By ROD WALTON Staff Writer on Feb 22, 2013, at 2:31 PM Updated on 2/22 at 2:31 PM
BECAUSE I SAID SO
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I’ve heard that agitated voice way too times. My eldest daughter was stressed out by the specter of a major life event happening soon. Like her dad, she doesn’t always respond to new challenges perfectly. She called impatient and overwhelmed. And I thought, Lord, will she ever make it?
But I woke up this morning and saw her latest Facebook post: “First day at the middle school. So scared, yet so excited!” My eldest is a junior education major at a certain regional university, and Friday was the first day of her first internship at a certain Tulsa public school.
Just writing those words makes me a little emotional. My sweet, red-headed sassy girl is almost starting her very own career. The little dynamo, who only yesterday it seemed was running through the Jane Phillips playground to join me for our first school lunch together, is suddenly a 21-year-old college student now making her first connection with younger students not so unlike her at that age.
She will do well, I believe and God willing. Children, particularly those open-hearted souls from disadvantaged and/or broken homes, have always gravitated toward her. I used to call her the Pied Piper. It was that immediate, that unmistakable among her talents. She is meant to influence young lives for the better. I saw it while she worked at the Salvation Army and on numerous mission trips to the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota.
Educators are thick within my wife’s family tree. Both her parents, Bob and Pat Marks, are retired teachers, noble souls who taught math and Spanish, respectively, to middle-school students. They are up there in years, so to speak, but still get recognized by former students when they go out to eat.
Maybe my eldest will live and breathe that ancestral experience one more time, reaching out to a new generation. Maybe she will give it just this try in college and decide on another career path. It’s hard saying not knowing what’s going to happen.
Teaching is a tough business these days. Yes, I know the line that they get nearly three months off, but that’s hardly the whole story. I know plenty of teachers from my children’s classroom days who spend extra hours preparing their environments to be as welcoming and yet mind-expanding as possible.
I read a great quote about teachers not so long ago. It goes something like this, highly paraphrased: “They have to educators, police officers, counselors and surrogate parents.
Indeed. I’ve given the education system some grief in my blog, too, griping about overreaction to playground issues and inhibiting recess time in favor of test mania. However, even there I give them a pass because politicians are more to blame for No Playtime Left Standing.
But I digress, again. My daughter just called me to tell how it went. It was her first day of school, just now she is the teacher and not the kid. She told me about how some of the 6th graders asked her if she was a hipster, implying they were trying to ascertain her age. “You’re on the other side of that conversation now,” I replied.
So whether you are a teacher, surgeon, journalist, engineer or restaurant manager, hopefully you’ll be doing something you love. I don’t know if my daughter is ready for all the baggage that comes with teaching – such as mandates, administrators and angry parents – but I know she has a passion for reaching children.
I end this with a quote I first heard from author John Eldridge but originally came from theologian Howard Thurman: “Ask not what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
I’m proud of what my girl is becoming, but she still has so far to go. So go do it. But our greatest blessing is that she’s loving getting there.
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