Crash (the sound, not the movie)

Teaching is hard on a body, physically and mentally. For several years in Baltimore, I paid for my hobby of teaching by cleaning the school in the evenings with my wife and a fellow teacher and his wife. This meant that every afternoon, I was looking for a way to rest up a bit before the second job began.

It was one of those long days with lots happening and I needed just 15 minutes. I talked another teacher into watching my class during carpool, turned out the lights in my room (which had no windows - one of the most inhumane conditions I have ever experienced in a classroom, but good for naps), and turned up my boom box right by my head with some soul enriching U2 as I lay on a folding table on my back, in the dark, with the sounds of Bono and the boys going strong.

I admit that I must have been moving a bit to the music, but probably it mostly came about due to my weight that a few minutes later, just as I was fading off to sleep, there was a large CRASH, followed by a bunch of students rushing in to find me in a newly formed "V" in the table top, the cd player on the floor, not working, and very wide white eyes in the semi-darkness from their surprised Bible teacher. At those moments, laughter is all that moves one past the moment.

I left the table in the corner of the room for a few weeks just to give the students the pleasure of laughing with me again each time they came to class. I don't lay on folding tables anymore.

The Big "O"

I often give students an opportunity to write down or prepare in some way questions about what we have been studying, but occasionally I have opened it up to "anything." This story is about one such instance in an 8th grade Bible class.

The young man in question was given to lapses of ignorance. "Hunh" and "what" were common "answers" of his in class. The students had been serving up about 20 minutes of questions for me about "anything in the Bible they did not understand." We had covered some things about Old Testament law, problems with a miracle, and even an excursion into Revelations, when this young man's hand finally was called upon.

"Yes, sir. What is your question?"

"I want to know what the "O" word is?"

"Uhhh, the "o" word?"

"Yeah, its in the Bible, New Testament I think, and I don't think its a good thing."

"Hmmm, can you give me any more information? Is it sins of 'omission' but that could not be because that is not stated in the New Testament. How is it used?"

"I think its in a list of sins or something."

At this point I am sweating a little because the only "o" word I can come up with is "orgy." Now this young man was somewhat worldly wise but maybe he did not know what this meant. But is this something you bring up for discussion in an 8th grade Bible class?

About this time it is obvious from surrounding chitter and chatter that others know what he is trying to ask. One young lady, a sometime "friend" of the boy, was turning red. She now looked at him and nodded at him as if to say, "Go ahead, say the word, you won't get nailed."

"Mr. ____, do you know what the word is and are just afraid to say it? It might be better not to ask than to bring up something inappropriate."

"Well, yes, but I am not sure about its appropriateness."

At this point I decide the best medicine here will be open honest discussion of a recurring theme in the New Testament.

"Are you talking about 'orgy?' Is that your "O" word?"

"Hunh, "orgy," what's that?"

"Ohh, that's not your word? An orgy is something pagans did in the New Testament involving sex with multiple people often at their pagan temples. Very bad, very wrong, makes it several lists of sins."

"No, I didn't mean anything like that. My word is 'orgasm."

Silence accompanied by a very red faced teacher settled upon the class.

"Ummm, you need to discuss that word with your parents. Trust when I tell you that the word is not in the New Testament lists of sins, but you need to discuss that with them."

"But what does it mean?"

"Again, to your parents."

What was interesting to me was that most of his friends seemed truly innocent of its meaning, but a few were watching me with horror, demonstrating all too clearly that they knew what was being asked.

Ahhh, Middle school questions.

"I Can Read"

His dark hair which was always falling over his right eye was constantly being flung back up where it belonged. He was big for his age, and when his momma brought him in to our school at the end of first quarter in his sixth grade year I knew he was going to teach me some things, even if they were mostly lessons in patience. He had a quick sense of humor which tried hard to rescue him from his academic shortcomings. He was part of a class of 31 students when I first taught him. He was placed in the back because he came in late. He did not like Bible class from the start and the wisecracks proliferated whenever he sensed danger. The danger for him was being asked to read. Now this was a school that was using the NIV, so it was not an issue of ancient KJV or the like, but rather he just found it near impossible to read. When I pulled him in during lunch and asked him to read for me, he immediately stated, "I CAN READ" and then stared at the page.

"What's up? Why not read this for me right here?"

"Well, its not that I can't read," he protested. "I just don't feel like reading this stuff. It's stupid."

I switched to other materials, still "stupid." "Okay, you bring in something you don't think is stupid and read it to me tomorrow."

The next day he is back with a Flash Gordon comic. He "reads" it to me in quick, unfaltering, impassioned tones. Not a word of what he reads to me is on the page he is "reading" from. He repeats, "I can read."

Sometime later, after repeating our sixth grade, getting a lot of reading help, and in particular learning how to cover up his obvious lacks with lots of humor and laughter, he was back in class, this time towards the front.

And he was reading from any passage I asked him to read from. And at his eighth grade graduation (we did not go above 8th) he stopped me in the cake line to state that not everything we read in Bible class was stupid.

Now I could draw a bunch of morals and lessons from that, but I don't want these stories to end with "applications." I trust my readers to draw their own poetic notions from these little lovelies.

Let's Start at the Very Beginning, a Very Good Place to Start...

My vision for this blog is to collect humerous and serious stories from the classrooms of my colleagues. I believe there is a great deal to be learned from teachers simply telling stories of their classrooms. Please, change or withhold the names so as to protect us all from certain lawsuits.

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