Since seven (yes, 7!) of our immediate family members have December birthdays, our “season” starts a little earlier than most. We have said for years that we start partying on Thanksgiving and finish on New Year’s Day. This year is no different. The birthday gifts are all but purchased, at least one package has been shipped, and our our living room is staged with “gifts in process” for both birthdays and Christmas so that we don’t miss anyone.
And each morning, I leave my comfortable home that is well-stocked with food, clothing, and this somewhat moderate collection of gifts, cross 28 miles of metro Detroit, pull into a disintegrating parking lot, enter the building, and prepare to meet the reality of the students that I serve.
Today’s reality came in the form of Kaden*, one of my seniors. I was in the gym when he entered from the bus, scowling.
“Good morning, Kaden. Everything ok?”
“I don’t know why we had school today. I almost froze to death.”
“Hey, come here a minute. You only have on a hoodie. Do you need a coat?”
“I mean, I have a coat,” his demeanor was shifting, “we just don’t have a washing machine right now, so I can’t wash it.”
“Ok, but we have coats. I can get you one this morning. Would you be good with that?”
“Yeah, that would be good. I would take a coat.”
Later in the day, I found him, we walked to our clothing closet, and he chose one of several new coats that remained from a large donation we received last year.
We have a fairly decent supply in that closet — coats, shirts, hats, and some miscellaneous toiletries and nonperishable food items — but it goes away quickly because our students are continuously in need of something.
Each day I am asked if I have something to eat — often by students I’ve never even had in class. I try to always say yes and walk students to my stash where they can select a granola bar, some trail mix, or a package of cheese crackers. Most teachers of teenagers probably have a similar routine.
I also get requests for deodorant, for socks, for cough drops, band aids, a toothbrush, or a safety pin — again pretty typical requests for teenagers, and fairly easy to accommodate. These small items solve in-the-moment problems for my students and allow them to get back to learning. I have a pretty healthy stash that many in my village help keep stocked, but when the holiday season comes around, the depth of my students’ need comes into sharp focus.
Before coming to this school, I’d never met families who simply “don’t do Christmas” but here I have met many students for whom December 25 is just another day because their families simply don’t have the financial capacity to purchase anything extra, let alone the privilege many of us have to line their living rooms with gifts, to create an elaborate feast, to deck the halls, and to gather with friends and family.
I have students who are housing insecure — one young woman whose mother died during Covid and who is currently carrying her possessions with her and bouncing between two places to “find a place to sleep”. I have students whose families bounce from apartment to apartment — one young man I spoke to yesterday said “we are definitely moving in a couple of weeks, but I don’t know where yet.” We have families who don’t have reliable transportation — who can’t join the basketball team because they don’t have a ride home after practice and have to take the school bus that leaves at 3:15. I have students who, in addition to coming to school, work to help their parents pay the bills. I have a senior whose very demeanor and aptitude scream “engineer” who is in the manager training program at McDonald’s. He often closes the store and does inventory or other related tasks that keep him up well into the night rendering him incapable of staying awake in school the next day. He’s working this hard, yet he is wearing the same worn clothes and shoes I’ve been seeing him wear since I’ve known him, which is most of high school.
Our students and their families are barely getting by. How in the world can they dream of doing anything for Christmas?
Yet these students keep showing up. They come to school, they log onto their school-issued chromebooks, they complete independent modules to earn their financial literacy credit, they come to my class, bend over their notebooks scrawling out the purpose and audience for their next essay, practice the nuance of Standard Academic English while teaching their middle-aged English teacher the current vernacular. They have big dreams — of being nurses and engineers and game designers and ultrasound technicians — and they need a whole village to rise up around them to give those dreams every chance at reality.
I’m part of their village, and I’m raising my voice to invite you to be part of their village with me.
School leaders have selected nine families who are in dire need of support this holiday season. Because it is already December 6, and we have to get items to our students before they leave for break on December 20, we won’t be filling traditional wish lists. Instead, we have set a goal of giving each of these 9 families one grocery gift card, one department store (Target or Kohl’s) gift card, and one gas gift card. Additionally, I have created an Amazon wish list of items that our students frequently request.
Joining this initiative may be a small part of your holiday giving, but it could make all the difference for a struggling family — it could help them put food in the fridge, buy some new jeans for a child, and put gas in their car so that they can visit a friend. It won’t change their whole world, but it might just change their opinion about the people in it.
All of us have many opportunities to give at Christmas. If caring for my students in Detroit is something you are interested in doing, I invite you to check out that Amazon wish list or to make a donation to our gift card initiative. To do that, you can send a check to Detroit Leadership Academy, 5845 Auburn Street, Detroit, MI 48228 or donate via CashApp.
so in Christ we …form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift … is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; 8 if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously. Romans 12: 5-8, selected portions
I’m getting ready to head to the polls this morning like I have in every presidential election since 1984. My practices have shifted quite a bit since those early years. I wrote about it in 2020, and I’m re-posting it here now.
In the house I grew up in, we didn’t talk politics. I knew who the president was, and I knew I should exercise my civic duty and vote, but other than my fifth grade teacher strongly extolling the merits of then-candidate Jimmy Carter, I didn’t know that people held strong opinions about elections or politics.
I was a white girl in middle America, the world was working pretty well for me, and nobody told me I should feel differently.
When I recently watched Mrs. America, a re-telling of the early failed attempts to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s, I was startled to realize that my family and my community had indeed been political in that they had believed an ideology and pushed to maintain a reality that worked for them, even if they didn’t consciously acknowledge or care to discuss it.
I believed from a young age that “those women” who were fighting for the ERA were bra-burning radicals who were bent on destroying Christian values. They were going to destroy the family as we knew it. No one in my family actually said this out loud, but I know I received that message, because as I watched the series, I was transported back in time to interrogate those beliefs and compare them with what I feel strongly about now.
I’ve been doing that a lot in recent years — interrogating firmly held beliefs. As the president’s nominee for Supreme Court Justice awaits a politically-charged confirmation, I find myself looking back on how I became a one-issue voter and how I walked away from that practice.
I remember voting for the first time as a freshman at Michigan State University in 1984. I walked to the neighboring dorm and cast my vote to re-elect President Reagan. It seemed the obvious choice. I’d watched the footage of him being shot as he was climbing into his vehicle, secret service agents swooping in to move him to safety. He’d survived that and resumed his duties. Why wouldn’t I vote to let him continue doing so? I was 18, what did I know?
I don’t think I voted in 1988. I was registered to vote in Michigan and student teaching in Indiana. I probably assumed the vote would do just fine without me for one cycle. I had more important tasks on my list.
In 1992, my husband and I bent over the Sunday newspaper the week before the presidential election, sorting through pages of charts to find the candidates and proposals we would be voting on. We read, discussed, and began our tradition of creating a “cheat sheet” to carry with us to the polls. Sorting through a sea of candidates, many of whom we did not know, we made a decision, as professional church workers in a conservative denomination, that we would vote for candidates who were pro-life.
Our decision to reduce complex candidates and platforms down to one issue speaks perhaps to our trust in our denominational leadership and our commitment to our duty as leaders in that denomination. That commitment to duty convinced me that we had to get things ‘right’. We had to vote the right way, parent the right way, lead the right way, and live the right way.
This whole-hearted commitment to being right made me very judgmental of those who I believed to be wrong. I was not afraid to speak out if I thought someone was going the wrong way or to impose my beliefs on others.
For example, I believed Halloween was decidedly anti-Christian. I was sure to let other parents know that if they allowed their children to participate they weren’t being very good parents. (Yeah, I was pretty fun to be around all of October.)
Similarly, I was firm in my pro-life commitment, so when my husband and I joined our church community to stand on the side of the street and hold signs and pray to end abortion, it seemed fitting that our children should join us, too. And, we continued to vote based on that one issue through many local and national elections.
The intention was good — I stand by that. We believe that life begins at conception, and to turn our backs on the unborn seemed unconscionable. But, just like the ideologies around feminism that my family and community held in my childhood, this belief — that voting for candidates who claimed to be pro-life was an imperative of our Christian faith — needed to be interrogated.
For one, just because a political candidate says he or she stands for something, does not mean that policy will be impacted. Some would wave a banner high just to get a vote.
Also, platforms can be misleading. A candidate may say she is pro-life when talking about abortion, but if she is also pro-NRA, is she actually pro-life? If she believes that American citizens have the right to own semi-automatic weapons, the likes of which have been used in many mass shootings in recent years, is she really concerned about the value of life? Many pro-life politicians have failed in recent months to enact legislation to provide life-sustaining relief to those who have been financially devastated by the pandemic and who are desperate for housing, food, and medical care.
What is our definition of pro-life, anyway?
And then there’s the actual issue of abortion.
I was nine months pregnant with my first daughter, when my in-laws joined us at our place to celebrate Thanksgiving. I sat across the table from my father-in-law, digesting turkey and potatoes, when the topic of abortion came up. I was poised for a fight, to stand firmly on my belief that abortion was wrong, but then he complicated the issue for me. He said, “It’s great to want to stop abortion, but once we protect that unborn child, who will be willing to provide for it? Who will care for the mother? Who’s going to fund that? Are we ready to really be pro-life?”
That conversation has stuck with me for almost 28 years. For many of those years, we continued our one-issue voting strategy, believing ourselves to be right.
But here’s the thing with believing you’re right — you often discover that you are wrong.
You might firmly instill in your children the belief that abortion is wrong, that they should save sex for marriage, and that sexual purity is highly valued by the family and the church, and leave no room for scenarios that you never would have expected.
You might discover that someone you love has been sexually assaulted and is afraid to let you know because you might not value them as much — you might find them broken.
Will they come to you? Will they trust you to have compassion? Will they believe that you love them more than your firmly held beliefs? Or will they feel alone?
You might discover that someone you love has had an abortion. Will they feel judged by you (and by God)? Will they find acceptance and grace?
What is our goal as Christians who vote pro-life? If Roe v. Wade is overturned, will the gospel of Christ be advanced? If in trying to achieve that goal, we find ourselves name-calling and shaming those around us, have we demonstrated the love of Christ, whose name we bear?
Is outlawing abortion the only way to value life? Or is it merely relegating the practice to secrecy where it will be unregulated, dangerous, and further demonized?
For most of my life, I have tried to get it right, but what if I admitted that I’ve gotten so much wrong? What if I acknowledged that I am sorely in need of grace?
What if rather than teaching my children that they’d better get it all right, I ensured them that I’d be with them when it inevitably goes wrong.
Several elections back, I stopped being a one-issue candidate. I found myself taking a long look at the complexity of our society, seeing all of its brokenness, examining the faulty options set in front of me, having complicated discussions with people who matter to me, weighing the options thoroughly, and voting as though I cared not only for the unborn, not only for myself, but also for those who have repeatedly and historically been overlooked, mistreated, marginalized, and forgotten.
I can no longer vote for a candidate who waves the pro-life flag with one hand while using the other to give the finger to millions of already-born humans who long for equality, justice, and a chance to breathe freely.
More than one issue is at stake in this election.
I plan to vote as though I know that.
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2)
I wish I had a documentary film crew that had followed me over the last 30 plus days, because there is no way I can adequately communicate the amount of training, preparation, planning, sweat equity, and problem-solving I have witnessed and participated in to prepare for this the school year. Nor could I paint a full picture of the first interactions my team and I have had with our students as they have returned to our building over the last week. How could I ever show what I’ve seen with nuance and love and candor? And what is my point in doing so, anyway?
My point, I think, is that I want to both process what I’m experiencing and also share my experience — the ways that my lived reality continues to shape my thinking around education [and educational inequity] and how that thinking connects to my life as a believer in the power of the grace of God to transform lives.
The last thirty days or more has been powered by that belief. I didn’t return to work on July 31 to maintain the status quo. No. I returned with my leadership team a month before my students because this team actually has as one of its core values to be transformative. We all choose to stay with this organization because we believe that the status quo is perpetuating inequitable practices that limit the opportunities for our students and other students in communities across the country. We spent the past month reviewing the data from the past few years that shows us how far we have yet to go to close learning gaps caused by these inequities, situating ourselves within our teaching framework, building strong relationships with one another, and managing the unexpected.
I want to share a glimpse at the intentionality that goes into such work but also to show all the pivots that have to be made to function within and reform a structure that is inherently broken — kind of like trying to re-tool a machine that is continuously in production. The whole works can’t be shut down so that we can fix it. We’ve got to fix it while it’s running.
So I am going to scroll back through my mental camera roll and share a few images to show what this looks like.
In one shot, the teaching staff gathers on their first day together after the summer break. They are munching on breakfast snacks, hugging, laughing, sharing vacation stories, then finding their seats to hear network-wide updates: the fact that student phones will be “away for the day” — collected in the morning at arrival and returned to students right before dismissal — and the “new” dress expectations that students will wear school colors every day — a return to pre-Covid expectations with no hoodies, no hats, no pajama pants, no house shoes. Then, when the large group breaks into smaller teams, our high school teachers hear from our new principal who was once a teacher and then a coach in our building. She shares her vision for the school year — we will activate excellence in all that we do, holding ourselves and our students to a high bar from day one.
I’m seeing our staff show up the Thursday before school starts, many quite early in the morning, to put last minute touches on classrooms and hallways before families start arriving to pick up class schedules, sign up for transportation, obtain supplies and a free haircut, and reconnect with school life. Teachers call students by name, often running to wrap them in hugs. Students, in loud smiling groups, walk through the hallways, fist-bumping, hand-shaking, and laughing.
I’m picturing the hot, sticky day I showed up at our building almost a month ago, dressed fairly professionally because my principal and I were scheduled to interview a teaching candidate. We met to discuss which questions we each would ask and then chatted about other building-related issues while we waited. The time for the interview arrived and passed — still no candidate. Eventually, HR informed us that our candidate was no longer coming. This happened over and over this past summer. It would have been a mere frustration if we eventually found all the staff we needed to fill our classrooms. Unfortunately, it became a necessary pivot point when we realized we would start the school year three teachers short.
Pivot we did. In the last days before school started, we enlisted two ancillary staff to facilitate two classrooms where students will receive instruction in math and science via live online instruction over zoom. We also persuaded a paraprofessional to teach freshman English Language Arts each morning in the same classroom where I will teach two sections of senior ELA in the afternoon [in addition to my instructional coach duties]. In this way, all classrooms are “covered” until we can find certified teachers to add to our team.
The next shot in my camera roll is of students reluctantly turning in their phones in the morning (while some sneakily hide theirs on their person claiming, “I didn’t bring my phone today”).
Another is students struggling to know what to do with their hands, asking frequently what time it is, and clamoring to be first in line when the phones are returned at the end of the day.
In between those two scenes, I’m seeing students attend more to learning. I’m watching them find ways to talk to their classmates at lunch. I’m noticing frustration, resignation, and adaptation. And, I’m also noticing some who are not adapting — they are choosing to transfer to another school, to move to our self-paced online platform that will allow them to earn high school credits from home, or they are staying in the building and acting out. And we’re finding ways to manage each of those scenarios, too.
I’m seeing first-week fatigue — emotional outbursts, heads on desks, and students walking slowly to their busses at the end of the day, but I’m also seeing excitement — when the principal provides teachers with new t-shirts and free lunch on the first Friday, when the football team and cheerleaders wear jerseys for their first game, when the stands at the game are full of staff, students, and families [is it possible that they’ve never been this full before?]. I’m seeing our cheerleaders looking sharp and our team bringing home a win.
I’m remembering the one fight I heard in the hallway outside my room at the end of day two, but I’m also thinking about the three students who were brave enough to demonstrate their singing ability in my class while the rest of the room [instead of jeering or laughing] snapped and clapped along in support.
We aren’t fully staffed, we’ve got a busted up parking lot, lunch doesn’t always arrive on time, and next week our classrooms are going to be uncomfortably warm, but I’ve got a good feeling about this year — about the students who are showing up every day, about little [and big] moments of excellence, and about a front row seat to transformation.
I’ll try to share more snapshots with you along the way.
If you are interested in supporting the work that we do at Detroit Leadership Academy, check out my wishlist.
It’s been a politically charged few weeks — an assassination attempt on a former president followed by the Republican National Convention followed by the withdrawal of the current president from the presidential race followed by the nomination for president of the first women of color ever followed by the Democratic National Convention.
If you missed any of that, you certainly have not been on the Internet.
The country is fully engaged (at least virtually) in the conversation around who will be our next president. I’ve seen mentions on my social media streams supporting Trump, others supporting Harris, others bashing Trump, others bashing Harris. This seems to be the way we do politics in America now. It can leave a girl feeling a little icky, if I’m going to be honest.
I sat down the last two mornings with my journal to do some processing around where I am in this conversation and it turned into a recounting of where I started as a voter, where I am now, and why. When I finished with my journal, I intended to write a post called “Evolution of a Voter”, but before I did, I did a quick search of previous posts to see if I had ever written about voting, and boy was I shocked! Almost everything I had written in my journal yesterday and today I’d already written before the election in 2020, and I’d even called it “Evolution of a Voter”!
I read it through and thought, “wait, has my view expanded at all since that time? Has anything shifted further?”
And I think the main thing that has become more a part of my everyday life since 2020 is a deeper commitment to doing something.
For a long time, I was a citizen who voted. And, full-disclosure, I voted almost exclusively pro-life. Other than that, I carried on with my life not really making the connection between what I do with my time and my money and how those choices impacted those in my community. Politics seemed very removed from my daily reality. I voted in every regular election and typically even primaries, but I was not making intentional moves that aligned with my vote, other than to once a year attend a pro-life march in my community.
It was probably in my graduate studies from 2002-2004 when I began to question some of the choices I was making. I started to dig into my motives and to begin to understand the impact of my actions. For example, our decision to place our children in parochial schools was intended to “bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4), but an unintended consequence was that they were isolated from children from different backgrounds — not only religious, but socioeconomic, racial, and cultural. We wanted our children to be raised in the Christian faith, but we also wanted them to have a diverse group of friends. We wanted to have a diverse group of friends. Our choice to work for the church and send our children to a Christian school was keeping us in a silo, oblivious to the complexity around us.
Our move to St. Louis in 2004, where our children attended public schools — both in an affluent suburb and in the city of St. Louis itself — and also two parochial schools, and where I taught in the St. Louis Public Schools and then a racially diverse suburban Lutheran high school, exposed us all to more complexity — a broader view of the culture within which we lived. We regularly interacted with Christians, Jews, and people of other faiths or no faith tradition at all. We had friends, classmates, and colleagues who were white, Black, Hispanic, and Asian. We encountered people who were in the top 1% financially and those who struggled to feed themselves from day to day. Our church was attended mostly by white people who drove in from neighboring suburbs to the mostly Black neighborhood in which both our home and the church were situated.
Our ten years in St. Louis were transformative. If we had once been siloed, we no longer were. We regularly witnessed financial and racial disparity and the ways in which those disparities were tied to education, health care, crime, and the general quality of life.
That exposure and my current role teaching in Detroit and residing in Ypsilanti have broadened my view of the sanctity of life. If all life is holy, why are some lives devalued and others elevated? And why are those valuations tied to income, race, education, and gender? I’ve come to the conclusion that the best way I can continue to vote “PRO-life” is to get behind candidates that support ALL life.
Now, I hear some of you shouting at me, “What about the lives of the unborn? They can’t speak for themselves! We must speak for them!”
Well…
First, we must speak up for ALL of those whose voices cannot currently be heard — the orphan, the widow, the sojourner (Deuteronomy 14:29) — but also the immigrant, the child in foster care, the homeless, and the felons who are no longer able to vote.
But also, outlawing abortion doesn’t necessarily protect the unborn, in fact, since the Dobbs Decision which overturned Roe v. Wade, abortions in this country have actually increased (source). I suspect a better way to decrease the number of women who obtain abortions, 75% of whom are low income (source) is to do a better job of providing sex education, affordable (or free) mental health care, affordable (or free) child care, and other resources such as paid maternity leave.
If the goal is demonstrating that every life has value, perhaps simply voting pro-life isn’t the best strategy.
Maybe we need to go beyond voting to taking action. Some donate to a local food bank, to women’s shelters, or to pregnancy clinics, and that’s a great start! I wonder what is next. Are any of us committed enough to valuing the lives of others that we might be willing to advocate for policy change, to participate in a demonstration, or to write a member of congress? Even more, are we willing to engage with communities of need, to come alongside those who can’t find affordable housing, who struggle to put food on the table, or who can’t go to work because they can’t afford child care?
I’m wondering if we are willing to go beyond disparaging remarks on social media to actually doing something with our money, our time, and our lives.
I’m just wondering. I’m not doing a great job at the moment. I’m not really going out of my way.
I vote, of course, and we’re making contributions to support our preferred candidates and their initiatives, but I think its time to look for ways to increase my political engagement, my activism, my involvement in the community that might demonstrate my belief that ALL life is valuable.
It’s a little scary. Most things worth doing are.
Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Proverbs 31:8
On Monday I wrote a post about inequity in schools. It’s not the first time. In the fall of 2020, I wrote a piece called “What World Are We Living In” when I first started commuting from Ann Arbor to Detroit to teach in a small charter school and began to daily witness the disparity between the two communities. In the spring of 2023, I wrote the following after a day spent in a suburban school district. I’m posting it again because I’ve spent the last three weeks facing the realities of life in my school — inadequate staffing, building issues, and a paucity of resources — and I feel compelled to share these realities and to call for change.
Last Wednesday, instead of driving to Detroit first thing in the morning, I drove to Oakland County to participate in a day of professional development along with a dozen other teachers who use the Adolescent Accelerated Reading Intervention. I’ve been using the program for a little over a semester with great results, but I have been aware that I might not be crossing all my t’s and dotting all my i’s. Having the opportunity to be a fly on the wall of two separate classrooms as other teachers implemented this intervention would hopefully help me see what I’ve been missing.
The beginning of my commute looked largely the same as it does on my daily trip to Detroit — interstate highway merging onto surface streets. However, I noted that while my regular route takes me past fast food, gas stations, minimarts, and older working class neighborhoods, this route into Oakland County took me past Starbucks, Trader Joes, and nicer restaurants before it led me through residential sections with large suburban homes. And then, when I took the final turn, I saw the school where I would begin the day.
It was a sprawling two-story building on a large piece of property surrounded by multiple well-lit and freshly-lined parking lots. I found a spot, grabbed my stuff, and made my way to the guest entrance at the front of the building. I approached a door, pushed a button, and looked into the camera before I was buzzed in to a glass-enclosed foyer.
There, a staff member looked me over and buzzed me through the second door. She knew why I was there and directed me to room “two-oh-something or other”.
“Which way is that?” I asked.
“Up those stairs and follow the signs.”
I walked up the open carpeted stairway in the expansive atrium to the second floor, also carpeted, and found the group of teachers already in conversation.
They sat in a semicircle in the [also] carpeted classroom. I found a seat in the back of the room in a bar stool height chair next to a tall table. The students had not yet arrived, and the teachers were discussing what was on the agenda for the class this day — one of the final steps of reading a book in the AARI program, mapping the text.
I heard the bell ring in the hallway, and the students started coming in, finding their resources in a strategically placed filing system, then making their way to the table where I was sitting. I relocated myself and began to observe.
Right away I noticed a t I hadn’t been crossing when I looked at the big piece of butcher paper where they had started their text map. My students and I had mapped our own text the day before, and it looked somewhat similar to, if noticeably messier than, the one I was looking at, but there was one big difference — ours was written all in black on white paper. The map in this classroom was color-coded to illustrate its organization — sections of the book written in sequential order were outlined in pink, those written in a compare/contrast format were outlined in green, etc. I mentally thunked my forehead with my palm and said, “the colors! why do I always forget the colors!” And then I noticed the posters hung on the wall in this spacious classroom. At both the front and the back of the room, the teacher had full-color posters representing each of the eight text structures. Oh, I’d like to have those, I thought. If I had full color posters in my classroom instead of the black-and-white print outs I have, I might remember to use the color coding system!
One teacher asked, “Where did you get the posters?”
“Oh, I just printed them on our poster printer!”
Oh, I thought, they have a poster printer.
The class functioned mostly as my class does. The teacher had seven students around the table; one was absent. I have ten on my roster right now; typically one is absent. She used the socratic questioning that I use, and her students engaged as much as mine do, if slightly more politely, but then again, when I had a guest in my room last semester, my students were on their A game, too.
The second building was a literal carbon copy of the first, down to the same double buzzered entryway and carpeted stairs. We gathered in a classroom that “isn’t currently being utilized” where we found flexible seating — restaurant like booths, chairs on wheels at tables, and the one I chose, a rocking pod-like chair, where I noticed I could quietly shift my weight and stay better engaged in the discussion we were having before our second observation. Wow, I thought, I have some students who would benefit from chairs like these.
When the bell rang, we walked down the hall where our second teacher met us at the door and invited us first into her classroom and then across the hall to another room that “isn’t currently being utilized” so that she and her students could map their text.
Like me, she had a projection system where she displayed a slide that she used for her gathering — the time when we engage with our students to set the climate and build community. Her students were seated, much like mine are, around the room at desks. The difference I saw was, again, the carpeted floor, the colorful text-structure posters, and stacks of resources in every corner of the room.
In the room across the hall, we again found flexible seating — bar-height chairs with optional attached desks, lower seats on wheels, and one other form of desk-like seating. Again, full-color posters on the wall illustrating each of the text structures and some key questions to ask during the AARI process.
The students again were on their A-game, and I wondered if that was the case every day, even when they didn’t have a dozen teacher-y observers. I mean, what would get in the way of their learning in an environment like this?
As I drove home, I continued wondering, why do these schools look so different from my school? Why do students in Oakland County walk into a brand spanking new building every morning, pick what kind of chair works best for them, experience the warmth of carpeting, the advantage of full-color visual aids, and, when it’s hot outside, the benefit of air conditioning, while my students just thirty minutes down the road are bussed onto a crumbling parking lot, walk into an aging building with an inadequate gym, some windows that open and some that don’t, no air conditioning, no rooms that “aren’t currently being utilized”, one seating option whether it is appealing or not, and a jillion other obstacles to learning on any given day.
Is it just a case of money?
I spent some time this morning trying to figure out Michigan’s formula for school funding that might explain this disparity — why one child’s experience is so different from another’s when they both reside in the same state. But guys, I don’t understand the model.
It’s complicated and based on per student funding from the state, property taxes, income taxes, and even cigarette taxes! Low-income (and underperforming) districts like mine are supposed to get supplemental funding from the state — which is earmarked, but historically not always allocated. And even when it is allocated, why are most Detroit schools in disrepair, lacking in resources, and understaffed when schools in higher income districts are well maintained, richly resourced, and fully staffed with high quality instructors?
Why do they get the cool rocking pod chairs and my students don’t?
Is it because those students deserve better?
No! All students deserve better! Yet these disparities continue to exist — for going on centuries now.
And why?
The simple answer is systemic racism — in education, yes, but also in real estate, in health care, in hiring, in so many sectors of our society. It’s the historical practice of separating those who have from those who don’t to ensure that those who have will always have and those that don’t never will. And the remedy is anything but simple. It begins with recognizing that selfishness and greed have created the structures in our country that enable some to have a lovely experience and to guarantee that others do not.
Now, if you are in the camp that thinks I am completely off base and that the difference in schools is sheer economics and not based in historical racism at all, I ask you why the establishment is so up in arms about our students learning African American history or looking at history through the lens of Critical Race Theory? If there is nothing there to see, why not let our kids take a look for themselves? Maybe you’d like to take a look for yourself. If so, I recommend you check out the 1619 Project* which is available through The New York Times, on Apple podcasts, or in video form on Hulu. And if you still think I’m out of my mind, come spend a day with me at my school. Get to know my students and decide for yourself if you think they deserve more.
Yes, I feel pretty strongly about this.
It probably won’t come as a surprise that my seniors and I just finished learning about systemic inequities in preparation for reading Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime, where we see through the lens of his experience the structural racism of Apartheid and how it impacted his childhood experience. We learned terms like unconscious bias, prejudice, racism, and systemic racism, and my students created posters to illustrate disparities in health care, generational wealth, criminal justice, and education.
When I returned to my students on Thursday and we started our class with a review of terms, I saw that not everyone understood that Apartheid was like the systemic racism we see in the US. In order to help them fully make the connection, I asked them to recall examples of where we experience inequities in our community. As they started to list them off, I told them about my experience in the Oakland Schools.
I wondered if it was necessary — to point out the details I had experienced. Would I be rubbing it in their faces?
But then I thought, Don’t they deserve to know what the experience of students 30 minutes away is like? especially as we prepare to read this book? especially since some of them are about to go to college and may study beside some of these very students who are walking carpeted hallways, sitting in rocking pods, and enjoying an air conditioned full-sized gym? (Let alone taking AP classes, music, and other electives we are unable to offer.)
I described what I had seen, and I could see their faces register the reality — the reality that their experience is not equal to the students I observed just 24 hours before.
“This is educational inequity,” I said. “It is one aspect of systemic racism. And why do you suppose it’s not easy to change?”
“Because,” one student answered, “it’s part of so many systems — not just education. And they don’t want it to change.”
“Who doesn’t want it to change?”
“The people in power.”
“Yes.” I gulped. “I suppose you are right. The people in power don’t want it to change.”
Pretty astute observation for a kid from Detroit? No. Kids from Detroit have this down, folks. They understand disparity; it’s the world they live in.
And the people in power can do something to change it. We are the people in power, my friends — people who vote, people in education, people in the church, white people — we can make choices that begin to make a difference for my students and their children and grandchildren. If we do nothing, this pattern will continue for more generations, and we shouldn’t be ok with that.
It’s not enough to fight for what’s best for our kids; we have to do what’s best for all kids.
As we established in my last post, I have “an insufferable belief in restoration.” The first step in restoration is acknowledging that our stuff is broken down, dilapidated, and no longer working, so I’m gonna keep talking about what’s broken to those who have the power and resources to fix it.
I hope you’ll start talking (and doing something) about it, too.
Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, When it is in your power to do it. Proverbs 3:27
Since I returned from my stint as dishwasher during A Week in the Desert, I’ve been leaning into another role — that of daughter. Of all the positions I’ve held in my life, I’ve held this one the longest. I’ve been a daughter since the day I was born, but the role today looks nothing like it looked on that first day.
On day one, I was totally helpless and in need of almost continuous 24 hour care. I was the third of four, so by the time I showed up on the scene, my mom and dad already had a two year old and a four year old to tend to, but somehow they found a way to protect, feed, diaper, rock, clothe, and otherwise care for me in those early days.
And their work became a gradual release of responsibility — to show the four of us how to move through life without harming ourselves, to teach us first how to eat solid foods and eventually how to prepare them ourselves, to manage our own personal hygiene, to find our own ways to deal with the challenges and disappointments of the world, to find, make, or buy our own clothing, and to eventually care for ourselves and then the others in our lives.
And in these last few years, our responsibilities have shifted our gaze back to where we began.
This is the way of life, of course. Many of us get the opportunity to parent our own children, to move them through the phases of less and less dependency on us, and some of us also get an opportunity to witness our parents as they gradually lose their independence and need us to step back into their lives to lend a hand.
We are there right now, and although our parents appreciate our willingness to step back in, it is not without some annoyance at their need. Last week, after we returned from Arizona, I made my way first to the hospital to check on my stepfather who had had a major surgery and was in the beginning stages of recovery. He wanted me to visit, but he also wanted me to leave. I can’t get inside his mind, but I can see that he is rather helpless — dependent on hospital staff to bring him ice chips, to help him move from the bed to the chair, and to change his dressings. He didn’t likely see this for himself — he didn’t see cancer, surgery, or an extended hospital stay, and I can tell he’s not a fan. He has never minded others making him food or refilling his drinks, but being in this compromised situation is somewhat humiliating, somewhat depressing. So, as I check in, I remind myself to be kind, to be respectful, and to help where I can, and I have do things I’ve never had to do before. I have to tell him what day it is, remind him that he won’t be going home for a while, assure him that I will go care for my mother.
He reaches for my hand as I leave — this one who’s never been super emotionally demonstrative — and I promise him that I will call, that I will be back in a few days.
I leave and drive to my mother’s, watch her take the rollers out her hair and apply lipstick, stand closely when she makes her way down the stairs, help her into the car, buckle her seat belt, walk slowly beside her when we enter a store, move away to give her some freedom, but stay close enough to make sure she is safe. While she appreciates me being there, she does not like to role shift. She has been fiercely independent even during times when her ability to be so was quite limited, so to depend on her children — the very ones who she has spent her life fighting to provide for — is quite uncomfortable.
But depend on us she must. Because of her limited vision, she can no longer drive, yet she has myriad doctor appointments and her husband is an hour away in the hospital and will likely be there for a couple more weeks. We take turns showing up — fixing things around the house, vacuuming the floors, driving her to appointments, helping pay the bills.
She thanks us over and over and over, and sometimes she says, “Now go home. You have your own things to do. I am fine,” but as she says them, she seems a little unsteady on her feet, a little weary, a little unsure.
Nevertheless, I leave. I drive back to the hospital. I sit next to my stepfather as he swallows the ice chips he’s been allowed for the hour. I find his phone charger. I listen to his nurse detail his progress and the goals they want him to meet before he is discharged to rehab. I sit next to him as one of the Bourne movies plays silently on the wall-mounted television. I hear his roommate snoring. Then, as I stand to leave, he reaches for my hand.
I promise to call. I assure him that my brothers are checking on our mom. I say I’ll be back in a few days. I walk away.
Back in my car, I call my mother to see if she’s taken her medication, to give her an update on my stepfather, her husband. I admit I’ve walked away with her charge card in my wallet. I promise to be back in a few days.
She thanks me over and over and over, and I finish driving home.
And today, I’m headed back — first to the hospital, then to my mother’s house.
It’s a gradual re-connecting. It’s beginning to hold more tightly to what was once let go.
She sees it as a burden. I see it as a privilege.
Not everyone gets to place a warm flaxseed pillow behind their 82 year old mother’s neck. Not everyone gets to clip the fingernails of a stepfather who has been at times annoying, disappointing, and problematic but nevertheless present throughout my life.
I’ve been building muscle for this role my whole life, and I’m thankful to have the strength to show up now.
I’ve spent this week in the desert — the literal desert.
My husband, who is both an ordained pastor and a licensed therapist, is serving this week at Shepherd’s Canyon Retreat, outside Phoenix, Arizona. SCR is an organization that exists to assist Christian ministry leaders who are navigating a season of difficulty. Several times a year, eight participants come to the retreat and are served by a chaplain and two therapists who guide the participants through group, individual, and couples therapy.
Why am I here? Well, the chaplain and the therapists are allowed to bring a spouse for the week! When my husband suggested I come with him, I was thinking, that is the first week after school dismisses! Wouldn’t it be great to escape to the desert to read, write, and recover from the school year? I can sit poolside, and simply let my body heal from the strain of the year. Great plan, right?
I thought so, too!
About a month before our scheduled arrival, we received an email that asked if I’d be willing, while here at the retreat center, to volunteer in the kitchen. Well, I thought, I will be eating everyday, of course, and even if I were at home, I would have to spend some time in the kitchen — cooking, doing dishes — and really, I reasoned, I don’t mind helping out a little each day. So, I responded to the email, “Of course, I’ll help! I love washing dishes!” And, I do! I really do love the rhythm and the industry of bringing order to post-meal chaos.
So, last Monday, we left our home at 4am EST, traveled to the airport, boarded our flight, stopped off for a change in aircraft, then landed in Phoenix many hours later. From there, we were picked up in a van and driven another hour, past mountains and hundreds of enormous saguaro cacti to a small town where we stopped to eat and gather whatever snacks and provisions we would need while staying — in the middle of the desert — at the ranch for the next week. Finally, about thirteen hours after we left our home, we arrived at the retreat center, were shown our rooms, and received some orienting information about where to go for meals, how to use the in-room humidifier, and why drinking water is so important.
Then, a little before dinner time, as I had been directed, I arrived at the kitchen and received my initiation to the crew. I was kind of in a dazed stupor, since we had been awake for over 16 hours by that time, but I followed directions, did as I was told, and even learned how to operate the kitchen’s dishwasher. When I walked away from the kitchen a couple of hours later, soaked to the skin across my belly and noticing the raisin-like quality of my fingers, it became clear to me what I had signed up for.
It took me a minute to adjust my vision of what the week would hold, but it wasn’t difficult. While I wasn’t really ever in the same room with the participants, I saw them coming and going from the dining room. I didn’t know any of them, but I saw familiarity. I saw clergy, missionaries, and other professional church workers who looked as I have looked in the past — weary and perhaps a little wary about what this week held for them.
I briefly flashed back to seasons in our lives when we could have used a week away in the desert, where someone else planned and prepared our meals, where we left dishes sitting on the table for someone else to clear, where snacks were mysteriously restocked, and refrigerators were continuously filled with cold drink. More than once in our lives of ministry, we would’ve benefitted from getting away from it all with some trained professionals who might’ve helped us navigate the unthinkable, process the traumatic, and begin to heal what Ann Voskamp calls our “unspoken broken”. Because of the careful confidentiality SCR practices, I don’t know the names of the participants or, of course, the issues they are navigating, but I do know that most professional church workers suffer from overwork and unreasonable expectations and many have been betrayed by their leadership, suffered personal family trauma that they don’t feel they can process in the public eye, or are journeying through their own personal struggles with mental or physical health.
The five of us in the kitchen, two paid staff members (both professional church workers), and three volunteers (all of us educators and two of us pastor’s wives), remarked early in the week that each of us have “been there”, and then got busy with the task at hand, preparing and presenting meals, and attending to the associated housekeeping tasks — dishwashing, packaging leftovers, vacuuming floors, and quietly attending to the needs of the participants.
After each “shift”, I would escape to my previously scheduled activities — daily journaling, re-engaging with The Artist’s Way, sitting poolside, reading an enormous novel, and taking daily dips in the pool. Then, I would make my way back to the kitchen, to join my “crew”. Together we chopped vegetables, arranged beautiful salads, poured condiments, and told stories about our lives. One has partnered with her husband in camp ministry for almost forty years, and it shows. She has endless cheer and positivity and a tireless ability to pivot when the propane tank runs out of gas before breakfast, when five of the week’s participants have specific dietary challenges, when there is no way that the baked potatoes will be ready to serve on time. Another has also spent her career in camp ministry and is one of those people who can chat about the difficulties of her life while browning ground beef or making French toast, and then stop everything she’s doing to show you a photo of the most beautiful sunset she’s seen in her months here in the desert or to tell you about the local movie theater’s habit of showing cowboy or alien movies on Tuesday nights. One woman joined us this week just because she loves the place. She paid her own airfare to come from Alaska and sleep in a camping trailer for two weeks, helping out in the kitchen for almost every meal. Another is the wife of the chaplain for the week. She not only worked in the kitchen three meals a day but made it her job to walk around in the the heat (of the desert) with a bucket of soapy water, scrubbing down any chair or bench that had become soiled.
Over the week, we have worked as a team, learning little known facts about Alaska, sharing stories of foods we like (or don’t like) to make, and laughing at one another’s silliness, and mostly making sure that the participants got what they needed when they needed it.
And, (you might have seen this coming), I got what I needed, too. When I was explaining to my colleagues that I was going to Arizona the week after school let out, I said I was looking forward to the abrupt transition into summer, a break in my school year routine, and an opportunity to detach from reality a bit. I got all of that, and I got another thing that I almost always need — a sense of purpose, of mission, of teamwork, of collaboration.
Even more, I’m walking away with some new lifelong friends — my kitchen crew — may we meet again, here or elsewhere.
‘Come away with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” Mark 6:31
*If you or someone you know is a ministry leader navigating a personal, family, or ministry challenge, check out Shepherd’s Canyon Retreats.
**If you’d like to support this ministry, check out their latest newsletter for current needs.
That’s what the kids say these days when they just. can’t.
I think we used to say, “Ok, Ok!” And maybe our parents said, “Uncle!”
It’s what we say when we just don’t have a response because we are at the end of our rope.
Recently, one of my seniors, who was supposed to have written a personal narrative about a time that he learned a hard lesson, grew up a little bit, or had a “coming of age moment,” instead submitted a description of a video game he had found online.
I’ve been a writing instructor for a long time, so I can spot these types of things with both of my eyes closed, so I sent my standard Academic Integrity Violation email with a screen shot of his writing and a screen shot of the site where he found it, which was super easy for me to locate. It’s not hard. I mean, we have Google.
Anyway, he was upset that I had caught him and replied that he didn’t like writing about himself. I didn’t have any right to know about his life. Could I give him an alternate assignment?
I didn’t respond right away.
“Alternate assignment please,” he messaged.
Still no response from me.
“Bro.” His last response when he was finally out of gas.
“The assignment is the assignment,” I replied finally. “You can do it. Try.”
He didn’t. He had reached “Bro.” He was done with the conversation.
I was trying to think of what to write today after several weeks of posting nothing, and all I could think was….
Dude.
Been there?
Have you been in those seasons when life is coming at you from all directions and you just. can’t. even?
I mean, this is definitely not the worst season of my life. In fact, the roughest seasons have given me so many tools that I am using to navigate this one — therapy, self-care, boundaries, yoga, music, laughter, and Netflix. [By the way, if you need something to carry you through difficulty, I have often recommended The Great British Baking Show; I now add to that Somebody Feed Phil (Netflix) and The Reluctant Traveler (Apple).]
But guys, there’s a lot going on right now. Some of it is great — my work, my husband’s new role as a private practice therapist, the fact that Spring is now here, our kids are doing great things and really stepping into their adulthood– but much of it is hard — the death of an extended family member, the cancer journeys of two others, and the uncovering of hidden realities that will need to be faced in the very near future.
And all I can say is…
Bruh.
It’s a lot.
It’s nothing uncommon to the human experience to be sure. Anyone reading this has navigated similar — illness, addiction, failure to communicate, and the accumulation of it all that someone eventually has to deal with.
And sometimes the ones who have to deal with it are the adult children of those who kept putting off the difficult.
Here’s the thing, though. The difficult doesn’t go away just because you don’t talk about it.
In fact, if you bury the difficult, keep it in a dark place, and even continue to water it from time to time, the damn thing grows. And often, it devours the beneficial, the beautiful, the healthy, the wonderful.
It just eats the good up and continues to grow until it bursts into the open — often at the most difficult of times — and somebody, finally, has to look it in the face, call it what it is, and give it its reckoning.
Dude.
I have been training for this moment my whole adult life, and still, I don’t wanna do it!
Just like my student didn’t wanna write a simple 300-600 word retelling of a day of his life where he learned a hard truth, I don’t want to look the difficult in the face.
But guys, the difficult thing has already surfaced. It’s sitting in the middle of the room, and everyone is trying to avert their eyes for just a little bit longer.
Fine. Look away if you must, but the difficult is not going anywhere.
It will not get easier to look at in a day or a week or a month.
My student came in the next day. After the “Bro.” message.
“Mrs. Rathje, I’m not gonna write this thing.”
“Ok. Let’s look at the impact of you not writing this thing.”
I opened the grade book, put in a zero for the missing assignment, and recalculated his quarter grade.
“Don’t do it, and you’ll have a C minus for the quarter. Are you willing to live with that?”
“A C minus?”
“Yup.”
“I can live with that.”
“Done.”
He looked it in the face, made a decision, and we both moved on.
It really wasn’t that hard.
However, the difficult thing I’m alluding to here was not merely a writing assignment. It’s a series of bad decisions that have been buried for quite some time. I think the bury-er was hoping the difficult would stay underground.
I have been there.
Thing is, most things surface over time. Some of us learn this the hard way.
I’m not scared to look this thing in the face, but it’s not mine.
If it was mine, I might be throwing extra dirt on it right this minute.
But that would not keep it buried.
Nope.
It’s just a matter of time until all things surface.
So, here’s the thing. I have no judgment for the bury-er. Some anger, yes, but not judgment. I have no idea what led to the development of this difficulty. I don’t know the full story. I don’t even need to or want to. That is not my business.
It is truly none of my business to know about a “coming of age” moment that my student may or may not have had, but I always give the opportunity to students to tell their story, because telling about the difficult is where transformation happens.
But that kind of vulnerability is not for everyone. It can be downright terrifying to look the difficult in the eye.
But here’s the thing — once you have stared down the difficult, called it by name, navigated the ugly, grieved the devastating, and realized the freedom that comes with the uncovering, once you have tasted the power of transformation —
Several times in my life, like this year, my birthday has occurred during Holy Week. Some of those years, I had been perhaps more devout and was observing a Lenten fast — from sweets, from junk food, or even — gasp! — from caffeine. Not this year, I’m a tad less devout than I have been in other seasons of my life. I’m currently in the come as you are phase. Perhaps I’m a little disenchanted with the ‘religious’ parts of faith
Having my birthday fall during Holy Week in some years has felt like a bummer — how can I celebrate me, after all, if Christ is hanging on the cross? Especially if you literally own lyrics like “It was my sin that held Him there,” for goodness sake. This year though having my birthday fall during Holy Week has felt like a screen play that has unfolded scene by scene.
It started last Saturday when my husband and I joined his brother and our sister-in-law for a birthday lunch at a local restaurant. My brother-in-law’s birthday is the day after mine, so for the last few years, we have celebrated together. We had a fabulous meal and exchanged gifts, and caught up on the details of life. While it was a celebration — the waiter even brought mini fireworks to our table top! –the tone was a little heavier than usual as the four of us at the table are all watching a parent make decisions and take action against a cancer diagnosis. This year’s conversation was a bit less about the birthday boy and the birthday girl, and a bit more focused on the heavy weight we all are carrying. Nevertheless, love was shared and laughs were had.
It’s a snapshot of life — four adults around a table sharing reality over delicious food.
The week was full of scenes like this. My husband and I sat in a coffee shop over beautiful lattes a couple days later, wearing thrift shop finds and discussing our plans for a trip we might take next year. We walked around an old oval dirt track holding our coats around us, bracing ourselves against a cold wind, chatting about our need to stay active, to keep talking, to keep finding ways to connect with our family and enjoy our life together.
The next day, I parked the car and ran into the library, returning some books and grabbing another so I’d have plenty to read over the long week with no students. Then, I drove to my parents’ home, through the rain and construction, so that I could help my mom into my car, buckle her seat belt, and accompany her to a medical appointment, drive her back home, help with dinner, vacuum the floors, schedule some appointments, and watch an episode or two of Jeopardy.
I can see each of these moments as though I am rewinding through the events of the week, analyzing the plot and trying to find some thematic thread.
As far as weeks go, it was rich with family connection — a long phone call with my sister where I got so lost in conversation that I forgot about the cookies I had in the oven; a warm bowl of chili with my brother, mother, and stepfather where we talked about photography, family life, and other mundane topics; a driveway conversation with my other brother that was heavy with responsibility, decision-making, and love for our parents; and phone calls with my father-in-law, a daughter, a son, and my dear ninety-two year old godmother.
She’s living in an assisted living facility, and when I called she was in her room coloring, “warming up” for the craft she would do with other residents in a few moments. Even though she didn’t want to be late, just like always, the goodbyes lingered:
“I love you and thank you for the call.”
“I love you, too! Have fun doing crafts.”
“Ok, and have a happy birthday.”
“I will! I hope I can see you soon,”
“Ok, my dear. I love you.”
“I love you, too, dear.”
“Goodbye.”
“Goodbye.”
Neither one of us wanting to be the one to hang up.
For some reason, each of these exchanges seem richer this year. It could be the fact that I am getting older — my fortieth high school reunion is this year, after all. It could be that the health realities of our older family members are causing me to take stock. It could be just that I am finally moving a little more slowly, taking in the richness that my life has afforded me.
I was sitting in church on Good Friday, trying to examine how I feel about this traditional observance in my current state. I’m singing the hymns, listening to the last words of Jesus, and smiling at the curly-headed toddler sitting next to me who is up past his bedtime and fluctuating between giggles and shrieks. I habitually reach to straighten my necklace, the necklace that I rarely take off, and it hits me that I’ve been wearing a version of this necklace on and off for fifty-eight years.
The gold heart charm was a gift at my baptism; it has my birthdate engraved on the back and my first initial engraved on the front. The butterfly was a gift when I earned my Master’s degree. I’m wondering, in the middle of this Good Friday service, why my mind has been drawn to this piece that never leaves my neck. Perhaps I’m realizing how loved I’ve been (in spite of human frailty, error, and circumstance) for my whole life; perhaps I’m noting the significance of the butterfly as a symbol of my insufferable belief in transformation; perhaps because my birthday falls during Holy Week, I’m acknowledging — again — that my whole life has been an object lesson in the power of grace to restore a life.
The toddler has been carried out of the service to spend the duration with his mother in the nursery, and the altar is being stripped as we sing the last song.
“How deep the Father’s love for us, how vast beyond all measure…His dying breath has brought me life…His wounds have paid my ransom.”
And it’s not the somberness or guilt that I often felt as a child on Good Friday. I don’t feel ashamed that Jesus died for my sins. No. I feel relieved, thankful…free.
And in that freedom, I lean into Saturday. I sleep in, do yoga, then make a pot of soup. I work on a puzzle and watch basketball and mindless television.
Sunday — Easter — I find myself in church again, surrounded by folks who have become family over these last few years. The pastor stands, says “Christ is risen!” and the congregants reply, enthusiastically, “He is risen indeed!” We sing, recite the creed, and listen to the reading of the Gospel.
I see Mary in the tomb, looking for Jesus, presuming she is speaking to the gardener, until He speaks her name, “Mary,” and she instantly knows that He is her risen Lord.
The sermon begins, and our pastor asserts that in our cynical culture, we have all become like Thomas, demanding proof that the resurrection is real, and I find myself longing for something — not exactly proof, I don’t think I need that, but I would love some kind of confirmation that these weekly services still have meaning, that they still matter, that my presence here still matters. And just then, the pastor says to the congregation — to me — “I have very good news for you, Jesus still calls you by name.” And I am reminded that He has always known me, from my birth to my baptism to my devout days to my come as you are days. He speaks my name, and I immediately recognize Him.
And I think I’ve found the theme. My whole life has been rich with connection, relationship, and meaning, even when I haven’t believed that to be true. I can see the evidence, my friends.
I’d been watching the girls’ basketball team all season — from the first game of their first season ever, where very few showed any evidence of having played the game before, where one girl received a “traveling” call for carrying the ball football-style while running down the court, where our players froze in place as the other team stole the ball, where the referees pulled our girls aside to teach them the rules in the middle of the game. From that game forward, I had been encouraging the girls, both on the court and in the hallways, letting them know I was seeing their progress. They were not only learning the game –the skills, the rules, and the strategies — they were also building confidence, stamina, and resiliency.
Many on the team were girls I had had the previous year in my reading intervention class. They had been freshmen– freshmen who had spent most of middle school on Covid lock-down, freshmen who had missed some social development experiences, freshmen who had very little capacity to manage challenge, difficulty, or conflict. So when I saw them during that first game, barely hitting double digits on the score board, I wondered if they would make it the whole season. Could they take the losses they would certainly face? Could they [and their coach] see this for what it was — a building year. Could these young women show up every day, practice the basic skills of basketball, and arrive at the end of the season better for it?
Only time would tell.
But here I stood at the end of the season, watching this same group of girls prepare for one of the last games. As the other team was rolling into the building, our girls were practicing an inbounding strategy while the coach called cues from the sideline. The girl with the ball slapped it loudly, and the four on the floor quickly shifted to their new positions to receive the thrown in ball. I stood on the sidelines, recording the scene on my phone, grinning with pride.
I was there to sell concessions, so I was in a little room at the corner of the gym with one eye on the game and one eye on my concession window, when I noticed that one of the players, the center, was shuffle-jogging down the court. I had noticed that she wasn’t a very fast runner earlier in the season, but I had assumed it was as fast as she could move given that she was about 5’10” and probably close to 200 pounds or that she simply didn’t have the stamina to run up and down the court for an entire game. Being the first season, the team only had about ten team members total, and typically only six or seven of them were eligible to play on any given day. Whoever showed up typically played all four quarters — that’s a lot of running for anyone, even those who are are in top physical shape.
But for some reason on this day when I noticed her shuffle jogging, my eyes moved toward the floor and I noticed that her shoes appeared to be untied. When I looked a little closer, it appeared that they were not actually untied, but in a permanently knotted state of floppiness. She could neither tie nor untie them., so the laces flopped as she ran, and the shoes, a pair of high tops that appeared to have seen some days on and off the court, seemed to be of little support in her efforts to improve her pace.
Is this the pair of shoes she’s been wearing all season? Why didn’t I notice this before?
Now look, every day at my school I see need. I see students who need food, who need new clothing, who need a haircut, personal hygiene supplies, pens, pencils, or even a water bottle, but this pair of shoes got to me.
This girl, who against all odds shows up for school every day, goes to basketball practice every day, has a C average, and dares to put herself in front of an audience of classmates, teachers, and parents, has been doing so inside sneaker head culture where the shoes on your feet can be linked to your status, your belongingness, or your ridicule. (It would take another whole post to examine the complexity of sneaker head culture within the context of high poverty neighborhoods, so let me just say that yes, a student may have brand new Jordans and still experience housing insecurity or food insecurity. It is what it is.)
This girl, despite her classmates’ comments and/or ridicule, has enough grit and determination to continue to show up on the court in these beat up kicks for the entirety of the season. That should tell you something about her.
So, I’m standing, watching the game from the concession stand, a game in which an adult in the stands got in an insult contest with one of our sophomores that escalated into a fist fight that DID NOT disrupt the game play — nope, our girls kept right on playing as security officers wrangled a punching mass of bodies out of the gym–a game in which they were down by double digits, came back to tie and go into overtime, a game where they lost by two points at the buzzer, and I’m taking in the wonder of these young ladies who could barely bounce a ball at the beginning of the season, who were making eye contact and passing, who were boxing out under the boards, and I’m understanding the impact of it all on their development — their ability to overcome difficulty, their ability to stay the course, their ability to trust themselves in difficult times.
I was overwhelmed.
A couple weeks later, after the season had ended and track season was getting started, the same group of girls was walking down the hallway, headed to practice.
“Ya’all on the track team?” I asked.
“Yes, of course!” they replied.
“Excellent!” I said.
“Are you going to come to our meets?”
“Definitely!”
And during this quick exchange, I noticed that all of the girls had on the same shoes they had worn to run up and down the basketball court all season — including that beat up pair of high tops.
And something inside me snapped.
A few minutes later I saw the track coach, “Hey,” I said discreetly, ‘I notice that K’s shoes are not really appropriate for track. I’d be happy to anonymously fund a new pair for her. Is there a way to make that happen?”
“I’ll figure out a way,” she said.
A few days later, I mentioned the situation to our athletic director. “I don’t know how many students you have that could use running shoes or spikes for track, but if I gathered a few hundred dollars, could you put it to use?”
“I would love that,” she replied. “Let me take a little inventory and see how many pair of shoes we need.”
So here I am telling this story, friends, because this is what I know how to do. I know how to tell you that having athletics is transformational for all kids — but for my students, who have experienced poverty and trauma beyond what I can imagine, who have every reason to give up hope for a brighter future for themselves, sports can offer an opportunity to practice navigating low stakes wins and losses and build the muscle they need to weather bigger wins and losses outside of sports. For my students, the power of athletics is essential.
My school is doing what it can to build programs. Two years ago, the only sports we offered were boys’ basketball, football, and cheerleading. Last year we added track. This year we added girls’ volleyball and basketball. In the fall, we hope to have a cross country team.
Teachers show up to coach, to run a clock, and to sell concessions because we see the impact of these programs on the educational engagement and morale of our students. If they aren’t passing classes, they don’t get to play, so they get more invested in their classes. When they are invested in their classes, they learn more, their grades improve, and they have more opportunity for their future.
It’s not hard to connect the dots between athletic programs and successful adulthood. We’ve known this for decades. All students should have access to programs that lead to a hopeful future, and they should have everything they need to participate in such programs.
So I’m asking, friends. I’m asking you for help — again. If you love sports, if you love kids, if you have an insufferable belief in transformation, please consider joining me in building an Athletic Shoes Fund for my students. Funds will be used to provide athletic shoes for students like K who cannot otherwise purchase their own.
Email me at krathje66@gmail.com for details on how to give or simply send a check with “DLA Athletic Shoes Fund” in the memo line to Detroit Leadership Academy 5845 Auburn Street, Detroit, MI 48228.
And if this isn’t your project to give to, I hope you’ll keep cheering us on as I keep on sharing our stories.
Next Chapter 