As teachers, we
spend a lot of time trying to explain why things are the way they are or were
the way they were. Sometimes we do a
pretty good job; other times, we come up short, often because WE don’t even
fully understand. Just recently, a
student picked up the latest book from the I
Survived series and asked me out of the blue, “What is a Nazi, anyway?” A coworker walked in my classroom as I was
stumbling over an explanation and as our eyes met, we both shrugged a little,
as if to say, “How do you explain
something so unthinkable?”
Then there are
those times when the students don’t even need to ask, or they answer each
other’s questions before you even have the chance, because what makes no sense
to you actually does make sense to them.
As grown-ups, we can’t help but over-analyze, over-think, and over-feel
every situation. We think we should
know it all, be able to fix it, and what we can’t fix upsets us, so we don’t
want to think about it at all. With
kids, it’s different. They want to break
apart every situation not because they think they can fix it but because they
want to understand it. They truly
believe there must be a reasonable explanation for everything.
Twice in the past
few days I’ve been struck and amazed by the perspective of my fourth
graders. Two separate situations, both
of which would’ve left me speechless, never even required my assistance thanks
to the wisdom of these ten-year-olds.
The first happened last Friday.
We were watching a video about Ruby Bridges, the first black child to
attend an all-white school in the South in the early 1960s. Each morning, as she walked into school, she
faced protestors yelling and threatening her.
My students were mesmerized, wide-eyed and disgusted at the way this
child was treated. The actress in the
movie asked her mother, “When will they stop?” and no sooner
were the words out of her mouth than one of my boys said, “When the Lord gets in their
hearts, they will!”
He looked back
toward me as soon as the words were out of his mouth, wondering if he’d crossed
the line, I’m sure. I just smiled knowingly
and gave a little nod of agreement, which put a big grin on his face, and he
turned back to the screen. I wasn’t the
only person in the room to agree with him; a few other students nodded or
murmured a “yeah.” It was a heartening
scene to me, to put it mildly; one of those moments when I knew I was exactly
where God wanted me to be.
It’s amazing to
me how often God makes His presence known in a place where He is welcomed,
privately even if not publicly. This
morning, the very next school day, our morning announcements had an
addition: a moment of silence for a local middle school boy who passed away
over the weekend after a long illness. I
knew my students would have questions and I answered them the best I could,
again stumbling over words and ready to quickly move on to math, where I
actually DO have the all the answers.
As I turned to
make the transition, one of my students who ALWAYS has one more thing to say,
blurted out, “Mrs. Jones?” I impatiently said, “Yes?” still hoping to
change the subject, as he stopped me dead in his tracks with his statement, “At
least he’s in a better place now.”
As I quietly nodded, put in my place for sure, the little girl beside
him put the icing on the cake with simply two words to end his sentence: “…with
Jesus.” They both nodded, and I
smiled, knowing WE were with Jesus too, in a different way, in that very moment,
and pretty sure that He was smiling too.
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