Passing Notes is Passe

Passing notes in class is one of the joys of being a high school student, or at least, it was. In the olden' days before cell phones, we designed all sorts of not so sly ways to communicate with one another while the teacher(s) droned on and on about Johnny Tremain or longitude and latitude. There was the stretch behind your head to drop the note on the desk behind you. There was the dropping of a pen or pencil to allow lateral reaches across the aisle below the visibility line of the teacher. It was a fairly easy task to pass a note forward by poking the back of the student in front of you, and there was even a "go-long" throw (used for notes in the shape of footballs) when the teacher's back was to the class while he or she wrote on the board.

As a teacher today, notes are the least of my concerns. The most common way students communicate with one another is by texting, which allows them to cross-communicate in class and also to connect with those in other classes with very little movement or effort. It is especially convenient for students who are testing and can't remember the answer to a question. A skilled texter can keep the phone below desk level, and out of view, thereby ensuring a "life-line" for those pop quizzes and trick questions we used to dread as students. My solution thus far has been to insist that all students keep both hands visible and on the desk top while taking tests or quizzes, and to walk around the room while teaching and instructing to minimize the possibility of this distraction during key moments. Despite these adopted policies and techniques, I know that when I sit down to do grading or other work, the phones will come out without my explicit knowledge, and I've learned to accept the reality while not encouraging the activity.

Perhaps the most frustrating of all the texting going on during the school day is the PARENTS who feel it necessary to text their students during class. How can students be held to a standard that their mom refuses to support? Parents, please! How difficult is it to just wait and talk to your student at a later time? Why not leave a message in the office if it's really an emergency, or text after school hours if it isn't? It is a symptom, in my opinion, of a much larger problem.

Parents are lately afraid of being real parents. They don't want to be older, wiser, and more self-controlled. They want to be cool, hip, and young-looking. They feed off the positive feedback their student's friends are more than willing to lay on thick, so as to keep the good times rolling along. I have even over-heard on several occasions students talking to one another about other parents who give and allow whatever a student wants as long as they are told how cool they are. Students have commented on parents who "want to be young" so they tell them they like their outfit or shoes or phone or car. Students write in their creative writing journals about aunts, uncles, and parents who "think they are still kids" and believe it or not, it is a source of frustration to many of them. One girl wrote something to the effect, "It's nice that she wants to be close to me and understand me, but she had her chance to be young, and now is living off my social life. I wish she was someone I could trust to be the grown up when I needed it." This is a sad commentary on my generation's parenting skills.

Back to my original topic of note-passing, after 3 years at my current school, I have finally found someone who I can call a friend. I have many wonderful, friendly co-workers, but this is the first time that I've had someone who seems to "get" me and my particular brand of sarcastic procrastination and random non-sequiturs. We have taken to passing notes between classes in preparation for coaching (volleyball) practices and games, and additionally, as a form of therapy to deal with stress. I have yet to fold one in the shape of a football, but who knows? Maybe someday if the headmaster isn't looking, I'll tell her to "go-long."

dealing with death

My heart is hurting for those I know who have lost family members of late. The sense of unpreparedness for the death of loved ones is always the most difficult to bear, even more than the ache that comes with the loss of a dear friend or family member. Lately, two pastors from the church where my husband and I taught were unexpectedly taken home to be with the Lord, one due to a plane crash that also took the life of his son, and one due to a heart attack in the months following the crash. Within the same month, a dear college friend lost her younger sister, who had incidentally spent the night in my dorm room when she was a prospective student. This young woman was snatched from this world as a result of careless mistakes during a gall bladder surgery which led to an emergency removal of much of her colon, and eventually a brain hemmorage and death.

The sadness and frustration of this terrible news can't compare to what their families, friends, and churches are facing now, and yet I must write to sort through my own feelings. How unfair it seems to take these two leaders from the same church fellowship so close on the heels of one another. How wrong it appears for someone so young and full of life to suffer for the carelessness of a medical professional. What a wrenching sense of disappointment with this world tumbles over me as I write this. Words fall short.

It is a reminder that time is short as well.