Rejected

It’s almost midnight, and I desperately need sleep, but I need to write this down first. My heart is hurting a bit tonight, though I’ve already been assured by all my co-workers that it shouldn’t be. I just saw the results from our student survey of the E.A.G.L.E. Center, and they’re kind of crappy. Out of the approximately 75 kids we have, about 9 of them consistently answered negatively, saying they had no one at school with whom they could talk openly, that the staff don’t care about them or assist them when they need help, and that the principal doesn’t care. I could give a host of reasons for this group (including the fact that about fifteen of the students who answered admitted that they miss one to two days of school every week, meaning they might not even know our names, and the fact that some of our kids are poor enough readers or lazy enough that they might have just picked “D” and stayed on it, as the survey answers are consistent regarding positive and negative answers). However, I have been told to always look at myself first, which really isn’t bad advice in most cases. OK then!

In looking at myself, I confess that I deeply love all my students, even the ones who try to drive me crazy, and would bend over backward to help them. All of my co-workers think the same way, and I know that all of them from the Principal on down desire to see our students succeed. I don’t see how anyone who watches Dr. Birkeland make a presentation, sees a teacher crawling on her knees from student to student to help them with math, or observes the warm interaction our exceptional education teacher has with our students could imagine anything else. That’s us, according to Miss Osthus’ perceptions.

So, should I go with one of my earlier theories about unreliability, assume my perceptions are dead wrong and that we are not really demonstrating care for students, or assume my kids are crazy? I just can’t quite shrug it all off. I know that being a people-pleaser can be very harmful in certain cases, and that a teacher or a parent can do a great disservice to her kids by just wanting them to like her, but a student’s perception of adults in his or her life matters--a lot. Knowing an adult at school cares about you and wants you to succeed doesn’t fix everything (or anything), but it can give a kid reason to hope and keep going. That being said, I would have to be very concerned if I were convinced that nearly one seventh of all my students could ever say that neither I nor any of my co-workers cared about them and their success, no matter how bad the day had been.

Anyway, as I’ve been ranting tonight and asking God what in the world the deal is, He’s reminded me of two things: the nature of teenagers and the nature of man. First I realized, as I hunted in my cupboards for a snack, how many teenagers, no matter what kind of parents they have, honestly think at certain moments that they can’t talk with their parents about anything. Their parents might love them more than anything else in the world, but an individual perception can overlook that. If a kid has a chip on his shoulder or has deep wounds from the past, ignoring love sounds like a fine defense strategy.

The other realization was somewhat more staggering to me, though it was obvious: most people take forever to realize that they can speak openly with God, and that He cares about them and assists them when they need help! “God, if Jesus Himself could be rejected by the apple of His eye, mankind, then maybe You can hold and protect my heart when my precious students reject the love and help that I offer them. I pray they all stop rejecting the human hearts that reach out to them, but God, may the gifts You are holding out to them be absolutely irresistible!”

Pray for me, brothers and sisters.