Cori Connors: teachers are amazing

For the second half of my Lent Writing this year I am revisiting the trigger words I have used already, but writing from a different perspective. On 3-27-19 the word was MITE. Today I'll use the same word in a different light.

A few years back, before our daughter Kate started her doctoral studies back east, she taught sixth grade in Houston, Texas. She had gone to Texas originally as part of Teach for America, an organization that trains dynamic young college graduates to teach, then sends them out into underprivileged communities as mentors and examples to young people. Kate was assigned to a Title One school in Houston. She was part of the 1% "white or other" population in that area. After teaching for Teach for America for three years she joined KIPP schools, charter schools with the same philosophy but with added outrageous expectations from their staff. (I can say that because I watched it with a mother's bias). Students spent at least 10 hours a day in school, and teachers spent more. Kate was rarely home from work before 8 pm. The theory is that if you keep kids busy, they are less likely to get into trouble. There was also Saturday school, and kids were given teachers' cell numbers so they could communicate outside of school. There are certainly pros and cons to the arrangement.

Each year the KIPP Intrepid Middle School sent their kids on class trips, and I'm not talking little ones. For Kate's grade, the kids and teachers went to Moab, Utah every year. I'm not sure where they got the funding for this, but each year they loaded a couple big travel buses with kids and teachers and parent chaperones and they wove their way up through Texas and New Mexico, into Arizona and Utah. I've taken that trip, when we moved Kate to Houston, and it's a humdinger of a drive.

For the first couple years I baked 150 brownies and we loaded up my sound equipment and guitars and we made the trip down to Moab to sing around the campfire with the kids, and to give our Kate a hug.

Then one year they decided to drive just a bit further north to Salt Lake and let the kids experience snow in the mountains before heading back down to Moab. Most of the kids were Latino, from Mexico, and they had never seen snow.

One of the buses broke down and they spent hours on the side of the road in New Mexico. Because of the delay the caravan was going to arrive in SLC late at night. It was unseasonably cold, and a whipping wind came down through the mountains into the Salt Lake valley. I drove out to the KOA site where the KIPP team had planned to set up tents and camp for a few nights. It was bitter cold, and dark at the campground. I called Kate, knowing she had just spent 20 hours on a bus with hormonally driven eleven-year-olds, and a few hours broken down on the side of the road, trying to contain the herd in the New Mexico heat. I just could not imagine them setting up tents in the wind and cold at 1 am.

"Hey," I said,"why don't you just bring everyone to Farmington for the night. The girls can stay here at our house and the boys can stay at Libby's"

The Kipp Intrepid crowd in our front yard.

So in the wee hours of the morning two big Lewis Bus Line buses pulled into our cul-de-sac and a stream of tired, travel-worn kids filtered into our houses, which are next to each other here in our neighborhood. Fifty sixth grade girls camped out on every inch of floor space in our house. The female teachers and chaperones got all the guest beds and couches. The male teachers and boys took over Libby's house.

The next morning they traveled up into the snow. We set to work barbecuing chicken for 130 people. That evening we fed them chicken and rice and salads and dessert down in the bowery of Forbush Park. When the sun set we returned to our houses. I sat on my fireplace hearth with my guitar and sang with a mass of dark haired adolescent girls as they smashed into my living room. Some of the girls giggled in the basement. We ate popcorn and talked as they swirled in our space.

At one point I went back into my master bathroom and there were Kate and two other teachers with two of their students. One was sitting in a chair, one on the edge of the tub, and the girls were on the floor. The teachers were hovered over the girls talking in happy tones as they pulled fine toothed combs through the hair of the girls. Kate lifted her eyes to me, and whispered "Lice". They quietly treated the hair of those girls, letting them maintain their dignity. That night three other girls ended up throwing up all night. A bug, of overindulgence, or homesickness, or monthly issues...I'm not sure what caused it. But it's a good thing we have a lot of bathrooms in this house.

The next morning I walked over to Libby's house and knocked on the door of the lower level, where the boys were camped out. When the door opened I was almost knocked over with a waft of aftershave! Teenage boys and aftershave...YIKES! Their teachers had insisted that each boy take a shower, and they allowed one minute per boy. One of them sat outside the door with a stopwatch, pounding on the door when time was up. The buzz at Libby's house was electric, but less giddy than at our house with all those girls.

All too soon the buses loaded up with fresh clean kids and their sleeping bags and backpacks and pillows, and off they went down toward Moab.

The AMAZING KIPP teachers.

I got to thinking about two pretty sweet images that stick in my mind, besides the wonderful picture of all of them gathered in our front yard.

One was the unexpected cluster of teachers huddled around two young girls, gently cleansing them, like Mary at the feet of the Savior, diligently removing nits and mites from their hair. Hours of combing, laughing with the girls while they worked. Meanwhile the rest of the kids did kid stuff, unaware of the sacred nurturing taking place back there in my bathroom. It made me all weepy, knowing the devotion and love that these teachers had for their young charges.

Those teachers knew how to manifest love.

The second is the look on the face of my sister Libby when I asked her if 50 teenage boys could stay at her house for two nights. Mind you, I didn't really ASK her...I sort of told her. And her response was "OK!"

The thing is, I knew she would be OK. I knew she would push furniture out of the way, and gather up all her towels and blankets, and she would pop some popcorn and open her pop shop... on top of doing the BBQ dinner we had already planned for 130 people we didn't know. And though she might be a little bothered, she would laugh it off, when a month later her basement still smelled like aftershave.

We do what we do because we love. And that love is not selective. As long as people can forgive my mess, I will welcome them here. And so will my sister. And so will my Kate.