Why I’m Still Thinking About Les Miserables

Just a short thought that sprung from my reading of Les Miserables (yes I’m still obsessed) and the church service on Sunday. Mostly I’m putting it here because I wanted it written somewhere and it was a bit too long for Facebook :)

When we truly show mercy and grace to others, we are not condoning the life they are living. Rather, mercy and grace should free people to live lives of righteousness without the need to first repay us for the wrongs they have committed. The Bishop shows mercy to Valjean not because he believes stealing is justified, but because he wants to give Valjean the opportunity to become the man God intended him to be. Valjean does not show mercy to Fantine to condone prostitution, but to give her a chance to live an honest life.

It is easy in our culture to confuse mercy and love and tolerance with relativism. Wrong action is wrong action, and while it is not our job to condemn others, it is our job to point the way and encourage repentance. Doing this without being hypocritical or bigoted is a fine line that I don’t think many people walk well. I want to walk that line well.

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by rachelheather on January 14, 2013  •  Permalink
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Why I Need to Look Down

As I was driving to go see Les Miserables for a second time today, I stopped at a stoplight and there was a man panhandling on the corner. I had to force myself to look at him rather than avoid eye contact. When I didn’t make it through the first light and had to stop again, I rolled down my window, waved him over, and gave him some cash I had left over from my trip to Austin over the break. I told him “Happy New Year” and rolled up my window and found myself with tears in my eye, without really knowing why.

As I sat in the dark theater, watching the poor of Paris begging the rich to look down and see them, I began to get a better understanding of why that small moment upset me so much. I wish I could say it was the man’s poverty that moved me to tears, but that would not be the truth.

No, it was the callousness of my own heart. It was the fact that my first response to seeing him was to think of all the reasons why I shouldn’t give him any money. It was the fact that I initially didn’t even want to look at him, to acknowledge him as a human being, made in the image of God and full of dignity.

Just last night I started rereading Les Miserables. I had wanted to for a while, but it’s long and there are so many other books in the world, but after seeing the movie and listening to the music pretty much nonstop since Saturday, I couldn’t help myself. As I read the first 70 pages, which are dedicated entirely to the Bishop of Digne, I marveled at the way he was described.

Hugo spends those first 70 pages describing a man who trusts God to an extent that others call foolish, who gives generously even when it costs him comfort, who refuses to speak without backing up his words with actions, who treats each person he meets with kindness and courtesy and grace, no matter who they are. I found myself hoping that people would one day describe me that way as well.

And so my heart broke as I sat in my comfortable car, looking at the man on the corner with such little courtesy and grace. There was a time in my life when I would have invited him into my car and taken him to get something to eat, no matter how reckless or stupid other people thought it was. And now I find myself in a place where I have to force myself to make eye contact? How did I end up here?

And so as I sat in the theater in the dark and watched the story of “les miserables,” of the wretched and poor and lowly, I could not help but wonder what this story would look like if it took place in America in 2013. Part of the richness of Les Miserables is its historical setting, so it hasn’t been updated and changed and adapted in the same way something like Romeo and Juliet has.

But there are still people in our culture who beg us to look down and see their plight. Can’t you picture Fantine as a teenage single mother? Can’t you picture Gavroche as a young boy doing whatever he can to prove himself to a gang? Can’t you picture Jean Valjean as an illegal immigrant trying to make a better life for himself and those around him? Who is it in our lives that is asking, pleading with us to look down?

And more importantly, how do I respond? Am I Javert, placing justice and what is “fair” and the letter of the law above everything else? Or am I the Bishop, who sees the soul behind the crime, who sees the pain and the suffering behind the violence?

I know who I want to be, and so I am glad to begin this coming year by rereading a work that speaks of the redemptive power of love and grace, even if it ends up taking me the whole year to get through it.

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by rachelheather on January 1, 2013  •  Permalink
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Why I Love My Job

Sooooo…remember how I was going to actually write and update my blog during the school year this year? Yeah, sorry about that.

As I should have predicted, blogging and writing and pretty much deep thinking in general has flown out the window, even after we got back in the swing of things. It’s really easy to forget during the summer just how much work goes into being a teacher and fool yourself into thinking that if you just make a couple of minor changes you will have oodles of free time.

The morning routine would have helped, except that right after I started it I got sick and felt pretty much horrible for two weeks. Sleep was a necessity and waking up at 4:15am was just not going to happen. Of course, after two weeks of not doing it, I kept saying I would start it back up again, but I always just ended up pushing snooze for an hour and I’ve now stopped even pretending I’m going to get up at that time. It didn’t help that football season started which makes it really difficult to go to bed at 8:30pm on Sundays and Mondays.

Even though all my grand plans have gone awry, I’m totally loving this school year. My students this year have been at our school since the culture shift and are totally bought in to what we do and the way we do it. It makes the class-to-class, day-to-day part of teaching so much better. We get to actually fun in class while we’re learning things!

It’s also really fun to see how much I’ve grown as a teacher. The improvement between my first and second year was pretty obvious, but with all the adjustments switching schools last year, I spent most of the year feeling like I was sliding backwards rather than improving as a teacher. This year, though, I can really see how much I’ve learned and it’s exciting to think that I may one day be the kind of teacher I loved when I was in school.

I wish I had time to tell you more about what we’ve been doing, but my planning period is about to end. In the meantime, go read a banned book this week.

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by rachelheather on October 2, 2012  •  Permalink
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Why I Need to Write This

I almost wrote this post this morning, but I wasn’t brave enough.  Also, focusing on the positive is good for me, so I wanted to do a bit of that to start my week.

And then I found out that today is Worldwide Suicide Prevention Day, and I felt like I needed to write this.  I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but never really wanted to actually sit down and write it.

About a week and a half ago, my roommate texted me and told me that the elderly woman living next door had shot herself.  The cops were on our street and everything was blocked off.  We’ve never really seen anyone going in or out of that house, so we didn’t know the people living there, but it’s still a sad and horrible thing.

We were talking about it last night and my other roommate was being really callous about it.  She was joking about how she thinks the woman was a shut-in being held captive against her will, although my other roommate thought she was probably just depressed.  The first one just kept going on and on about how she just doesn’t get suicide and it’s such a selfish thing to do and people should just think about how it will affect those around them and not do it.

I exchanged a glance with my other roommate (who has a history in psychology) and left the conversation to go back to my room.  Because here’s the thing: I do not have suicidal thoughts, but I do have depression, so I kind of get it.  I understand how someone can feel completely hopeless and be absolutely incapable of thinking about anything else.  How even though you can repeat to yourself things you know are true, you can’t force yourself to feel them.

Our emotions lie.  And as Jenny Lawson says, depression lies.  It tells you that you are worthless, that you can never change, that there’s no point in even trying.  It tells you that you will fail every time and that everything you touch will wither and die.

It’s been a long time since I talked openly about depression on my blog.  In fact, I’m not sure that I ever really have.  People who know me in real life can read between the lines, but I generally try to stay positive on here.

Which is a big part of why I didn’t update the past couple of weeks or much at all last year.  I have been too busy fighting a war against the lies in my head.  The past two weeks were mild, triggered by not feeling well and then reading posts about depression that are meant to encourage (I didn’t realize reading about other people’s struggle was a trigger for me, but boy, do I know now).  It was mild enough that work could distract me, but the weekends were bad.  I was able to make some good choices and I’m feeling like I’m almost out of the woods.

But when I talk about last school year being hard, I don’t just mean that I was busy and stressed.  I mean that almost every day was a battle.  You know how most people have to force themselves to go to the gym, or eat kale, or other things they know are good for them, but don’t particularly like? I was having to force myself to do things I normally enjoyed, like going to church and talking to people.

For a while I ignored it and hoped it would go away.  And then I tried to power through it and force myself to do and think positive things.  And then I admitted to myself that it wasn’t working.  And then I admitted to my small group that it wasn’t working.  And then I got help.

I have been seeing a therapist again since January.  I’m pretty open about that fact with the people in my day-to-day life; less so with people who don’t see me on a regular basis.  You see, I don’t want to lose the good reputation I (hope I) have in those people’s minds. Or I don’t want people constantly asking me how I am in the super-pitying voice they seem to use.  Or I just don’t think it’s their business.

Our culture doesn’t commend people for asking for help.  In fact, it isolates and shames those who need help the most, which is absolutely tragic.  There is nothing worse than hearing subconscious messages from society that confirm the lies depression is already telling you – that you have done something wrong, that it is all your fault, that you are weak for not being able to be OK on your own.

Except it is estimated that 1 in 4 adults suffers from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.  1 in 4. 1/4. A quarter of the adult population. But we insist that they should hide and be ashamed and not be a Debbie Downer by talking about it.

But we need to talk about it.  Talking about it is how we know we are not alone. It’s how we know that we do not need to be ashamed, that we are not broken (at least no more than the people around us), that we are not beyond hope.  Talking about it is how we begin to heal and hopefully how we help others gain the courage they need to ask for help.

So this is me talking about it.  Depression lies, but there is hope.  There is a light at the end of the tunnel.  All you need to do is ask for help.

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by rachelheather on September 10, 2012  •  Permalink
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Why I Love This School Year

So, you know how my last post was all super-positive and about how great things were going to be?  Well, that day actually kicked off about 2 weeks of being sick.  I went from a sore throat to chest congestion and coughing to nasal congestion and coughing to more chest congestion to a day or so of what appeared to be a sinus infection to four days of mostly feeling ok, except when I would exert myself in away and start coughing.  I haven’t been able to do any cardio the entire time and the coughing actually got so bad that I was taking the elevator up to my 3rd floor classroom because climbing the stairs just led to coughing fits.

Even with all that mess, the past two weeks in the classroom have been a lot of fun.  The difference between last year and this year is pretty astounding, and it just shows how much students can accomplish when they are held to high standards.

Last year, most of my students started at the school before it was the very structured, high-expectations type of school it is now.  They went through the transition in leadership and the huge amount of change-over in staff and they weren’t really bought in to the culture and systems we have in place.  That, plus me being new and not fully understanding how to best utilize the systems and leverage the culture, made for a very difficult year.

My current students, however, have never known anything different at our school.  Where the older students complain that the homework system and the amount of rules is the school treating them like children, my current students seem to embrace pretty much every aspect.  They love snapping it up for their classmates.  They love doing claps and stops to celebrate things.  When I ask questions, their hands shoot up into the air, sometimes before I’ve even asked the question.

And it’s not just the behavior; these students are the more prepared academically than any class I have ever taught before.  I almost don’t know what to do with them.  We barely take any notes, because they seem to remember everything they learned last year.  In 9th grade, I started off the year with a unit that is essentially what I ended my 9th grade class with last year.  We used a bunch of short stories to review the concepts we had covered, but I decided to start with the short stories this year.  And you know what?  I’m asking essentially the same questions I was asking at the end of last year, and probably getting higher quality answers.

There’s still plenty for me to teach them.  Their writing needs a lot of work and they need a lot more practice dealing with difficult text, especially anything that was written more than 50 years ago.  But because I work so closely with their previous English teacher (she basically taught me everything I know about teaching), this has been an incredibly smooth transition.  And since I’m not spending so much time getting frustrated with misbehavior, we have plenty of time to do the work we need to do.

It’s kind of amazing.  I’m fully invested in the culture, and so is pretty much every other adult in the building.  We all truly believe that our students can do great things and that our systems and culture are instrumental in helping them do those things.  I didn’t use those systems well last year; I wasn’t sure how to or if they really worked.  This year I have proof that they do, and that they lead to student achievement in ways that drill-and-kill test prep never can.

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by rachelheather on September 10, 2012  •  Permalink
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Why Today Will Be Awesome

Photo Credit: Selena N. B. H. (Creative Commons)

Today will be awesome because I have decided that today will be awesome.  The power of positive thinking right?

I was supposed to spend an hour writing this morning, but because I’m a genius I forgot to reset my alarm to 4:15am from my Sunday wake-up time of 7:15am.  Thankfully, God is awesome, and woke me up with only my cell phone alarm, which is not something that usually happens.  I hit snooze more times than normal because I wasn’t having to walk across the room to do so, though, so I’m running a little late this morning.

Because of that, and because I have decided that today will be awesome, here are some things that are awesome:

1. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is awesome.  I mean, seriously, who saw this guy coming?  I saw Premium Rush on Saturday, which was pretty fantastic.  Then Saturday night I watched Brick, a high school film noir which has been in my Netflix queue for forever.  Yesterday I watched 10 Things I Hate About You, which is still one of my absolute favorite movies.  Watching Joseph Gordon-Levitt in that and realizing that he’s become this huge star is kind of mind-boggling.

2. Cooler weather is awesome.  Yesterday was pretty warm, but the evenings and mornings here have been super pleasant recently.  Normally August is pretty miserable, but fall has been in the air the past week or so, even if lots of humidity is still in the air too.

3. Short stories are awesome.  I get to read “The Most Dangerous Game” with my 9th graders this week and “The Monkey’s Paw” with my 8th graders.  Hooray for crazy generals who hunt people and wishes with horrible consequences!

4. My coworkers are awesome.  Seriously, I work with some of the best people ever.  This can actually be a problem sometimes, because I get caught in conversations after school instead of getting work done.  Oops.  Totally worth it, though.

5. Coffee is awesome.  Numerous times I’ve thought that I should stop drinking coffee for awhile, since I’m completely addicted to caffeine.  I thought about trying not to drink any this summer, but it’s just so dang delicious.  I should be drinking water in the mornings instead of so much coffee, but whatever.

Well, my phone has informed me that is time to get dressed and ready for work, so I have to stop listing awesome things now.  If you need more convincing to make your Monday awesome (it’s hard…Mondays are so not awesome), check out 1000 Awesome Things.

*Photo Credit: Selena N. B. H. (Creative Commons)

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by rachelheather on August 27, 2012  •  Permalink
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Why I Miss Summer Already

I’m trying very hard to have my desk not look like this. I’m succeeding more at work than at home. Photo Credit: Karl Sinfield (Creative Commons)

I love my job.  I really do.  Being back at work the past few weeks and having students in my room since last Monday has reminded me that I do actually enjoy teaching, even though I may not love all the planning and set up work that has to go along with it.

And yet when it was time to leave yesterday at 6:30am, my loudest thought was “I miss summer.”  Or more accurately, as I was telling some friends at lunch yesterday, I miss who I was in the summer.  I managed to actually achieve some sort of balance this summer: I would read, I would write, I would watch Netflix, I would go to the gym, I would run errands, all those things normal people seem to manage to do along with their jobs.  And it was fantastic.

But now that teacher-Rachel is in control, it seems like all the other parts of me have withered and died, especially writer-Rachel.  I keep telling myself that this is just normal beginning-of-year-busyness, but I’m not all that confident that it is.  A lot of the things that are keeping me at school late this week are things that I will have to do week in and week out – grading, lesson plans, parent contacts, making copies, etc.  And even though I’ve been doing things early and trying to get ahead, I still feel like I’m behind.

I don’t want writer-Rachel to wither and die.  I woke up at 4:15 this morning because I want to time to write and think and I know I won’t do it after school.  But even with that, I find myself staring at a blinking cursor, with not much to say.  It requires more effort than usual to string these few sentences together because the words and phrases just will not come.  I write a sentence, drink some coffee, take a bite of oatmeal, and try to write another sentence.  A month ago, this post would be 800 words long already and my coffee would be getting cold.

Other teachers have lives outside of school.  They have relationships and spouses and children and hobbies and social lives.  People with other types of time-consuming jobs have those things too.  How do they do that?  Is there some secret to adult life that I haven’t been able to discover?  Or is real life just like high school, where I think everyone else has it figured out, but we’re all just faking it?

*Photo Credit: Karl Sinfield (Creative Commons)

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by rachelheather on August 22, 2012  •  Permalink
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Why I Started a New Morning Routine

Photo Credit: l.ili.an (Creative Commons)

Last week I was inspired by Jeff Goins (and the other people he linked to) to create a morning routine.  Now, I have had a morning routine for the past couple years, but it wasn’t exactly a purposeful one.  Most days it consisted of hitting the snooze button too many times, stumbling to the coffee maker, making my Powerpoints for the day, wasting time on the internet, and then throwing on something that was at least semi-professional and heading off to work.

This worked fine, but after reading Jeff’s post, I decided to give a more structured, purposeful morning routine a try.  One of the themes rolling around in the back of my head for this year is using time more wisely.  That theme has popped up at work (my first batch of assignments was completed a day early, even though it required working on Friday and Saturday night) and on #SheReadsTruth (we’re going through Proverbs this month) and now I’m trying to implement it in my personal life.

Even though I’ve never really been a morning person, I cannot deny that it’s easier to get things done earlier in the day, before my brain gets fried.  I really enjoyed the first few hours of the day this summer when I would have time to read my Bible and drink my coffee and write.  Of course, my days then usually started around the same time I’m starting class now, but many people have proved that you can train yourself to be a morning person.  I’ve already somewhat done that anyway, considering college-Rachel though 7am was really early; now it’s just a matter of shifting things a bit earlier.

So here’s what the new routine looks like on an ideal week:

4-4:15am: Wake up

I am trying to not hit snooze, but I don’t really trust myself yet, so my phone does a preliminary wake up at 4, while my main alarm across the room goes off at 4:15.

4:15-4:30am: Make breakfast/coffee

I only get coffee on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, but I make sure to have either eggs or oatmeal every morning (sometimes both).  I’m still moving pretty slowly at this point, plus letting Lucy out and feeding her, so this actually takes 15 minutes.

4:30-5am: Quiet Time

This is when I eat my breakfast and read my Bible.  I’m starting to get to the point where it feels strange if I miss a day.  Woohoo!

5am-6am: Writing/Exercise

This part of the morning looks different depending on the day of the week.  I’d love to exercise and write every day of the week, but then I would have to wake up at 3am and that’s just ridiculous.  So on Mondays and Wednesdays I write for an hour.  It can be a blog post, or journalling, or something that will hopefully eventually turn into a book; it doesn’t matter what it is as long as I’m spending that time writing.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I do my Couch to 5K program (which is much harder to do in my neighborhood, with it’s cracked sidewalks and steady inclines, than it is on the flat treadmill) and then shower.  I don’t have time to drink coffee on these days, and I’ve found that drinking coffee before running is a bad idea anyway, but I haven’t suffered from caffeine withdrawal so far, so I think I’ll survive.

On Fridays none of this applies because I have small group on Thursday nights and we’re not starting until 8pm this year so the couples can have dinner with their spouse and put the kids to bed before our meeting.  Friday mornings are going to be interesting…

6-6:30am: Get Ready

I get dressed, make my hair look at least somewhat presentable, make sure my lunch is ready to go (I’m trying to put it together in the evening, but that doesn’t always happen), and head off to work by 6:30am.  I won’t always have to leave that early, but I have breakfast duty this month, so I like to be in my classroom by 6:45 to give me a chance to make sure I have everything set up and ready to go.  I’m trying to do more of that stuff in the afternoons before I leave, but I get nervous if I don’t have that time in the classroom before students show up.

So there it is.  A bit ridiculous, no?  The early wake up means I’m going to bed between 8:30 and 9pm every night, which I know is going to be more and more of a challenge.  I didn’t quite succeed in sticking to this every day last week, but I was close.  The hardest part was when I was working until 6 or 7, and then had to be in bed by 9.  It made it feel like all I was doing was working, but I know once the year gets up and running I won’t have to work that late very often.

And based on the days I did stick to it, I think I’ll come to enjoy the routing.  It was so nice to come home from work and know that I can waste time on the internet or watch Netflix for a while without feeling guilty because I got the important things done early in the day.

*Photo Credit: l.ili.an (Creative Commons)

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by rachelheather on August 20, 2012  •  Permalink
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Why I Might Go Missing for a Bit

Photo Credit: Lali Masriera (Creative Commons)

Thanks so much for all the birthday wishes yesterday!  I’m sorry I didn’t respond to each comment individually, but I was working pretty much from 9am to 8pm because of registration so I didn’t really have a chance.

Today is the last official day of in-service before school starts on Monday and it’s just a work day.  The school will be open tomorrow as well and I’m hoping that between those two full days I can get everything finished and not have to work on Sunday.  I’m not super optimistic about that though; I still I have a lot to do.

And that’s a big part of why I may go missing for a bit.  I’d love to say that even in the midst of first week of school craziness that I will make writing a priority and have sparkling, insightful posts for you to read every day, but let’s be honest: that’s not going to happen.  I mean, this week was only in-service and I missed Wednesday and wasn’t exactly sparkling the rest of the time.  Maybe I should become a vampire…then I could sparkle.  Ok, see, this is why I don’t write things when my brain is preoccupied with other activities…it just comes out nonsense.

Anyway.  Chances are I won’t be posting anything next week, but I will definitely be making note of any funny stories or particular insights so that I can share them with you when I return the second week of school.  And I will return!  No falling of the face of the blog earth this year.

Have a fantastic Friday and a wonderful weekend and I will see you back here on or before August 20th…hopefully before  :)

*Photo Credit: Lali Masriera (Creative Commons)

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by rachelheather on August 10, 2012  •  Permalink
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Why I Like Birthdays

Today is my 26th birthday.

I like birthdays.  It’s fun to receive gifts and phone calls and texts.  It’s cool to open Facebook and see tons of notifications (even if most of those people don’t ever say anything to you the rest of the year).  It’s lovely to eat a cupcake and not feel guilty because, hey, it’s my birthday.

But more than that, I like birthdays because they are another opportunity for a fresh start.

I like fresh starts.  I like new years and new school years.  I like when everything seems to hit reset and you get another chance to fix mistakes and change your path.  It’s a time full of optimism and idealism and ridiculously high expectations; it rarely lasts, but it’s fun while it’s there.

As many of you know, 25 was a tough year.  Here are some ways I’m planning to make 26 better (while also acknowledging that a lot of things are not actually in my control):

1. One thing at a time – This mostly has to do with school.  So far this year, I am doing my best to focus on one thing at a time, starting with the most important.  This is difficult when that one thing is taking me a lot longer than expected and other things keep getting added to my to-do list, but I know it will be worth it in the long run.  Setting up my classroom would be great, but making sure I have a firm understanding of what my students need to accomplish this year and how we are going to get there is foundational.

2. Multitask – Ok, this seems contradictory to #1, but I don’t mean it in the traditional sense.  By multitasking, I mean I want to do things other than just work.  I do not want to be a teacher zombie again this year.  I like the person I am when I am not completely defined by my job.  So I will write.  I will hang out with friends.  I will go to Sunday night dinner even when I’m tired and don’t feel like being around people (I will leave at a decent time though…as in, not midnight, which is when I left two weeks ago).  I will read books for fun.  I will work out.  My life will be multifaceted.

3. Give myself grace – This is a big one for me.  Over and over again during morning devotions at in-service, I was reminded that my worth comes from my identity in Christ, not my performance as a teacher. (Side note: we had morning devotions every day at in-service, and they were awesome.  How am I so blessed?)  I am going to mess up.  I am going to have bad days.  I’m going to procrastinate.  I’ll probably turn something in late at least once this year.  But you know what’s awesome?  God’s mercies are new every morning.  I don’t have to wait for a birthday or a new year to get a fresh start; I have one every morning.  Now I just need to remember that.

So there it is!  Here’s to a fabulous 26th year of life!

*Photo Credit: Aih (Creative Commons)

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by rachelheather on August 9, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by rachelheather on August 9, 2012

http://rachelheather.wordpress.com/2012/08/09/why-i-like-birthdays/

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