T-Ball Cringe

 I want my kids to do organized sports, but I often think they are too young for it. 

T-Ball is a good example. The kids are having fun, they're enjoying it, but I'm not. I'm not having fun or enjoying it because I can't stop watching my kids and thinking about what they're NOT doing. 

I don't mean I get upset because they're not good at T-Ball. I mean I get upset because they're not even playing T-Ball. My kids are playing their own game, and the rules can only be found in their head. 

I'll watch as the coach, who has the patience of a Saint, calmly tells my son, stationed at short stop, that "Okay, now you need to watch the batter, because if he hits the ball and it comes to you, you have to throw it to first." 

My kid hears these instructions. Or at least he should hear them. He has ears and everything. The doctors all say he can hear. But what he does instead is he stares straight up at the clouds and starts spinning in circles. Spinning until he gets dizzy and falls down like Otis on the Andy Griffith Show.  

Later he gets to go practice batting. There's a line. He gets to wear a helmet. After putting on the helmet, he immediately takes the bat and starts whacking himself in the head. Hilarious! And guess what? It never gets old. He waits behind four other batters, whacking himself in the head nearly the whole time. All the while, I keep wondering if I need to go and stand next to him throughout the whole practice to make him follow instructions. 

At a certain point, while he's supposed to be practicing at catching the ball, he just sits down in the grass. He's done listening for the day. It's been 25 minutes. Practice is over an hour. 

Maybe this is how Cal Ripken got started. Maybe he, too, stared up at the clouds and decided he would try to make himself barf. Edward might just be following in those footsteps after all. But for now, we'll just practice standing up for the whole practice.

Kiss Me, Dad!

This evening I took my two-year-old son Emerson out on a drive to get him to go to sleep. He went to sleep almost immediately but I still went ahead and extended the drive for at least 20 minutes. 

As I carried him inside, his blonde head resting on my shoulder, I redirected my footsteps toward the rocking chair in the living room and stole a few minutes. Just for Emerson and me. 

*********************************************************

My kids do some cute things, but this might be the cutest:

When Edward was born, my attention shifted pretty heavily to Emerson. Being two, he was already a bit of a handful and since Christina was nursing a newborn and Ellery could follow instructions pretty well, I spent a lot of time playing "defense" on Emerson so that he wouldn't...like, kill himself or anything. 

Seriously, there was one time Christina set him down and he immediately tried to run and jump into a pond situated behind me. I had my hands full so I straight up kicked his legs to make him trip and fall down. THAT'S NOT CHILD ABUSE, THAT'S SAVING A LIFE.

So a game we started playing was "Kiss Monster" where I would sneak up on him, grab him, and give him like fifty kisses on the cheek while he would squeal with laughter. After doing this for a while, I would pause and he would look at me:

"Kiss me, Daddy!"

"Oh, man! I'm sorry, I'm all out of kisses!"

Then he would hop up to me and give me a big ol' kiss on the cheek. 

"There you go!"

And then the game restarts. 

For whatever reason though, I had the saddest thought on the planet a couple weeks ago. There's going to come a day when I'll be up for playing Kiss Monster and he's going to say he doesn't want to play that game anymore, that he's too big for it or he wants to do something else. And then I'll be left sitting there thinking:

"Oh, yeah, cool. You know. Whatever. It's just a stupid game. No biggee.." **sobs**

Ever since Christina and I started having kids, we've had older friends and relatives say to treasure it, that it will go by fast. It's impossible though to treasure it enough. There is no way that I can live in the moment enough to get enough of my fill that I won't look back on things like this with nostalgia and a tender heart. 

There's also no way I can ignore the fact that on most days, my children seem designed to destroy my house as well as each other. It's a bit tricky to see them as little cherubs in those moments. 

But tonight, I can steal a few minutes. And I can take solace in knowing that every now and then, I took advantage of some of this time. That for just a while, a little blonde head drifted further into sleep as it nuzzled against my shoulder. 

It's enough. 

What Defines You? Getting Rid of my Own Baggage

5:30 am. It was still dark. The chill air was almost enough to start the heater on the minibus I would be driving to Wichita East High School. But I knew most students would have blankets and it was going to get hot later in the day. Better to enjoy the cool while they can.

As each student arrived, some wearing new suits and blazers, I told them good morning and to grab whatever seat they would like. As they passed me, I handed each one a personalized letter I had written to them. It's been a tradition I've kept with our state team. The morning of competition, I give each student a letter telling them how proud I am and all the things I admire about them. It's become one of the things I look forward to each year. Often, more than one student ends up crying.

I didn't want to be around while they are crying, though. I'd rather let the letter do the talking.

At one point I left the bus running and went into the school building to grab a backup laptop. I was alone. I took just a moment of that solitude to stop and say a quick prayer for my students--that they would learn and grow from today. I also prayed for myself--that I would not get too wrapped up in their success or failure--that I would keep things in perspective.

I finished my prayer and looked up. I was standing next to the trophy case.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I became a forensics coach on accident.

I know. It's pretty tough to "accidentally" fill out an application for a job and then agree to do that job. But what I did is about as close to that as you can get.

I finished my first year of teaching freshman and sophomore English in Buhler feeling pretty good about where I was. My strength as a teacher generally comes from my ability to speak in front of a group. If I can get an opportunity to talk about something I love, I can sometimes get others to love it, too. Excitement can be contagious and I grasped pretty early that if I'm not excited about what I'm teaching, my students won't be excited about what they're learning.

My building principal noticed this and eventually I was asked by another teacher in my hallway if I had thought about applying for the vacant debate and forensics position for the next school year. I was told not many people had applied for the position and it was uncertain what would happen with the program. The teacher telling me this brought up my past as an editor-in-chief of a newspaper in college and other experiences where it had felt like I was undergoing baptism by fire. I also was (and still am) a news junkie, choosing NPR over almost anything else whenever Morning Edition happens to be on. Surely those experiences would help me acclimate.

I figured I could pick up debate and forensics relatively easy.

I was wrong.

Like, stupid wrong.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We were in third place. Half of our entries had made it to semifinals.

And I was nervous.

I may have drank about half a metric ton of coffee that morning, which didn't help. I also hadn't exactly slept the best the night before. On top of that, it was tough for me to sit down and hold still. I had never been this nervous at a forensics meet. I've generally been pretty fatalistic at tournaments. I'm zen. I'm in the moment. I'm in an attitude of perspective. "Whatever will be will be." You know?

What a load of crap. I'm a coffe-fueled fraud in the first degree.

We were in third place.

Which was good. I was hoping we would be in third place. Knowing our forensics competition throughout the state of Kansas, I did not think we would be in the running for first or second.  Sterling and Norton High School were in a dead heat for the top two spots but we were in position to bring home a state trophy. The first forensics state trophy in Halstead's history.

The state tournament was proving to be a dream run. We had students giving perhaps their best performances of the year and the results were showing it. Judge after judge was rating each of our competitors the best in their rooms over and over again.

They were pumped.

They were nailing it.

We went outside and did our warmups again. All of us as a team. Even the ones who did not advance. The ones whose day was done. We all went through our warmups, all our tongue-twisters. We also sing the theme song to "The Fresh Prince of Bel Aire" as part of it. I told them all how proud I was of them. How they had already achieved something great and special. We all put our hands in and said "Dragons on three! 1, 2, 3, DRAGONS!"

Then, they went to find their rooms and compete. Confident in themselves. Ready to knock it out of the park. I pulled one student aside, Patrick, and we drilled his delivery for the introduction to his persuasive speech. A few minutes later, it was sounding much better and he left to find his room. Meanwhile, I went upstairs to work in the tab room and wait on results. My wife was there with me. She watched me pace and listened to me blabber for over an hour. Until the first ballot came in.

We were in third place.

Half our entries were in semifinals.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nothing has been more difficult in my professional life than figuring out debate and forensics. I had never actually done debate and forensics in high school (outside one competition where I tried to do extemp...it did not go well). Often, coaches have experience competing at the collegiate level, let alone the high school level.

On top of that, I was taking over a program that had won a state title in debate just the year before, that traveled to compete at nationals ever year, and that needed an assistant coach hired. Oh, and I didn't know anyone that could help me.

Oh, did I also mention that not only had I never coached debate or forensics before, I had not coached ANYTHING before? Like, I did not know what a student needed to hear from me before competiting in an activity that most adults would find absolutely terrifying. "Go get 'em, Tiger." That's a coach-y thing to say, right?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My wife was watching me pace and talk. Every now and then I would catch myself and try to sit down. But a few minutes later I would be up and moving again.

The year had been going incredibly well, for experienced students and new students alike. It's always neat to see first-year students do well at this activity. But it's rewarding to see your experienced students do well, too. 

Jessie was one such student. She was a holdover from a previous coach. She first fell in love with forensics when someone else was in charge of the program. Every year she competed, she qualified for State in an acting event or prose. 

Once, she told me her impression of me had been when I had first introduced myself to the Halstead students. She summed it up like this:

"We hated you."

 

I was a little surprised by that. "Why!? I thought I had been charming!"

"Oh, you were totally charming. That just made us hate you even more."

The previous coach had done a good job working with her students. There were several who absolutely loved competing in forensics and they loved the family that forms whenever you join a team like that. 

But I won them over. I was happy that Jessie said everything in the past tense because, as she put it, I "had my work cut out" for me. 

Jessie was immediately a positive influence on the team. Never down. Never negative. She would keep things in perspective. The world could be going to hell in a handbasket, but she was going to give the same performance she always would. 

Her senior year, she spent a good chunk of time working with the first-year students. She helped them to block their performances, gave instruction on how to hold the prose book properly, and came up with games for the whole team to play together to create a family atmosphere. 

On top of that, she had taken a script that was essentially a 10-minute monologue and added so many small details to her performance that her judges could not help but get pulled in by her performance. There were no gimmicks, no funny voices, not screaming. She would just...talk. And every inflection in her tone, every change in her facial expressions would contribute to the story she was telling. 

And now she was in semifinals. And I could not stop thinking about her and everyone else on the team and all the hours they had put into their performances and how much they deserved the chance to make it to finals. How much they deserved to take home a state trophy. 

I went back to pacing. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Imagine that you have never played football before. Now imagine being told that you are going to be the head coach for the Indianapolis Colts. Maybe you've had a nightmare like that before.

Before my first year coaching, I moved out of my classroom in the English hallway and downstairs to the old drama room, which would now be the debate and forensics room.

Things went about as well as you'd expect. In that it inspires a longing for a stiff drink. My kids all knew more than me. And they knew it. For smart kids, knowledge is capital, and debate and forensics draws a lot of smart kids.

According to a math teacher in my building, Mr. Regehr, communication might just be the number one problem in the world today. That probably holds true even before you realize you don't know what it is you need to communicate.

Like travel sheets. It might be a good idea to make them and detail who is traveling, where they're traveling, how long they'll be traveling, and what they need to bring along for their travels.

It's tough to communicate that when you don't KNOW the answers to many or all of those simple questions.

And that's before you even get to the content-related stuff. What adjustments should be made to this performance? What case should we write for debate? Is it appropriate to tell a political joke in a speech on current events?

Small problems like that grow and lead to bigger problems. In a void of information, students take matters into their own hands and that just creates chaos. Like a ship without a captain.

I had a small handful of first-year students. And I learned right along with them. I would teach myself a debate concept one day and then turn around and try to teach it the next day. During forensics season, I tried to do the same thing. I would learn how to address a particular issue in delivery or learn the rules to a particular event and then try to share that the next day. For my first-years, it was ok. For my experienced students, it wasn't near enough.

Word got out. In the world of debate and forensics everyone knows everyone. I showed up to tournaments with my kids late. I didn't always have the entry fee with me. My students made arguments that made no sense.

Other schools could see the program was floundering, even if your own building doesn't necessarily know it. In some schools I was known as "the bus driver" because that's all that I was good for.

I was miserable.

Being incompetent and fully aware of your incompetence is one of the worst feelings in the world. I felt like I had done everything wrong that I possibly could.

Then, at the end of the year, I was given an out by my principal. He was worried that I might leave for another district and he made it very clear to me that he'd rather I stay. He would let me go back to teaching English full time if I wanted to.

I thought about it. Going back to teaching the subject I was in love with in the first place was incredibly appealing to me. I could focus on something I felt proficient in. Something more comfortable.

Something I felt like I was better at.

But a really backwards thought hit me: This year was so rough, so challenging, so incredibly draining that I felt like it COULDN'T just all be for nothing.

I had to see if there was any improvement in myself. I had to give myself a chance to do better and to BE one year better.

I signed on for another year.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I stopped pacing and checked the clock. The extempers would be almost done now. 

Extemp is probably the most difficult event in forensics (and also my favorite). Quite a few students are terrified of how it works. Students draw three current events questions, put two back, and get 30 minutes to make a 7-minute speech answering the question using only the files you bring to the meet with you. 

You're allowed to use a note card. But it's more impressive if you don't and just rely on your memory for all the sources and pieces of information you're using.  

It's definitely something that causes your adrenaline to pump. Extempers have to get comfortable with a lot of early failure while they figure out the event and build confidence. 

And that confidence is so important. My two extempers, Sara and Olivia, were good. In fact, they had finished first and second at the last meet we had been to before State. They were both capable of making it to finals so long as they could stay cool and collected. One mistake can sometimes multiply into several mistakes, even for the best extempers. You can't let stress get to you, especially when that stress originates from outside the round. 

We had talked about that. About how you have to clear your mind of everything and make yourself calm. We did breathing exercises, we meditated, we had conversations about the big picture, about how no matter what happens, your value as a person is not determined by one activity, by one speech, no matter how important that speech is. 

And this speech was important. 

The round was almost over.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My second year was still not fantastic, but at the very least, I could see some things were at least minor improvements. 

First, I was moved back upstairs to my old room in the English hallway, which was a thousand times better. I knew our English department was really, really good (I was still teaching three sections of English), but the isolation of being the only debate and forensics coach in a building was so much worse being on a different floor from my department.

One thing I noticed I had done right was recruiting the previous spring. I had gone to the middle school and pitched the program. I had attended parent meetings for incoming freshmen. I did everything I could to convey nothing but excitement for a program I felt like I was failing. I tried to make my excitement infectious. 

It worked. 

Unlike my first year, where we had only three first-year students, I found myself with 16 students willing to sign up and try debate and forensics. 

I still did not have the team culture down right. My advanced students still wanted to be the ones to run things and there was often friction regarding my own leadership. But they were winning. And my new students were buying in to me. They may not have been winning all that much, but they were trying hard. 

What's more, with a year under my belt, I knew enough to have a very basic level of competence. 

Travel sheet? Check. 

Running home meets? Check. 

Oranizing system of evidence? Check. 

I reached out to other coaches and tried learning from them all that I possibly could. I had enough base knowledge that I felt like I knew what questions to ask. 

There were still a number of things I was terrible at. But at the very least I was confident some of the new students would be returning. And they did. The felt like they had grown a lot over the last year. They didn't feel completely lost or unsupported. They believed I could help them continue to improve. And that was something. It was something that was mine. The third year, we qualified nine students to State debate and eight of those students had only ever had me as their coach. Four of them even advanced past the preliminary rounds. It would be my last year in Buhler but debate and forensics were now so ingrained in me that I couldn't imagine teaching without it. I took a job with a shorter commute to be closer to my growing family. I was still going to be coaching.

I started to wonder just how much I might get better.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Throughout the day, different coaches walk over to the computer that contains the team placings. It automatically syncs with all the results being entered throughout the day. There are over 300 entries at this meet and it takes time to record everything electronically. They could see the top three schools:

1st: Norton High School

2nd: Sterling High School

3rd: Halstead High School

I know many of the coaches at 3A state. There are so many fantastic people who have helped me out over the years. But there are also several coaches that I never see, that do not compete against us much. 

"Who's Halstead?"

"Did Halstead just move to 3A this year?"

"Who is the Halstead coach?"

I heard a fair number of these questions. Generally, people have an idea in their head of who the top schools usually are. And that's fair. You get used to seein certain schools and certain coaches at the top of certain activities. You expect to see Alabama towards the top of the NCAA football rankings. You don't expect to see Iowa State there, though. Or at least if you did, it spurs discussion. 

But it underscored two things I already knew: I'm not a well-known coach and Halstead isn't a school you see in the top tier. A selfish part of me wanted to change that. I wanted to be well-known and I wanted my kids to be well-known. I wanted people to notice when my kids were competing, when they were speaking. 

I wanted to bury the memories of the failures I had from my first year coaching. 

Maybe a state trophy would help me to do that. 

1st: Norton High School

2nd: Sterling High School

3rd: Halstead High School

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3:30. The round was over. 

For semifinals, students compete in rooms of six people. In general, if you finish in the top three of your room, it's enough to make it to finals. As the ballots came in and were tabulated, I recorded how each one of our semifinalists finished in their rooms:

4th 

4th 

3rd

1st

4th

4th

6th

2nd 

Three. We had advanced only three to finals. 

I looked at the computer that records the points for each school. 

1st: Norton High School

2nd: Sterling High School

3rd: Nemaha Valley High School

4th: Halstead High School

We were in 4th. Passed by a school that had five entries in finals. Mathematically, it was now virtually impossible for us to catch them. We finished the day in 4th place.

I closed my notebook and walked to the cafeteria where my kids were waiting. I informed them of who was advancing and who wasn't. 

Then I went outside. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Over the next couple weeks, I would reflect on that day at state. I told my students where we had finished as a team. How close we had come to getting a trophy. How proud I was of them for doing better as a team than anyone else from their school had done before.

As adults, I think we often have trouble separating our work from our identity. Our successes and failures often get wrapped up in our perception of ourselves. I was finding myself looking at the glass as being half empty. We had a team that achieved some awesome things and yet, for a short time, all I could see was an empty trophy case. I felt like I had let my students down. I felt like an overwhelemed, incompetent newbie all over again and that if I could just achieve this one thing, then maybe I would have proven myself worthy to get to work with such awesome kids. 

At moments like this, I try to swallow the medicine I have offered to stressed out students time and time again:

This does not define you. 

No matter what happens, you are a miracle. 

Coaching has made me a better teacher in several ways. I feel more comfortable connecting with students on a level that isn't nearly as superficial as it sometimes felt in my regular English class. I've been able to see students crave more than simply content knowledge from their teachers. They want lessons they can take for life. They want a relationship with a caring adult that is unconditional, a relationship that convinces them that you are going to be in their corner no matter what. But I lost sight of my own growth when I let my identity get wrapped up in it. 

And as I got some perspective back, I let it go. My students didn't feel betrayed. They didn't feel disappointed. They were proud of what they had done and proud of each other. My issue was with myself and my own baggage. 

Sometimes we all get this way. We all identify something about ourselves and build it up in our minds to the point that we ignore the big picture. We wrap our identities up in our own children and then live vicariously through them. Then, when parenting gets difficult (it's never not difficult) we think of ourselves as bad parents and therefore bad people. 

Or we wrap ourselves up in our work. We seek the next big accomplishment, the next step on the ladder to success and when that step doesn't come quickly enough, we view ourselves as failures, or as unwilling to sacrifice enough to make it happen. 

Or we wrap ourselves up pursuing relationships. People seek the "love of their life" and when faced with rejection, they think of themselves as somehow unworthy of love. Or maybe as someone who can't "make love work." 

And that's ridiculous. It really is. I don't feel ashamed of feeling sad on behalf of my students who wanted to do better (after all, I don't feel ashamed at sharing their joy at doing well) but I do feel ashamed that in my head, I had made the meet about me instead of my students. 

Because at the end of the day, it's always about our students. We constantly teach them that their value goes beyond a score on a test or a misspelled word on a paper. But it's important to remember that our own value also goes beyond that, too. 

It's a challenge. 

But we might just grow from it. 

Infinity War - The Thanos Theory

COINED IT. "THANOS THEORY." YOU'RE WELCOME

If you haven't seen the new Avengers movie, then maybe this isn't the relaxing blog on economic theory that should be for you. Also, spoilers ahead.

Quick disclaimer: I am definitely not an economist by any possible stretch of the imagination. BUT I do like reading and listening about economic theory. And when you can combine it with a super hero movie, well...

Also, I LOVED the movie. You should see it. Even though Thanos doesn't know what he's doing.

So the main villain in Infinity War is Thanos. His whole motivation is he wants to eliminate half of the population of the universe because overpopulation is resulting in resource depletion. So he wants to destroy half of all intelligent life in order to save everyone. It's your classic "the ends justify the means" dilemma, which good movie villains often have because it makes the conflict more real.

Or at least, it WOULD make the conflict more real in this case if Thanos' particular argument wasn't kind of stupid.

Because population is not as directly tied to consumption as Thanos seems to think. And you probably won't create a Utopian universe by randomly killing 50 percent of everyone anyway.

1. Earth's population is leveling off. We're not going to overrun anything.

There are several reasons we're not going to overrun our own planet. For one, when women get a higher education, they have fewer children. Also, people have fewer children when infant mortality rates start dropping. And finally, the longer the lifespan, the lower the fertility levels. Granted, aliens would probably  be somewhat different from humans. But it seems like if Thanos really wanted to control populations, he could have just built some schools and hospitals. 

2. If Thanos is truly all-powerful, why not just make half the universe infertile?

This would seem like the most logical thing he could have done. I mean, he didn't need to do the whole genocide thing. I get what they were trying to do. Villains are scarier when you can relate to them at least a little bit and understand where they're coming from. But I can't help but feel like Thanos would have slapped himself in the forehead and been all, "Oh, yeah! I totally could have just kept people from having children! Stupid me."

3. Killing half the universe means killing half the workers and would probably destroy everyone's economy, not save it

You aren't going to make anything a utopia by reducing its population in half. Who's going to work in the fields now? Are those field workers going to now get all that extra food? Or are they going to turn around and try to trade it in exchange for clothes? And if you have a ton of extra food, doesn't that lower the VALUE of the food? Meaning you need a TON of food to trade in exchange for like one shirt? Then, next season, they simply grow less food because ain't NOBODY making a profit off that stuff anymore. Then you're all the way back to square one where hardly anyone has anything. 

Color me skeptical, but I don't actually believe Gamora's home planet is all of a sudden a paradise just because half of the houses are all of a sudden empty. 

Also, WHAT THE HECK HAPPENS TO THAT HOUSING MARKET NOW!? Your house isn't worth NOTHING anymore! You know why? Because someone could just go camping in an abandoned house now because no one is living there! All that money that you were sinking into your house is now WASTED because your house is worthless, and Bank of America is going to still try to collect from you even though your mortgage is under water now. But hey, maybe you can earn a living by selling some of your OH WAIT, NOTHING YOU OWN HAS ANY VALUE ANYMORE BECAUSE EVERYONE WHO VANISHED LEFT ALL THEIR STUFF, WHICH IS NOW PROBABLY FREE. 

Like, I can imagine Thanos showing up to Earth to look over his "paradise" and everyone is super pissed and wondering when he's going magically create an economic system that actually fits 50 percent of the population.

THANOS! WHERE ARE MY WORKERS, THANOS!? Hey! All of the autoworkers in Detroit got laid off. You know why, Thanos!? IT'S BECAUSE NO ONE NEEDS CARS ANYMORE BECAUSE ALL OF A SUDDEN WE HAVE TOO MANY OF THEM. 

Thank goodness they can purchase food to-OH WAIT, THEY DON'T HAVE MONEY BECAUSE THEY GOT FIRED. WHERE'S MY MONEY, THANOS!?!

4. Population controls itself

In a Steady State Economy (SSE) the amount of resources controls the population. In essence, population controls itself. Why exactly does Thanos need to care about murdering half the universe? Won't people naturally just straight up live with the consequences of over-consumption? Like, if there are too many rabbits, the wolf population will spring into action and decimate them. Likewise, if there are too many wolves, their numbers will go back down until there are enough rabbits to support them. If humans cut down all the trees on the planet, then...well let's not think too hard about that.

In an SSE, it essentially comes to the same thing. Thanos wouldn't even need to get the soul stone to do that. Whaddya know!

It's the Relationships First

I was inspired this past weekend by Sam Neill's blog post over the surge of student activism in the wake of the Parkland shooting. She opens with an illustration pulled from one of her favorite children's books, Mike Mulligan's steam shovel. This got me to thinking about one of my own favorite children's stories, "I'll Love You Forever" by Robert Munsch.

Now if you haven't read the book, be prepared to cry when you do read it. It's the story of a small child who, throughout the years, continually makes a mess of things. But no matter whether he's a toddler, a child, a teenager, or even an adult, his mother sneaks into his room each night, rocks him, and sings to him the following song:

"I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always.
As long as I'm living,
My baby you'll be."

At the end of the story, he goes to visit his mother, who is very old and very sick. So sick, she can't sing the song anymore. The son, however, reaches down to pick up his mother, rocks her back and forth, and sings the song to her. The book then closes at his house with him singing the same song to his brand new baby daughter.

It was a book that used to creep me out a bit as a tale of helicopter parenting run amok. But over the years, ever since I've had kids of my own, it's become one of my favorites to read to my kids. No matter how much that little boy screwed up, no matter how many problems he caused for his mother, she puts that aside and comforts him. It's an illustration of the sort of unconditional love that I think all teachers strive to show to their students.

If relationships, at their root, are about love, and if building relationships with students are crucial to being an educator, then being an educator is about figuring out how to love those who are under your care.

You don't have to look hard to see this is true. Just look at all the different professional development activities that teachers go to. They are about figuring out how to reach students who have undergone trauma, students who are depressed, students who are disabled, students who have an exceptionality, students who, in short, it's sometimes hard to build a relationship with.

So many #ksedchat discussions on Twitter consistently come back to the importance of building these relationships before we can truly see growth in our students. The social-emotional components are often critical to achieve academic success, which means educators often need to fulfill the basic needs of our students before we can address their learning. Being able to present the information alone is insufficient. If it were, what would be the need for teachers to exist at all?

Time and again, I see the best teachers express a belief that every one of their students is valuable. That every one of them has potential and purpose if only we can tap into it. The whole idea of a public education is built on the notion that every single one of us has value and is worthy of all that life can offer them if they work hard enough. It calls on teachers to express the kind of love in Robert Munsch's story. No matter how difficult or trying the child is, that is MY child. And your child. And they deserve our best.

Forever and always.

I'm not a fan of Franklin Graham

I suppose it's hearing the constant refrain that 2016 was the worst year ever that's put me in a bit of a sour mood, but lately it's been hard for me to feel encouraged by a number of social and political leaders. And much of the reason why is because of the election of Donald Trump. Now for context, I didn't go into the sort of serious malaise over Trump's election that other people experienced. I honestly wanted to give President-elect Trump a chance to win me over. He actually probably has the political power to move the country to a single-payer healthcare system, although it's unclear he would do that. And some things honestly felt promising: promises to increase infrastructure spending, pledges of support for small communities, and his post-election remarks that he would be "president for all Americans."

"Now it's time for America to bind the wounds of division; have to get together. To all Republicans and Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people. It's time. I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans, and this is so important to me. For those who have chosen not to support me in the past, of which there were a few people...(laughter)... I'm reaching out to you for your guidance and your help so that we can work together and unify our great country."

It was a nice sentiment that lasted almost 24 hours. The next day, on November 10, instead of reaching out to groups that opposed him, Trump took to Twitter again:

Since then, he's done more of the same.

I won't lie. The thought of seeing this from our president every week for the next four years does not exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

This is discouraging to me for a few reasons. First, it shows me that Trump couldn't care less about "uniting" the country. He seems to think that it's up to everyone else to rally behind him and he won't bother trying to champion me or my concerns. It makes it incredibly difficult, if not impossible, for me to want to support him. In fact, I almost want to speak out against him out of spite, even if he happens to propose something I agree with.

But to an extent, I expected this. Over the last year and half it's been pretty obvious that Trump would not be able to keep himself from 1) Twisting the knife in his opponents and 2) Playing to his base and ONLY his base.

It's his base that confounds me, though. It's expanded substantially since the Republican primaries and I don't see why.

The Christian Right has perplexed me the most, mainly because it's backing a guy that is not a Christian. That's not an insult. I honestly don't see how Trump, who claims to have never sought God's forgiveness, fits the definition of a Christian faith whose basic pillar is the redemption of mankind's sins.

And I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but it still sucks because, as a Christian liberal, I'd like to think people could tell the difference between being a partisan and being a Christian. But time and again, leaders on the Christian Right have compromised their own views in exchange for gaining influence in a Republican administration. Just look at Billy and Franklin Graham. Once upon a time, they considered Mormonism to be a cult. Then Mitt Romney, a Mormon, won the Republican nomination in 2012. All of a sudden, every reference to the "cult of Mormonism" disappeared from their website and Romney won an endorsement. Let's not pretend that their interpretation of the scripture magically changed when Romney won the nomination. Regardless of whether those beliefs were right or wrong, they were traded for influence.

And just in case you think that, as a pastor, Franklin Graham is non-partisan:

I get really tired of being called a socialist, as if any level of government operation is socialism. But aside from that, you may have noticed Graham offering criticism of such a ruthless dictator. It's sure convenient to criticize Castro because Obama happened to be improving ties with Cuba. But meanwhile, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin gets credit for being more Christ-like than Obama:

Just to be clear, it's doubtful Putin has been "reading his Bible." Putin has imposed more restrictions on religious freedom than at any point since the collapse of the USSR. I'm not talking about being forced to provide health insurance that covers family planning services. What I'm talking about is you can't even discuss faith outside of a church. And unless you're an Eastern Orthodox Christian, you probably don't have a church and you just meet at someone's house. So, sorry, you've just been banned from worshiping. But Trump and Putin are becoming BFFs, so to Franklin Graham, perhaps religious freedom only matters when it concerns bakers in America. And the Russia thing isn't limited to one Facebook post. Graham's actually praised Putin and his government over its stance on homosexuality, usually coupling it with criticism of President Obama.

Graham also seems to think that liberals have allowed some kind of Muslim conspiracy to infiltrate the government and often he comes across sounding an awful lot like Joseph McCarthy:

And later....

He used the spectre of attacks by Islamic extremists to justify opposition to President Obama's plan to resettle 10,000 refugees from the Middle East. Graham's opposition seems contrary to the letter and the spirit of Leviticus 19:33, Luke 3:11, Hebrews 13:2, Ezekiel 16:49, Galatians 5:14, and Matthew 25:35-40.
Last year, he even went so far as to suggest that President Obama himself grew up in an Islamic household and that he must therefore be somehow less Christian:

“My influences growing up, as many in this country, were under the Christian influence and the biblical influence,” he continued. “But our president did not have that, it was Islam and many feel that he’s protecting Islam. I don’t know that, but it certainly seems that way”:

Because of course, how else can you explain a Christian like Obama holding such liberal positions? He must therefore not be a Christian at all.

This is in stark contrast to the words of former president George W. Bush, for whom I've come to have more and more respect over the last several years. In the wake of the largest terror attack ever carried out on American soil, he said:

The English translation is not as eloquent as the original Arabic, but let me quote from the Koran, itself: In the long run, evil in the extreme will be the end of those who do evil. For that they rejected the signs of Allah and held them up to ridicule.
The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don't represent peace. They represent evil and war.

A sitting president of the United States quoted the Koran on national television. I have a hard time imagining President Obama being allowed to do the same thing. I think there are some lessons to be learned here.

1. It's important to distinguish when a political belief is centered on your faith and when you feel it is simply the best policy option. Strange as it might seem, it's probably okay to have some beliefs that aren't based on scriptural interpretation. The phrases "socialism," "capitalism," and "right to bear arms" do not appear anywhere in the Bible. Seek the Bible for guidance, sure, but then just pray for help the rest of the time.

2. Leaders, even supposedly apolitical Christian leaders, are subject to the trappings of power. I think Franklin Graham proves this more than many. In an effort to curry favor with conservative politicians, you'll find them aligning their views with the powers-that-be in an effort to make even the most petulant official look Christ-like. I think Franklin might do well to heed the lesson of his father Billy, who when asked if he had any regrets, replied: "I ... would have steered clear of politics. I'm grateful for the opportunities God gave me to minister to people in high places; people in power have spiritual and personal needs like everyone else, and often they have no one to talk to. But looking back I know I sometimes crossed the line, and I wouldn't do that now."

No, You Don't Have to Vote for Trump or Hillary

First, let me make a quick disclaimer: I'm a bleeding-heart liberal who will definitely be voting for Hillary Clinton. I have several policy, moral, and religious reasons for doing this but that's not what this post is about.

This post is about a common argument I have heard time and time again regarding this election:

You have to vote for Trump or Hillary.

Here's the thing. You don't.

You don't have to vote for either one of them. If you are convinced through solid, unbiased research that both of these candidates are bad for the country or that neither of them can be a capable president, you DON'T have to vote for either one of them.

It feels like this year, most people seem to agree that both candidates are bad. In fact, most voters are not voting FOR a candidate. They are voting AGAINST the other candidate. They are voting not because they believe their candidate will be good for the country, but because they fear what will happen if the other one wins.

But if you believe your candidate will not be a good president, you have no business voting for them. 

This flies in the face of most of the arguments that I've seen, from blog posts bashing third-party candidates to talk show guests saying that "It's not like staying home from the movies because they all stink. You're going to have to watch a movie whether you like it or not."

I struggle with the argument that you have only two options for president and that you have to pick one of or the other. I hate seeing memes that declare a vote for Gary Johnson is a vote for Hillary Clinton, or that a vote for Jill Stein is a vote for Trump.

You know why I hate that? Because voting against someone else is perhaps the worst reason to be supporting a political candidate, especially for president. You're essentially letting your fears make you legitimize a bad choice. And I keep seeing the exact same tired old arguments come up over and over again.

I suppose the argument I hear the most is "I support my candidate because they will pick the next justices for the supreme court." But this argument comes up EVERY SINGLE ELECTION. When you say that is the reason you vote for a particular person, you are saying your vote is being held hostage by one issue. Almost like you would vote for Hitler if Hitler promised to select justices you agree with. For that matter, you do not know for a certainty what issues will be brought to trial, whether they would make it all the way to the supreme court, whether the court would agree to hear it, or even how the justices will vote once it gets that far. In the meantime, there a host of other issues that the country will definitely be facing over the next four years and you definitely owe it to yourself and your country to select someone who won't screw everything up. In debate, we call this impact calculus. If you have legitimate concerns about a candidate's level-headedness when it comes to using nuclear weapons possibly leading to nuclear war, then your concerns about the supreme court wouldn't matter anymore. Because there wouldn't BE a supreme court anymore...you know, because of the nuke stuff..

I know both major parties are arguing that a vote for another candidate is a vote for the opposition, but I'm particularly irked by Trump supporters who spin the election as a vote that's not for Trump is a vote against Christian values. His running mate probably has a claim to conservative Christian values, but Trump, in my eyes, is not even a Christian. I don't mean that to be an insult. I don't mean that as a slap against his character (because we all sin and fall short of the glory of God). I mean that theologically I don't see how someone who has not asked God's forgiveness can be a Christian, who talks about holy communion as "When I drink my little wine -- which is about the only wine I drink -- and have my little cracker, I guess that is a form of asking for forgiveness..." Given this, I get very frustrated when people claim Trump will stand up for religious freedom in this country. First, not only is this the single most ridiculous thing anyone could ever say about him given that he has called for a ban on members of an entire religion numbering 1.6 billion from entering the U.S. (if the government has the right to ban Muslims, it has the right to ban Christians) but it again makes a false equivalency between faith and political parties. God is not a Democrat or a Republican and treating Him like he is one makes God into something way, way, way smaller than he is. Conversely, throwing out all your own values for the sake of supporting someone who merely seems less bad than your alternative proves that you were never voting your faith in the first place. I mean I suppose that's fine to keep your politics and your religious beliefs separate, but let's just be up-front about it.

I think Erik Erickson, founder of the conservative website "The Resurgence" put it best when he was interviewed on NPR recently:

MARTIN: So what do you do? You say that you're not going to vote for Hillary Clinton so that means you're in the end going to vote for Donald Trump - and we only have a couple seconds here.
ERICKSON: No way. I won't be voting for either one. Hopefully someone will step forward that I can vote for, but as someone of faith who takes it very seriously, I'm - I take Charles Spurgeon's position. Between two evils, choose neither. Just because his has an elephant next to it doesn't mean it's worth voting for.

I am definitely not saying you should not vote. There are plenty of candidates further down on the ballot that probably do deserve your attention and support. All politics is local, anyway. And for that matter, I'm not saying you should have to vote for Stein or Johnson. You can select "no choice" or even write in a candidate if your state allows that.

But years from now, someone may ask you why you supported a particular candidate. If you say, "Because I disliked the other candidate more," that may not hold up very well in their eyes. Be proud of your choice and own it. Even if that choice is neither.