New School Year

In the morning, bright and early, the big yellow buses will begin rumbling down the highways, into the tree covered dirt roads, across the rivers and up to the five schools that make up the Hamilton County School system. Other students will be dropped off by anxious parents, walk to school, or in the case of high school, drive themselves.

Many of these students are more than ready for school to start again, anxious to renew friendships, see teachers, and get back into the routine of the school year. Others are not so eager. The job of teaching would be easy if every student arrived at school anxious and ready to learn, but the job is to teach every student who is enrolled.

Teachers also have mixed emotions about the upcoming school year. The ideal situation would be to have a hundred percent of the teachers well prepared in both attitude and ability. We know, however, that we do not live in an ideal world. There are some teachers who are what I refer to as "the called." These are the ones that live to teach. Others are "the taught to teach" who have been trained and do a good job at teaching. Then there are others who fill the position and do an adequate job most of the time. Occasionally there are people who are filling a classroom, taking roll, and playing school without doing a very good job of it.

Administrators also come in different shapes, sizes, attitudes, and abilities. Some are a better match for a school than others. A good administrator can make a good school better. An adequate administrator can end up dampening enthusiasm of teachers if they let this happen. A bad administrator can poison the atmosphere of a school and damage the morale of both teachers and students.

Most of the times, teachers do not get to choose their administrator. Teachers, do, however, get to choose the attitude with which they go into the school year. A good teacher can make an administrator look better than they are. I hope that it is the goal of each of our teachers this year to make the administrators at each of our schools look like prize winners.

I well remember one year when our principal spent the time at our closing luncheon to pretty much tell the whole faculty off. This was particularly bad since we were all going our separate ways. We came back that fall with a renewed resolve as a group of teachers to see that our school did well. We worked together, encouraged each other, supported all the programs of the school and accomplished wonders. We made our administrator look so good that he was hired by someone else at the end of the year. We had such a good year that we were all really sorry to see him go.

So, tomorrow when I see the flashing strobes atop the buses drift by my window in the early morning light, I will be saying a special prayer for each of the teachers facing those kids in the new sneakers and their fresh school clothes. I will be praying that each of those teachers face this year with resolve to be the best that they can be. I pray for their health, their emotions, and their patience. I pray that they have wisdom, that they plan well, and that they be blessed with students ready to learn.

Mama's Birthday

Eighty-eight years ago, my mother was born in a converted boxcar in Kathleen, Florida while her parents were in Polk County working in the strawberry fields. The Jacksons were working to save enough money to buy their own farm in Lafayette County where they lived. She was the tenth and last child born to her parents, the fifth girl. This trip was their next to the last because they did save enough money. The rest of her childhood was lived near Mayo, Florida.


It was fitting that those of us who could, gathered to celebrate her life for a few minutes. When asked what was the most wonderful thing that had happened in her lifetime, there was a chorus from the grand kids, each claiming their birth as that most wonderful thing. Anne, of course laid claim to being the only grand daughter; Rob, to being the biggest baby. John topped them all with his assertion that he was the first and therefore the most special. As the laughter died down, she thought about the question and answered that she thought it was the change in birthing things that are available now to protect the health of mothers and children.


When she was born, there was no thought of going to a hospital to have children. When someone got sick, you did what you knew to do and prayed for the best. Her mother had been the person in the community whom people would get when there was sickness in their house. She would do what she could to pull them through. My mother said the sweetest prayers she ever heard were her mother's prayers for sick children when she did not know what to do.


When we look back on 88 years, we might think that someone would come up with computers or space travel or any number of modern additions to our lives, but I think there is a lot of wisdom to her choice. No matter how many problems we have with health care, our lives are so much easier now than in 1923. Childhood immunizations keep us from having to hear our little children racked with the horrible coughs that signify "Whooping Cough." The various measles, mumps, and chicken pox are basically things of the past. Cancer is no longer an automatic death sentence.

After lunch, mulling over her recent experience of getting a new driver's liscense, she pulled out her first one which expired in 1945. It was typed on a piece of form and on the inside was a place for offenses if you were ticketed.....no plastic; no picture.


My mother is the last of those ten children living. Her life has been a long one. She lived through World War II with her husband in the Pacific, a brother in Europe, a brother on a carrier in the Pacific, and four nephews scattered through the services. She watched her older sister die of cancer in the early fifties. She worried over nephews in the Korean War. She raised two children, helped farm, birthed a lot of calves and pigs, cooked a slew of meals, worked in tobacco, watched her children graduate from college, went back to school and got her high school diploma, celebrated the birth of each of her four grandchildren, dried a lot of tears, celebrated triumphs, shared heartaches, enjoyed her great-grandchildren, and grieved when her husband of 67 years died in 2003. She still raises the best tomatoes in the world and knows how to coax the most beautiful blooms out of roses.

I am sure that when someone has the nerve to ask her if she still drives and lives on the farm, she will give them a good hard stare out of those hazel eyes of hers and say, "Of course! I'm only 88!"