure out whether or not the Spanish word was on their card. Most of the contestants were on point, resembling avid Friday night Bingo enthusiasts. A few, however, I would hear say things like, “I don’t know what the word for that is!” and “We never had ‘house’ on our list yet!” “Yes, we did!” “Well, what is it?” “I’m not telling you!”

It was a day!

My last week approaches and then the new teacher, who I met on Tuesday and is experienced, personable, and awesome, arrives. Some of the kids are pleading with me to not leave, to which I respond, “I am not Spanish teacher! I’m like that plug in your sink, just trying not to let too much water escape. They stare at me with confusion, not understanding that it’s an analogy, a comparison. It’s the “deer-in-headlights” look, or “ciervo en faros”, as they say in Spanish.

This past week the middle school where I hang out went through its various safety drills. Each day, except Wednesday, we went through one of the four drills for the various situations that schools prepare for these days.

On one day we sheltered in place in case our area ever had a tornado alert. About 20 years ago, a school less than 30 miles away from us was hit and destroyed, so the possibility of it happening, although remote, is still something that many are familiar with. My class took refuge in the girls’ restroom, an eye-opening experience for the boys. It was as if they had been allowed to enter forbidden territory without the threat of consequences. One boy commented on a startling revelation he had been given, that the girls’ restroom smelled a lot better than the boys’ restroom.

Another day we had a fire drill, and on a different day there was a lockout where no one is allowed to enter the building because either something is happening in the area around the school, or, as happened once last year, a wild animal (bobcat) has been sighted.

And then there is the lockdown, where classrooms and students are secured as a result of the increasing number of school invasions that have happened in recent years.

Although the four drills took time away from instruction, they were very beneficial for the staff and students to practice just in case!

It’s different from when I was in school back in the 70s. We practiced getting under our desks in case there was ever a nuclear attack. We always wondered how a wooden desk that had 25 years of initials carved into it and about a hundred gobs of gum stuck underneath the top could keep us from being incinerated by an atomic bomb being dropped within a few miles of us. We obediently, however, like unsuspecting lambs being led to the slaughter, crawled under our desks and waited until the “All Clear” signal was given.

If I remember correctly, we had fire drills, but very, very infrequently. Like once a year, but never when I wanted one. Being spared from a few minutes of math class never seemed to be my good fortune.

We did have two bomb threats one year. On the first one, school was dismissed for the day and everyone cheered as we exited the building, more excited about a day that had suddenly been freed up from academics instead of the possibility of being blown to pieces. It ended up that a student hadn’t studied for a math test and had placed a call on the school pay phone (Remember those?) to report a bomb had been planted in the building. He was found out and, I guess you could say, his number was up!

Someone else thought it was such a great idea, that he called in a threat a couple of days after that. However, the school administration and local law enforcement had wised up in the time since the first one. We were all evacuated to the football stadium until the school was searched, and then classes resumed about 20 minutes later. There were no other bomb threats after that. Twenty minutes sitting with a thousand students on bleachers in the midst of a cold February morning took care of the thrill.

It’s a different day we live in compared to the early 70s. Back then, Vietnam was winding down. It was the hot topic of conflict. Nowadays, conflict seems to have various places to call home. School shootings are more frequent than congressional agreement on anything. Nowadays, we talk about bullying on social media. It can happen suddenly and numerous times out of the blue. At any moment, a kid can go from feeling happy to being scared or depressed. Back in my younger days, bullying was mostly restricted to Johnny telling you he was going to find you after school and put a hurting on you.

Schools are a different world than they were back in the day, complicated, complex, and yet sophisticated. Kids, however, have the same bizarre combination of emotions that they have always had. Fear, anger, frustration, joy, tears and laughter, confusion and uncertainty, friendly and isolated, extroverts and introverts. The environment has changed, but the basic ingredients of kids are still the same.

And not a single student had to crawl under a desk this week!