The Words You Need to Hear Today--Answering the Call to Teach

Several months ago, I visited a reading class at Endeavour Elementary.  It was my first time in a classroom, in front of students, in about seven years so I was both excited and anxious.  Would I be able to slip into teacher-mode easily? 

What had changed in the classroom in the last seven years?  It seemed, for example, that a digital revolution had taken place almost overnight.  The first thing their teacher asked them to do before she introduced me was to tell them to close their laptops.

I was there to share with them my new book Jules Verne and a Raven Named Poe, to read to them from the book and answer any questions they might have on writing and what it means to be an author.

So, I was standing there and I had these twenty or twenty-five students all at desks in front of me and I gave my own little introductory spiel and started right in reading to them.

And almost immediately, these two kids sitting right in front of me, put their heads down and went to sleep.

And I was like, yep, seven years, I’ve still got it. 

I can still put kids to sleep.

But I didn’t wake them.  I learned that from teaching too.  Never wake a sleeping child.  I continued reading and the rest of the kids were very attentive.  When I was finished, they asked good questions, and I tried to impart some meaningful life lessons. 

“I don’t make any money from writing,” I told them.  “I do it because it’s fun.”

When it was time for me to leave, I made my way back out to the parking lot and my car and once inside my car, I nearly broke down crying.

Why?

Because it had been seven years and I missed teaching.  I missed the classroom so much.  I missed that interaction with students.  I missed opening doors for them, showing them things that they hadn’t ever seen or thought of before.  I missed that connection.

And I realized, even after all these years, teaching was still my calling.



Seven years ago, I sat at my desk during a morning planning period.  Anyone walking by would have seen me just sitting there staring off into space, but I was actually having this massive internal debate as I contemplated the end of my teaching career.  I had already been on leave once that year for an autoimmune condition that presented with chronic vertigo, fevers, joint pain and fatigue.

I had not been back to work for very long and I knew—I knew that I physically could not keep up.  And I also knew that if I went on leave again, it would be for good.  There would be no coming back.

So I sat there at my desk and I prayed.  I prayed like we all pray when we have no idea what to do or when we know what to do, but we’re afraid to take that next step, when we don’t trust ourselves to make the decision on our own—I prayed to God for a sign.

He was quiet, so I continued to sit and then I looked up at the wall clock to see how much longer I had before the bell rang, and—I swear I’m not make this up—the clock had stopped.

The batteries were dead.

Time was up.

A week later, I left teaching.

But the call to teach has never left.



If you are here tonight, congratulations, you are the choir—as in tonight, I am going to be preaching to the choir.

You already know why you’re here.

You’re here because it isn’t enough.

The pay isn’t enough.  Maybe you’re working multiple jobs.  You never see your family.  You’re getting by with no support, not from parents, not from administration.  You feel disrespected left and right and you are tired.  You are so tired.  You’re exhausted, even now, here at the end of summer, and the new school year is right around the corner.

But even as tired and worn out as you may be, you can’t give up teaching—you don’t want to give up teaching.

That’s why you’re here tonight.

Because of what’s in here—because of what’s in your heart.

You are driven to teach by something bigger than all this.

Teaching is your calling.

How do you know if something is a calling?

I’ll tell you. All callings have this one thing in common.

They never leave you.

They are hardwired into you—into your heart, into your soul. 

Your calling breathes as you breathe.

Your calling beats with your heartbeat.

Your calling gives you life.

And no matter what obstacles come your way, the stumbling blocks that are placed in front of you on the path, on the journey, your calling stays with you.  It is not something that can ever be separated from you.  It is you.

You cannot deny your calling any more than you can deny yourself.

Your calling enriches the world in some way and not one way is ever too small to matter.

Your calling is the most important thing you will ever do.

Your calling is something that is founded and built upon selfless giving, on an unconditional love of the world—a Jesus-love.

Your calling is not your job.

Your calling is your vocation.

It is your life’s work.

It is the answer to the question we have all asked.

What is the meaning of life?

I want you to embrace your calling.

I want you to embrace and hold tight to the spiritual side of your vocation.

I want you to fill and nurture that spiritual side, because—let’s face it—it is the only way to survive in this profession.

That’s what I hope to do tonight.  I hope to show you ways to keep your spirit filled.



Years ago, I was sitting with a friend up in the front office conference room.  It was the day of the FCAT Writes and I was keeping my friend company while she checked off teachers as they came to collect their testing materials.

It was getting closer and closer to the bell and it was right then that our friend Sharon showed up for her tests.

Sharon walked into the room holding an ice pack from her lunchbox awkwardly to her wrist.

“What happened?” we asked Sharon.

“I fell this morning,” she said. 

“Did you break it?” we asked her.

“I’m not sure,” Sharon said and then removed the ice pack to show us.

Both my friend and I took a giant step backwards as we caught sight of Sharon’s grotesque wrist injury.

“Sharon,” I said, “your wrist is broken.”

She squinted.  “You don’t think it’s just swollen?”

“Sharon,” I said, “your wrist is shaped like an ‘s.’  Normal wrists don’t look like that.”

Sharon had come to work that day with a broken wrist all because it was FCAT Writes day.

We’ve all been there haven’t we?

Shown up to work on days when physically we should have been in bed.

We’ve worked through fevers and stomach bugs.

Some might say that teachers have a martyr complex, but teachers don’t work through pain and illness because they are looking for sympathy.

Teachers don’t have a martyr complex—they have a saint complex.

They believe in sacrifice.

But here’s the thing, teachers, you are not saints.  You are not endowed with superhuman strength.  You are human.

You are absolutely human.

Jesus was human and even he knew when to take breaks, when to escape the crowd and go and pray.

When he and the disciples were out on a boat during an insanely savage storm, the disciples all thought they were going to die.

And what was Jesus doing?

Sleeping.

You are not a saint.  God doesn’t want sacrifice from you.  He wants you to take care of yourself so that you can do the job that He needs you to do.  He needs you to be well and rested.

So take those days off.

There is this scene in the book Tangerine by Edward Bloor that I used to read with my classes where a sinkhole opens up and swallows a whole bunch of portable classrooms.

Despite our fears as teachers that the world might end if we don’t come to work that day, I have yet to see the ground open up and swallow schools whole.

Rest.

Take time for yourself.

And not just the occasional day off.

Make the most of those planning periods.

My first-year teaching, I had one planning period.  It was twenty minutes.  The rest of the day I taught six classes.  Fifth-eighth grade Language Arts, seventh grade Religion, and fifth grade social studies.  I ate lunch in my classroom with my homeroom.  That year I survived on pop-tarts and lemonade, but I was twenty-two and still had the metabolism to handle that.

That was a private Catholic school though.  The next year I taught at Jefferson Middle School here in Brevard County and I was given—at least what seemed like at the time—an obnoxious amount of planning.  Two planning periods, each about forty-five minutes long.  And a lunch break, separate from the children.  Only five classes to teach and each was an eighth grade Language Arts class.

Over the years, I became very protective of those planning periods and very bitter every time someone wanted to take one away with a team meeting or a department meeting or a parent conference or, my very least favorite thing in the world, covering another teacher’s class.

Not wanting to cover classes, it was never about not wanting to be helpful.  I would have done anything for my fellow teachers, anything—I was the go-to person when it came to emergency lesson plans.  My selection of movies was filled with all the current G-rated hits and came complete with questions aligned with the Sunshine State Standards of the time.

But don’t ask me to cover a class.

Even when the class you’re covering is filled with your own students, it’s like suddenly they don’t know you, they’ve never heard of you—rules, what rules?

In the morning before school started, I would run the other way when I saw the assistant principal coming with his clipboard.  I ran outside to the bus loop once hoping to avoid him.  He followed me.

The next time I ran to the ladies room.

He stopped chasing me and started just calling me on the phone during homeroom, when he knew I had to pick up and wouldn’t be able to say no.

Planning periods are just so precious.

And they are even more precious now that you only have one.

So make the most out of that time.

Take that time for you.

Do not feel compelled to grade or plan or make phone calls.  Yes, that is what you are told good teachers do with their planning periods.

Let me tell you what healthy teachers do with their planning periods.

They take a moment to breathe.

They go to the bathroom.

They have a snack.

They breathe.

They take a walk.

And maybe, maybe, they might even pray.

They might take that time to sit with God.

Here is why prayer is so important.

When we pray—and we all have different ways of praying and no way of praying is wrong—when we pray, we invite God to sit with us.  Prayer for me is like sitting with God on a porch swing on a cool summer night, enjoying some sweet tea and listening to the hum of the cicadas.

In other words, prayer is peace.

Or as C.S. Lewis once said, “I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God. It changes me.”

Prayer changes me.

It will change you too.

My last year in the classroom, I was also attending seminary part time.  I had planned on becoming a priest in the Episcopal Church.

It was a part of my life that I didn’t hide.  Everyone who worked with me, knew my spiritual story.  We’re so afraid sometimes of sharing that part of ourselves, that spiritual side, because we’re so afraid that we will offend someone.

But when I talked about my spiritual journey with others, I found most people hungry and thirsty with their own spiritual needs.

I was in the restroom one day at work when the custodian came in and asked me if I would pray with her.  I had known her for years.  She had had a very rough life.  Just a few years before she had been shot by her husband.

And now she wanted me to pray with her.

I asked her if she wanted to go back to my classroom so we could have privacy and she said, nope, she was fine praying right there in the restroom.

So I took her hands in mine and we bowed our heads and closed our eyes and prayed.

Who says there can’t be prayer in public school?

How many times have you prayed for your students?

I used to do two things for my students during testing, hand them a peppermint and sit there silently and pray.

One of the worst things we ever did was tie teacher pay to student test scores, if for no other reason than this.

I never wanted any student to think that the only reason I fought for them, the only reason I worked with them, the only reason I pushed them to do better was because I wanted more money.

I didn’t pray for my students to score well on tests.  When I watched them sitting there, struggling, I prayed for peace for them and strength.  I prayed out of a place of love and concern.

I still pray for four former students even though they have been out of my classroom for many, many years.  I pray for the one who spent five years at Jefferson, purposely failing because Jefferson was the safest place she knew.  I pray for one who was so abused as young child, that it literally affected her physically. She walked hunched over.  She barely made eye contact.  I pray for another who survived a horrific accident and experienced a miracle.  I pray if she ever needs a miracle again, one is there.  I pray for a girl, so filled with anger every minute of the day, she could not walk without stomping and could not close a door without it slamming.

I pray for the ones I fed books to, because books save lives.

I pray for the ones who had been told all their lives that they were worthless.  I pray for the ones who acted out because that was the only way they knew to get attention.

I prayed for myself, that I would have the strength and the patience to show these kids that they were worth something.

That they were loved.

Whenever you pray for someone, you are taking a stand.

You are claiming that person for God.

You are raising them up, Lion-King-style, and saying to the world, this person belongs to God.

This child is a child of God.

I remember getting frustrated years ago when it seemed the guidance counselors would schedule every troublemaker on our team.  I would get so bitter because just when I thought I had discipline under control in a particular class, in would walk some new kid with a history of suspensions and an attitude that sucked all the oxygen out of the room.

For the longest time, the only way I knew how to interact with these students was by not interacting with them at all.

One day, I was on my way back to my classroom after lunch and I passed a friend of mine, a fellow teacher, in the hall.  She was taking one of my students to the office, one of my new students, a transfer from New York who wrote his first essay for me on gang life in New York City.

This friend of mine—she was fuming and she rarely had issues with students so whatever he had done, it had to be big.  As she passed me, she said to him, “Do you talk to Ms. Lacy that way?”

He just stared at the floor and then he mumbled.  “I don’t talk to Ms. Lacy.”

And I wanted to say, “Yes, yes, this is it right here.  This is the secret to discipline in the classroom.  Do not talk to students.  Nobody speaks.  Nobody says anything stupid.”

But at some point, something changed in me.  I stopped looking at students as road hazards, meant to be avoided at all costs, and instead saw them as something more, as children, and specifically as children loved by God.

But more than that, I began to see teaching as more than a job.  I started to realize that perhaps God had put these kids in my classroom for a reason.  And when I made that connection, I stopped looking at teaching as a job and started accepting teaching as a calling.

What could I do for these kids in my classroom?

What could I offer them?

What did God want me to do for them?

Perhaps I could start by simply acknowledging them.

Here is the beautiful thing.  Every one of your students is a child of God.

But—so are you.

God loves every student who walks into your classroom.

And God loves you just as much.

You begin every school year with this in common with all your students.

God loves you.

God cares about you.

God wants what’s best for you.

God has your back.

God is with you.

You are His.

And He has called you to teach.  He has entrusted you with these precious children, because He believes in you.



Here at Hope we have a prayer labyrinth, right there down by the water, a scraggly hedge maze that I promise you cannot get lost in.

A few months ago, I led a Moses walk around the property.  It was designed (the walk—not by me) to conclude with a journey through the prayer labyrinth.

I was leading a group of pre-teens.  It was hot and God had sent us our very own plague of love-bugs in this case.  As we walked around the property, each child picked up a stone and on the stone they wrote something they struggled with.  It became a weakness stone.  And when they got to the labyrinth, the idea was to carry their stones to the center and leave them there, then take with them a staff that had been left there ahead of time, as symbol of God’s support and strength.

But between the love-bugs and rumor of wasps, not one kid would step foot in that labyrinth until I took the first step.

Once I started walking the path, all the others followed.

Well, not all.  One girl decided she just couldn’t do it—for whatever reason.  But here’s the beautiful thing.  I wasn’t going to make her walk the labyrinth.  I wasn’t going to try and make her do something she clearly didn’t want to do.  And none of the kids with her tried to pressure her into doing it, either.

What they did do, though, was take her stones—they took her weakness stones and carried them for her into the center of the labyrinth and then brought back to her a staff.

It was an amazing thing to watch, because I had nothing to do with it.  There had been no prompting from me.  Nothing from me.

All I had to do that day was get out of the way and let God do His thing and oh, what a beautiful lesson He shared with all of us that day.

You never walk the path alone.

When you’re a teacher, you walk the same path as all other teachers.  You walk well-worn paths.  You branch out onto new paths.  You take students with you on some paths.  But never, never, do you walk the path alone.

That’s what I want you to leave here tonight knowing.

You are not alone in this.

You have been called to teach.

And what do all callings have in common?

God is the one doing the calling.

He’s waiting there for you on that path.

He loves you and He will never leave you.

You’ll notice around the Parish Hall that I have displayed photography and poems from my book The Words You Need to Hear Today.

All of those pictures have something in common.

Yes, they are all flowers.

But they are all flowers that continued to bloom throughout the night.

The bloomed even in darkness.

Have faith, my friends.  You are stronger than you know.

Good night.