Forward-Looking

Today, Jeffrey asked how old my roommate is. "She's a couple of years younger than me; I think she's twenty-eight." I replied.

He did some quick calculations: "OK...so when YOU'RE one hundred, SHE'LL be ninety-eight."

I hadn't ever thought of that, but his math was accurate.

"You two will be old ladies together!" he continued, and then gestured to the rest of the class. "And all of us, we'll be young -- like in our seventies."

There's nothing like a little perspective.

(Just add another seventy years to this picture.)

Running, Walking, and Leprosy

Here at school, we're always sprinting when we should be walking and slowing down to a pace of utmost decorum when we should be hustling. It's some kind of weird Murphy's Law that exists between children and adults in authority. Some days, it seems that all I do is swing between harping on students to "WALK!" instead of fly and harping on students to "GET MOVING!" instead of putz.

On the way to the lunch line? We're a blur, barely visible to the naked eye. You wouldn't want to be standing outside the classroom door when we head out to our backpacks to get our snacks, either. (I guarantee you'd be the one left with the bruise.) The same is true as we tumble out the door for recess.

But we let our feet d - r - a - g on the way back to the classroom. Thirty minutes of recess has a way of reprogramming our legs to bring us back to class by the slowest, least direct detours. Same goes for return trips from the bathroom -- that's the perfect time to tour the world at a snail's pace. This year I even apprehended one of my own students as he was army crawling all the way back from the bathroom. (Yes, army crawling.)

These thoughts brought to mind a chapel sermon I heard back in the day at NCU (from a Californian pastor named Scott Brown. A plus to being a note taker: being able to give credit where it's due ten years later...). He told the story of Namaan the Syrian leper coming to Elisha, the Israelite prophet, for healing. (You can find the whole story here, in 2 Kings 5.)

It was the only message I've ever heard which focused on Elisha's servant Gehazi, who's not even mentioned until the end, when Elisha rejects Namaan's joyful offer of a reward for the healing and sends Namaan on his way. Gehazi, thinking that Elisha let Namaan off too easy, runs after him and lies in order to take the reward for himself. When he comes back to the house, Elisha tells Gehazi that he'll have leprosy for the rest of his life (and upon his descendants, as well) because of his subterfuge. Not exactly a happy ending.

An astonishing healing had just taken place, but Gehazi wasn't excited about that. He perked up and ran, however, at an opportunity to enrich himself. Brown's question was simple, but heart piercing:

What makes you run?

And what makes you walk?

Because the things we run for, ultimately, become the things that run our lives.

This is making me think. I run to check my email. I d - r - a - g my feet to correct reading workbooks. I'll spend time with friends in a flash, but I've been vascillating for months now about working in the church nursery (a small thing!). I'm highly motivated to keep my blog updated, but the simple acts of washing dishes or keeping track of my budget? Well, suddenly I'M the one army crawling across the living room.

The older I get, the more I see how much those small things matter -- the things I'm happy to avoid. Just like my poky students -and good old Gehazi-, I'll miss out on a lot of what's truly important (and bring pain on myself and those around me) if I don't learn to walk and run at the right times.

So today, I'm asking God: where is He telling me to "Get a move on!"? And where is He saying, "Hold your horses, there..."?

Oh, To Be a Hero

(Picture: my very heroic brother)

Today, I was sorting through materials leftover from our school spirit week, which happened back in February. [Side note: the upside of desk-cleaning is finding scraps like this. The downside of finding scraps like this is that one tends to stop and blog about them instead of finishing the desk cleaning...]

The theme was "Heroes." Each day our multi-age teams began by discussing a goofy superhero question. These were my favorite two answer sheets:

[I would post the actual pictures of the sheets, but they have student names on them. And I always change names of students here, so I'll recreate them instead.]

What is one superpower you would NEVER want to have? Why?

Flying. Too common.

X-ray vision. No use to it.

X-ray vision. It would be a scam.

Stink power. Doesn't want to smell bad.

Mind reader. Doesn't want to know what people think.

Fighter. Peaceful thing.

Invisibility. Don't wanna run into people.

Last student (a kindergartener): he likes all super powers.

If you could do only one heroic deed in your life, what would you choose?

Save a life

Save a life

Save a life

Hit the winning home-run in the world series

Shovel driveways

Gotta love that last one. He must really be a hero to his parents -- that is, unless his wish is to shovel only once. In that case, he's living in the wrong state.

Of course, I had to think of my own answers to this question...

The one superpower I'd absolutely hate:

I have to agree with the mind reading. Yuck.

One superpower that would come in handy:

The ability to magically make unruly middle schoolers stop disrupting my class. I'm imagining me pointing at someone (who just might be making duck noises in the back row), a loud ZAP! resounding throughout the room, and that student remaining frozen until the end of class (or the end of the semester -- I'm flexible). That would be so stinking cool. And effective.

My preferred heroic deed?

Chase a bear away from a vanful of food in the middle of the night while camping -- oh, wait, my mom already did that. (I did wake her up, so I was a tiny bit helpful.) Maybe I could rescue a camper from the jaws of a grizzly bear instead.

Presuming that I actually received the aforementioned super zapping power: in some cases, choosing to unfreeze certain students would be a gesture of heroic, exceptional mercy. Just sayin'.

In reality? I'd like to steal my friend Nick's answer from the last time I played Loaded Questions: take in orphans. Or follow my aunt and uncle's example and purposely live on less than their salary so they can give more. There are a lot of people in my life that I'd like to emulate: people who choose to give their time and resources to those who can't give it back. People who serve without anyone noticing or appreciating them. People who take the high road, or the hard road, in order to follow Christ, even when it costs them.

Presidents and Toy Story, First Grade Style

Many of my students were non-readers when our current president was elected, a fact that was irrelevant to me until an argument erupted and half the class passionately asserted that his name is Rocko Bama. ("It is! I KNOW! My dad told me!") We had a brief social studies/spelling lesson once everyone had calmed down and I had stopped laughing.

(I have to confess that while I don't have any trouble with saying Barack Obama's name, I'm stuck with a different political creative hearing problem: every time I hear someone on the radio talking about the crazy president of Libya, I hear Mallomar Gadaffi -- and subsequently picture a chocolatey-marshmallowy cookie man. Proof that I'm a first grader at heart, I guess.)

The fact that what I say is not always what they hear was reinforced today when I was introducing our science fair animal report projects. I listed the types of animals the students could choose from: "Mammals, or birds, or fish, or reptiles, or you could even do amphibians..."

To which Jeffrey immediately responded (in his best Buzz Lightyear impersonation), "To Amphibian! And Beyond!"

These Are A Few

I am a person with an inordinate amount of favorite things and small delights. (When I was in high school, I kept an actual list of "Things That Delight Me." Lists, empty notebooks, and lemon-scented chapstick were the top three...)

While it's difficult to top those, these are a few things that have tickled me lately:

The seventh grader who pulled me aside: "Ms. Djerf, can I ask you something? I just have to know. The way that Mr. E. smells -- is that a cologne he wears, or is it just a Canadian smell?"
(One of these days I'm going to have to ask him.)

A friend drawing out the suspense of a funny story all day by virtue of cryptic emails and mysterious voicemails.

My new rain boots. So happy to have a genuinely rainy day for them today.

My nearly two-year-old niece (a diva in the making) entering my parents house by announcing, "HI, FAMILY!"

My middle school drama students who, unable to remember the word "pilot" during our practice last week, kept calling her a "planist." After several tries, we adjusted the skit so that the misnomer was part of the script, and we found a way to sneak a paper with the correct word written on it onto the stage. And it was hilarious.

Getting to sleep until eight every day last week. Spring break is a wonderful idea.

Hours in Caribou Coffee with a precious friend, telling stories, asking questions, analyzing the world at large and then bringing our myriad non-conclusions to the feet of Jesus together.

My jacket still smelling like coffee the next morning.

An eighth grader who usually doesn't participate in Bible class knowing the answer not once, but twice today! And wanting to share it!

Sitting with my six month old nephew on my lap and discovering the magical combination of talking and tickling and surprising necessary to rouse a hearty belly-laugh out of him. Pure joy.

The sweetest? To be at a painful, broken place Sunday night and find twofold refuge in my loving Father: in prayer with a compassionate roommate, and in Scripture that I'd recorded in my journal all week long. So grateful for the way He reaches me when I barely have the strength to reach for Him.

Um, I Don't Think So

During Friday morning prayer requests, I relayed that I was once again praying for my dad, who was going to have surgery.

We've prayed quite a bit for my dad this year, through his prostate cancer and surgery as well as for his Crohn's disease. This particular problem was a hernia, but my method of explanation was the same as it has been for the other things: "There's something wrong in his belly."

"Boy, he sure has had a lot of problems with his belly!" someone called out from the back. "Maybe he's pregnant!"

Doesn't Take Much

Wednesday morning, Grayson, our unofficial class leader, scanned the room with a discerning eye, and delivered this bomb of an observation:

"Hey Carl, your hair is sticking up in the back. You...sorta look like a werewolf."

Jeffrey immediately turned around, took a hard look at Carl, and breathlessly added, "Yeah...you DO kind of look like a werewolf!" (I think he was excited by the prospect of having one of our own in class.)

To which Carl dissolved in a puddle of tears, and I attempted (unsuccessfully) to right the situation by talking with them.

Turned out to be quite difficult to convince a second grader that he need not worry about his best friend's tactless remarks; this child takes things to heart (I had to mop his tears on Monday when someone called him the smallest person in the class. Never mind he's my TALLEST student; he cried buckets. We had a similar, fruitless conversation then, too.).

Was equally challenging to castigate the two offenders, as they saw their comments (and subsequent suggestions for taming the werewolf-like hair) as simple observation of fact. In their minds, they were simply providing a community service. And though I warned that such Good Samaritan-like behavior might someday invite a punch in the mouth, there was no relenting.

Such is life in our never-boring, delightful microcosm.

Anti Time On the Line

"So what do you want us to do, run laps the whole time?"

Four third and fourth grade boys stood before me at the beginning of recess today, reporting for duty.

Yesterday's recess had culminated in a far-too-physical game of King of the Hill (which is illegal to begin with). The tears and tattles that straggled in with my little people alerted me to the problem, and I headed over to the third and fourth grade room for an impromptu come-to-Jesus meeting in the hallway. They quickly admitted their guilt, so I asked them what consequence they thought was appropriate for their disobedience and lack of self control. To my surprise, they all agreed: "We should probably lose our recess tomorrow."

So there they stood today, waiting to see what plan I'd cooked up. How painful could Ms. Djerf make these twenty-five minutes be? Laps aren't so bad when you're a boy with an excess of energy and your three best friends are in the penalty box with you.

I'd been thinking and praying, however. I've spent this winter working through Ephesians 4:22-32 with my middle schoolers. The entire passage reiterates a basic three-part theme: if you are a follower of Christ, put off behavior that hurts you and rejects God, be made new in the way that you think, and put on new behavior that is like God. As I've studied this, I've been challenged to adjust the way I view discipline and the process of change.

Kathy Koch of Celebrate Kids! (a ministry for which I have enormously high regard) teaches that change is EXCHANGE. Don't just put off the bad habit, but intentionally put on the opposite new one. The same principle applies to correcting and disciplining: after telling them what needs to stop, I need to clearly put forth what needs to start.

We don't just want our boys to draw back from the "too-far" line of physical aggression toward smaller students; we want them to see their role as leaders outside and direct their energy toward fun and healthy pursuits. And so I told them I had a secret mission for them: each one had to find younger students to help, encourage, or include for the entire recess period. They would report to me at the end.

It gave me such joy to watch one boy help some little girls work on their snow fort, while another built a snowman with first graders. A third (braver than the first two) chose to intervene in a conflict between kindergarteners, standing up for a tearful girl and then helping her rejoin the game. The fourth invited a wandering little boy to play hide and seek with him. For one recess period, they were shining leaders instead of wolves fighting for the alpha spot.

I don't expect that we permanently eradicated aggression or unkindness, but it sure was better than running laps.

How to Recognize the End of the World: From the First and Second Grade Archives

This is, quite possibly, my all-time favorite second-grade story. Was retelling it to friends recently, and decided that it most certainly belongs on the blog, particularly since I almost named my blog after it. [Actually, I only told half of the story that night (sometimes it takes me a really long time to get to the point), and never quite made it to the punch line. So this is for you, JS! Now you know...]

Several years ago my only two second grade boys were best friends and polar opposites. James was philosophical and quirky, with his feet just barely on the ground, while happy-go-lucky Matt, concrete to the core, strongly influenced our classroom culture each day.

This contrast made for plenty of humorous moments throughout the year (another day, another blog post), but my favorite Matt and James moment was in relation to our class behavior incentive.

Matt was all about motivation -- a big fan of prizes in any form. Naturally, he was the number one fan of my class reward system, which consisted of two things: a drawing of superballs in a jar, and the promise of a party when the "jar" was full.

One of the easiest ways to earn a superball was for everyone to be at his or her desk working quietly when I returned from brief errands outside the room. Thus, that year, any time I walked out the door, I heard Matt directing, "OK, everyone! Sit down! Be quiet! Remember the superball!"

Lucky for him, all of first grade toed the line enthusiastically (they were all girls, and they were all in love with Matt).

James, on the other hand, wasn't as impressed by Matt OR the superball jar.

One Wednesday, I walked in just in time to hear James say condescendingly, "You know, Matt, if we didn't get a superball, it wouldn't be the end of the world..."

In all seriousness, Matt replied, "I KNOW it wouldn't be the end of the world, James. If ALIENS were coming, THAT would be the end of the world!"