It was inevitable, I guess. My key just broke in my classroom door, the afternoon of September 26, 2015. I am pretty sure it's the same key issued to me the first week of August of 1998 when I moved to Houston and Westbury Christian School. Several weeks ago, it cracked in the middle and while still usable, I had the foresight, for once, to get a replacement from the office when the end came. And it came this very hour. Not wasting time, I have already sent in a maintenance request to extract the broken key. The good news is that all of our classrooms on this wing have two doors so I have an alternate point of entry with the identical key. I WILL SURVIVE!
When I talk to folks about why I've never wanted to be an administrator, I explain that my classroom is my own little kingdom. It's a small space but with its own population, ever shifting as it might be, with its own tradition and landscape and history. I am teaching the same two classes, five periods per day, which I taught in 1998, almost unheard of these days. I would estimate I have had 1,800 students in my time at WCS, although some of those are youngsters counted twice because they sat in my desks both as eighth graders and high schoolers. The quizzes and tests, memory verses and notes, the mural and the pennies counted, the progression from notebooks to laptops and VHS to DVD and YouTube, McGee and Me and boys standing for girls, taken together are sort of a blurry kaleidoscope at best. But none of those memories happen without a piece of steel which turned a lock and opened the door to a world which is my second home....or maybe even my first. The scriptures use the term key/keys ten times with the best known being Jesus' use of the phrase keys of the kingdom in Matthew 16. (I once heard a high school basketball coach, Ronnie Stapler, call a crossover dribble after a shot fake the keys to the kingdom but I don't think he was speaking Biblically!) I'm not sure what I'll do with the remnant of my key but it has served me well and hopefully, my students, too. What a large world can be unlocked with a small key.
Applicable quote of the day:
“I’ll give you the key to my heart, if you promise not to make duplicates.”
Jarod Kintz, (This Book is Not FOR SALE)
God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1
www.hawleybooks.com
E-mail me at steve@hawleybooks.com
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