The Day of All Saints

To those who know and keep the Roman calendar, happy feast day. And what a day it has been. Though not yet over, sufficient numbers of highlights and lowlights have danced and pranced across the stage of life that I can make an entry for today. The past several days have been "ordinary" days with little worth noting having occured, but I would have written something if I did not also have a stack of papers nearly a foot high that need grading.

Today demands my electronic pen be put to paper, and so I write to those who follow my sojourn as an educator.

This morning opened with a particularly "checked out" young lady loudly calling one of her fellow classmates the N-word. She naturally was using it in the unfortunate modern usage that prevails among young people of her socio-economic background and sub-culture. Were I on the street, my spine would have bristled, but I would have continued on my way. In the halls of my school where I am expected to teach my students to reach beyond their socio-economic backgrounds and to transcend their sub-cultures, I naturally was forced to react. I gave her detention on the spot and had a conversation with her about language and its very powerful effects.

But she and I were not done for the day. Fifteen minutes later, I caught her chewing gum. For those unapprised of the dire consequences for those observed chewing gum by me, I have the students complete an "odious task," which five students discovered roughly a month ago means, "scraping gum off the bottom of Mr. Cochran's desks." My room remains gum free even now as I type this (to my knowledge; I last checked two days ago. I'll check again before the end of the day). So, the math teacher will have a gum free classroom this afternoon as well.

The day goes forward. The entire school attended mass for the Feast of All Saints and then we returned for second period, missing first period religion class. The periods slipped onward until the aforementioned young lady arrives for my fourth period class. Rather than paying attention, now she feels the need to write notes and so forth. I seize what she writes very naturally. Thirty seconds later she resumes her writing. This time, I kick her out of my room. As she is leaving, I inform her of the fact that I will be expecting her this afternoon to help clear the math teacher's room of gum. She retorts that I will most certainly not see her (though not quite in so many words; she was more vulgar). I told her it would mean suspension if I did not see her and then sent her on her way.

It is in the background of today's Feast of the Saints, those who chose in this life to live for God and to serve their neighbors and so now enjoy the beatific vision of our Lord, that I relate this story of sin, uncouthness, and woe. And I do mean woe, for I am saddened that so many of my students have been forced into positions by their own choices and the great many circumstances of their lives outside of their control that they face the high probabiliy of material & spiritual failure. It would be a sin against hope for me to presume that this girl will never face herself and correct the errors of her own making, especially at an age when I myself was guilty of making my own poor choices. But when a student never turns in a single piece of work, ignores questions posed in class, and does little beyond occupy the time-space continuum inside a school building for 8 hours a day everyday, what am I supposed to believe? What image am I to conjure when reason dictates to my perceptions that this girl faces more than just academic failure but worse should her life not change course...?

The quote for purposes of critical thinking in my class today was, "All that is necessary to be a saint is to want to be one" by Robert Lax. The quote had appeal even to those of my students who profess no faith that I am aware of for it spoke to the power behind desire, intention, and ambition in the face of doing good. My young gum chewer sat in a daze as the words were read and discussed, the words that could save her from herself falling on her deaf ears. She occupies a seat in the class that sent me the most over the edge in my previous post concerning reading comprehension. She and a few others continue to worry me in that room, but my new reading comprehension-centered approach seems to be working. The students responded to my walking them through an assignment due today on Tuesday. And I gave them a handout for tomorrow's class on which I intend to test them.

... but my greatest moment, my reminder that the saints do indeed pray for us, came when one of those same students all but fell out of his chair to tell me that he had procured a dictionary for himself as I had instructed them to do the day of my podium-post. He beamed as he searched ardently for the meaning of words he did not know and he then used them - properly. And he answered my questions with new confidence and vigor that I had not yet seen.

We celebrate the saints today. All of the saints. And we celebrate them because they wanted to be saints. When someone wants to be good, there is cause for all of us to celebrate.