Rubble

      Consider the paradox of a construction site.  In one setting, workers are scurrying about like ants pouring foundation, doing the brick and mortar thing, or framing the new structure that is taking shape.

      And then there is the rubble--the evidence of what once was.  In this case, a school building built almost a hundred years ago. 

      On this eve of the first day of school,  I walked home from my classroom past this mound of tangled beams and two by fours and cement and thought about all the footsteps that had made their scuff marks on those wooden floors.

          Built when William Howard Taft was President, this old two-story structure educated children without computers or televisions.  Teachers in this building worried more about a snake or a lizard in a kid's pocket rather than a cell phone.    And recess might have included schoolyard fights instead of fighting over who got to climb on the colorful playground equipment.

           The sun was setting, so I snapped a few photos and made my way home, only a couple of hundred yards from the site. The imagery lingered.  One gets a bit wistful after all these years teaching in the same school district.
           Gone is a historic part of our school's legacy.  Arriving soon is the opportunity to see a new one begin.  Destruction and creation often go hand in hand.

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            Interestingly, what takes place on the inside of any school building--new or old--is a principle quite the opposite.  The act of tearing down to build up is not the method a classroom teacher uses. If it is, he or she needs to find a construction job or any other career........and quickly.  

             Every year when school starts, a teacher walks into a room  facing new "ingredients"--young lives for whom we are responsible.   Some come to us with  strong foundations.     A few arrive in disrepair, with cracks in their foundation from abuse, neglect, poverty, or learning challenges.  

              Even in the best of schools, rubble exists.  We have to dig through it sometimes to find the treasure, that lone item that allows us to recognize potential and then take it one step further:  to help the child see his or her own worth and then inspire them to use that self-worth to make the world better.  An educator is  not just the construction foreman; he or she has to get hands dirty and do the hard labor each and every day in order for the job to get done.

             Our new school will be completed in less than a year; however, the students I greet tomorrow won't be ready anytime soon for all that life is going to throw at them.  Before their education is complete, they will have left behind little mounds of rubble, results of growing pains and teenage adolescent disappointments.       

              Helping them to build on those experiences should be the ultimate mission of all who call themselves "teacher."