Sharing the Load

As a teacher, I often see myself as one of those bicycle taxi people.  I pedal along through my days in the classroom and one after another, students pile in to my little mental rickshaw.  It gets heavy, but I can't help it.  They keep climbing in.

The other teachers I work with acknowledge the bicycle taxi metaphor and are steadily pedaling along with me.  Their cargo is just as heavy, and yet we recognize the need to keep pedaling.  One way a few of us has handled it is by starting a bi-weekly faith-sharing group.  At first it started out as a few friends/colleagues getting together to read books with Christian themes and talk about issues outside of the classroom--a little mental and spiritual vacay, if you will.  However, as it tends to work with teachers, our work was hardly left behind when we gathered.  Just last week, we finally threw up our hands and decided to call it what it really is:  a support group for people who are overwhelmed by, but desperately passionate about our students, colleagues, and profession.  We devoted nearly half of our meeting time to prayer for students and colleagues, and have decided to continue that practice.  Which brings me to my overflowing bike taxi this week. 

It's been one of those weeks (or two) where a certain student has been on my mind.  She's a beautiful little sixth grader who happens to be inflicting pain on whatever girls decide to be her friend.  She attacks other girls in cyberspace, tries to seduce boys via text, and all the while hides behind a long curtain of brown hair at school.  I hear her name about every other day regarding her involvement in various middle school squabbles and conflicts.  Luckily, her loving extended family takes care of her, as her parents are unfit.  But I see evidence of her pain daily.  She's forcing herself into my rolling rickshaw.

I brought this student's name to our prayer group last meeting.  Many of them nodded as if they knew her.  Some of them did know her personally, but the others--well, they did know her in a way.  They have about 30 others like her piled up in their taxis from present and past classes.  We bent our heads and let the silence carry our hopes for her, and others like her, into the atmosphere.  Then I murmured a prayer for her--not nearly as eloquently as the Baptist next to me, might I add, but hey, I'm a Catholic and need a little practice with spontaneous God-praising and inquirying.  We prayed for two other students and a colleague and then parted ways, the love and peace in our hearts neutralizing the acidic stress of state testing earlier that day.  Ah, the rejuvination that a communication of love brings.

Just a couple of days ago, my little bicycle taxi passenger came into my class, her brown hair draped over her shoulders.  She smiled and showed me proudly a turquoise silicone wristband from underneath her hoodie sleeves.  It was from a presentation she had attended the night before, given by a young author and founder of an organization called Girl Talk, about encouraging mentorship between high school girls and middle school girls.  I had seen a version of the presentation, myself, on the same day just for educators, counselors, and administrators.  The purpose of the program is to educate people about the trauma of middle school for girls and to encourage action to support our female students before they become the adolescent casualties that we remember becoming by ninth grade.   Needless to say, I was thrilled that my student had attended the presentation.  And that she was proud and excited to tell me she had gone.  And that she was wearing a bracelet that said "T.H.I.N.K before you talk, txt, or type" (an acronym for True, Helpful, Inspiring, Necessary, Kind).  Hadn't we, as her teachers, been trying to tell her the whole year that she just needs to THINK??  But, if I've learned it once, I've learned it a hundred times that the education and raising of a child goes way beyond what I can do in a school year, despite what I choose to believe sometimes about my saving-the-world capabilities.  Nope, I saw her with her bracelet and her excitement and I had to note immediately that the real inspiration there was the work of God.  A small victory for her, and for faith.  The load I carry is a little lighter--that is, until she needs to be carried again.

So, since God has affirmed for me that my time spent with my colleagues in prayer was purposeful and powerful, I'll end with one more prayer for this little girl.  Lord, I pray that the adults in this beautiful flower's life can be inspired to rally around her and show her the love that I know once in her life, someone denied her.  Help her to see the gifts she has and how to show love to others around her.  Lift her up and hold her close until she is able to glorify You with her thoughts, actions, and txts.  Amen.