Teacher Batteries

We are all looking forward to the Memorial Day holiday. We need some time off from school work and being cooped up in classrooms on these warm spring days. The teachers need a break from their students and the students need a break from their teacher and each other. Spring brings up the sap in plants and trees and it brings up the sap in people too, especially young people. They have more energy and you know - you just know - that once summer comes, that sap is going to convert itself into a growth spurt. It has already begun. Boys whose trousers were the right length when school began are now sporting the high water pants look and their bony wrists extend beyond their long sleeves.

I remember sitting in my classroom in Maine with the windows open and the gentle, warm breezes embracing me in my desk, beckoning me to come outside to stretch my legs running and scream the pent-up energy out of my lungs on the playground. Glorious sunny days with clear blue skies enticed my mind to dream of anything but the spelling words and math problems in front of me - all I could think of was playing, playing, and more playing. We boys came back to the classroom, our hair plastered to our hands with sweat, our shirts untucked, our palms and knees scraped and bleeding, our faces red from joyous exertion. How our teacher managed to stay sane until the third week of June astonishes me.

People who are not teachers or not married to teachers don't realize how important a day - or a couple of months - off for a classroom teacher. If teachers were cell phones, they would all be beeping right now, because their batteries are so low and need recharging. Our teachers are blessed in that they finish the school year, have a week to collapse, and then a week of convention to revive through the life of the Body of Christ.

If you see a teacher, make sure you take time to thank, to edify, to encourage, or, if nothing else, to pray for him or her. I wish I had the resources to send them all off on a cruise or somewhere away from it all to be pampered. Probably I will just end up buying them lunch on the last day of their school year, June 10th. It's the least I can do and also the most I can afford, though they all deserve more. I'm counting on God to bless them in all the ways I cannot.

Beep! Beep! Beep! I think I hear a battery running down...