I just found this article about the University of Dallas from Princeton Review. Thought you might like it!
Archives for January 2008
First Day of the Flexing Poplars
The day has finally arrived that I, Jesse, have become The Enemy – I have become an Algebra teacher. It was my first day teaching at the school I affectionately call “Flexing Poplars”, a rather expensive and small private high school comprised primarily of troubled kids from white suburbia. But before entering the ranks of the despised Math Teachers I first had to survive my 1st period Speech class.
All the classes at Flexing Poplars are small (usually 5-8 students), but I currently only have three in my Speech class. However even this is misleading because, as the director of the school warned me, one of the kids never gets to school earlier than an hour after it starts. So when the bell rang I found myself sitting in a room with a freshman who wouldn’t look me in the eyes and a senior who only met my gaze with sustained defiance. The defiance was probably born from my refusal to (and I know that it’s hard to believe that I could be such a Nazi) let him play cards in class. The defiance seemed to turn to curiosity quickly, and soon I found that this Senior was a self-improvement junkie who was analyzing my body language and trying to understand “what made me tick” so he could manipulate me with skills he learned from Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Clever kid, and a natual conversationalist, but I don’t think that class turned out to be what he expected. For the rest of the class we held a discussion about “why we celebrate Holidays” and analyzed our discussion. There was no card playing.
The rest of the day consisted of Algebra classes, where concepts weren’t nearly as challenging as class control. Conversation breaks out perpetually, especially when the students want to get out of school work – which is always. I told the students right away that I don’t tolerate interruption and text messaging… and all day long I fought those battles.
After school was out I found myself in conversation over cofee with Katie, John, and Benjamin and tried to explain what the atmosphere is like. Sorrowfully I told them that I have no choice but to allow crass joking and “F” words in my class, because to combat that directly would be a losing battle that would consume all of class time and pit them against my authority.
Katie told me that at Cambridge, Christiana’s school, the students stand when the teacher enters the room, and may only sit once the teacher grants permission. That sort of behavior is incomprehensible at Flexing Poplars.
Our Blessed Journey Home From CA
Last Post of the day. I really am going on a binge blogging spree here, probably because I am on my lunch break and I just had some LOVELY mac and cheese…ahhh!
Anyways, I just really wanted to relate what happened on our way home from California on Sunday.
The first thing that happened was aboard our first flight, I spotted a celebrity! Well, sorta, he’s a little young to be an actual celeb. His name is Noah Gray-Cabey, and he plays “Micah” on Heroes. Here’s his picture.
He was only sitting a few aisles up from us, so I pointed him out to Jesse. It sorta made our day, seeing as we are practically addicted to Heroes.
The next cool thing that happened was on our way home from the airport with Katie and Noel. Noel dropped off Katie and Christiana at a PSAT center and then asked if it was alright to run an errand before driving home. He then proceeded to tell us about a family living in Highland Park. The daughter was a classmate of Christiana’s. About 7-8 months ago her brother, Ryan, was in a tragic skiing accident after which he was in a coma for months. He just recently came out of the coma, but has severe brain and muscle damage. For this reason, he is confined to a wheelchair and cannot control even his mouth.
The reason they called was because Noel is known for going around and anointing sick Christians with the oil from Saint John Maximovich’s tomb in San Francisco (Courtney, Michael, Jesse and I made a pilgrimage up there this summer to see his still undecayed body!). Saint John is known for miracles of healing both while he was alive and also after he died. Noel has been using this oil to pray that the Holy Spirit would use St. John to heal them. So far, many have been. This family specifically asked that Noel come to anoint their son with oil in the hopes that he too might be healed.
Noel asked if we wouldn’t mind coming. Jesse decided to join him, but I had been feeling ill all morning and opted to sit out. We arrived at the house and the boy’s sweet mother was there to greet us at the gate. She took us back around their huge house to a small apartment in the back. This was her son’s own private house that they had set up to be a sort of hospital.
Even though I had been previously told of the severity of this boy’s condition, I was still pretty shocked and moved by what I saw. It was also hard seeing various paraphenelia in his room, exactly the way a normal 16 year old boy left it only 8 months ago.
Noel, Jesse and the boys two parents (both of whom attend a PCA church just down the road) began to pray the Akathist to St. John Maximovich. The boy’s nurse and I sat aside and watched. It was an incredible 25 minute long prayer, during which Noel broke down several times. At the very end, Noel anointed the boy with oil on his forehead, cheek and back. It was hard not to think of how this very same thing used to occur in the early church.
Afterwards, Noel, Jesse and I got back in the car and headed toward the freeway home. As I was sitting there stunned by the whole thing, wondering at the grace which Noel went about this act of service, we passed a homeless man walking along the road near the 35 freeway. Noel did an instant U-turn, pulled two cans of beans from the console of his car, and rolled down his window. Noel knows most of the homeless in downtown Dallas by name, and knew that this man, Robbie, loved to have cans of beans to “feed his dog”.
As we pulled away, Noel told us more about some of the homeless people he had encountered and ministered to in Dallas. He told us an interesting story about a couple of the occasions that he brought a much younger Christiana along with him. One day, when it was just Noel alone, this man came up to him and said, “Noel! I had a dream about your daughter last night!”
Of course, this wasn’t exactly what every father wants to hear. Great, my daughter’s in your dreams! Weird!
But the guy continued. “In my dream, Christiana kept trying to tell me something, over and over again! I couldn’t hear her. Please, would you ask her what she was trying to tell me?”
The next day, Noel was in the car with little Christiana and he asked her, “So, what do you think of Mr. —?”
Christiana replied, “He seems like a really nice man. Sometimes though, I feel really sorry for him.”
A couple minutes went by before she added, “But you know, Daddy, I’ve been REALLY wanting to tell him that he NEEDS to come to church with us sometime. I think he would like it.”
Jingle Bells
This year has shown me why I like being a preschool teacher around Christmastime. Especially for super rich kids.
A sampling of what I got from just around 5 families:
$50 Anthropologie Gift card, $25 to Chilis, $20 check, $10 gift card to Target, $10 gift card to Linens and Things, a vase with candle holders all around it, a CD, a Chenille Throw, a lapdesk, tons of Avon products, a cross from Venice, a big bottle of nice perfume, and gourmet hot chocolate.
I wish it were Christmas every week!