I read an article yesterday that said part of Alabama's new immigration law required that students provide either their legal status or that of their parents' legal status when they enter school and how that's caused some withdrawals by Hispanic students. I told my friend that this fired me up and really angered me. We disagree on the subject of immigration, as I do with most of my friends I suspect, I just haven't had the joy of discussing it with most of them.
If it was up to me, I'd say let them in. Now, if they have a criminal record obviously something needs to be done about that. But I suspect the vast majority of illegal immigrants or undocumented workers or whatever you want to call them are just trying to make a living here. Isn't that what drew most of our European ancestors here in the first place? The chance to make a living for oneself and their families? Last time I checked, most people who are seemingly so against immigration aren't Native Americans. We are a nation of immigrants, and need to stay that way.
If you don't want people coming here from Mexico or other Latin American countries, then you should help those countries build better infrastructures and help provide work for them right where they are. I suspect the main reason people come here are for jobs. That's probably why immigration has leveled off the past couple of years, there aren't nearly enough jobs to go around anymore. Now, some people reading this may say, "But we have tons of problems right here in the United States." To this I simply reply, "You're right. So what are you doing about those problems?" Many times I get asked why I help people overseas when there's so much need right in my own backyard. There are several reasons, but I do also try to help out here at home when I'm living here. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like a lot of people who argue that we should all not help overseas are the same ones that aren't doing anything here either. And if that's the case it makes one wonder why they care in the first place if you decide to go overseas to help someone.
I long for my whole life to be a life of service. Right now, I see my job as service. I'm a teacher at a Title 1 school, meaning I teach those in a low socioeconomic class. My school is a great swath of diversity, personally I love the opportunity to teach there. When I first told people that I got a job there, people had this kind of stunned reaction, as if to say, "Didn't you know that Tuttle is a Title 1 school?" To be honest, no, I had no idea Tuttle was a Title 1 school or what a Title 1 school even was for that matter. Looking back now though, I know God placed me right where He wanted me. Looking forward, I can't wait to see what God has in store for me at my school. How can I get my church involved with helping out our students? How can I help build a bridge between my church and my school? How can we serve the needs of my students? There's a quote by someone, I don't know if it was Rob Bell or someone else, but they said something along the lines of, "If they were to close the doors of your church tomorrow, would anyone outside of your congregation protest?"
I long to help our church be so wrapped up in our community that our community can't imagine life without us. That is why we are here on this earth, to be a blessing to others. We are to be a blessing to others, particularly the poor and marginalized. This is what informs my view of immigration, that we should help them adapt to our culture and thrive within it while at the same time keeping key parts of their own culture. I don't know why, but I feel called to get even more involved with our immigrant population than I already am. I have no idea where this will lead, but I am looking forward to it.
A year or so ago, when the Arizona anti-immigration law was passed, I remember sitting in a small group and our pastor sharing a tweet he had read earlier that day that said something along the lines of, "I don't care what your position on immigration is, we're called to love them." One of my close friends responded that the quote was interesting and made him think because he said his stance on immigration probably didn't come across as real loving. I remember thinking at the time, "Well, then, your stance probably needs to change." I kept my mouth shut at the time because I didn't want to open a can of worms but looking back maybe I should have said something.
We live in a globalized workplace and are more and more intertwined with other countries. Personally, I think it would help tremendously if we went out of our ways to meet the 'other.' Someone who is different from us, whether that be culturally, socioeconomically, or racially different. For instance, I wonder if my fellow Christians would be so anti-immigrant if they knew more undocumented workers. Mother Theresa once said something like, "Change happens when small things are done with great love." Or something like that, I'm probably ruining that particular quote so you'll have to forgive me for that. The idea, though, is that big change starts small. If we as Christians truly long for people to come to know Christ, we're going to have a hard time demonstrating His love if we're busy telling them to get out of our country.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Sabbath and work
What is the Sabbath? In the Bible, God rested on the seventh day from His work of creation and made that day holy. He named it the Sabbath, and commanded His followers to honor it and keep it holy as well. Lately, I've been interested in finding out what exactly that means and also what it looks like in real life. This lead me to order a book on my Kindle called "Ancient Practices: Sabbath." Honestly, so far it seems like a lot of fluff. It's very idealistic, which I normally like, but some of it I just can't seem to wrap my brain around. The author talks about how Sabbath is meant for playtime; basically to enjoy God in whatever activities you do that day. It talks about how a true Sabbath can really order our weeks around it. The three days afterward you feel refreshed and the three days prior you anticipate taking a Sabbath again. Personally, I like the aspect of not doing any work on the Sabbath, even though that seems impossible at times to uphold. What does it mean to 'play' as an adult though I wonder? Does it simply mean to do that which you love and makes you come alive? That seems like a good definition to me. Some people really enjoy hiking in the mountains. Would that be considered as work, though? I don't really think so, unless you're coming from a legalistic standpoint on it.
A while back, I was in correspondence with someone over an upcoming mission trip that I was scheduled to go on in the summer. Whenever I emailed her with questions, she'd faithfully write back and her sign off was always, "Enjoy God," and then her name. Personally, I always enjoyed reading those signatures from her as it was a good reminder that we don't serve God out of obligation but rather from a place of joy and contentment. This isn't always the case, obviously, we need to worship Him even in the midst of suffering. Ultimately, though, our praise stems from joy more often than not. Joy is not to be confused with happiness either; although it's my personal belief that if you are pursuing joy than you will have more happiness as a natural consequence as well. When I think of joy, specifically joy found in the Lord, I think of contentment. Being content no matter what circumstances you find yourself in is a discipline that is built over a lifetime. The apostle Paul had a really good grasp on it, one that I can only hope to attain one day. For myself, though, I find it really hard to stay content when my world is falling apart. When I'm in the throes of depression, for instance, or when my job is so overwhelming that I can't even see straight. That's when I have to say a special prayer and beg God to find contentment in the midst of my circumstances.
Speaking of work, we have just been given all this stuff about RTI, response to intervention. Now, the plus side of this coin is that we're focusing on meeting students' needs, which is always a good thing. Most teachers were doing this anyways. Now, however, we're supposed to document everything we're doing. This leads to an excessive amount of paperwork. Paperwork has never been my strong suit nor has organization in general so I'm starting to learn how to deal with it. It's a new learning curve, as are a lot of things within the field of education, so I'm slowly finding my footing along the way.
It is my desire to be the best teacher I can be, as cheesy and cliche as that sounds. My plan is to probe the minds of some of the best teachers at my school and to read more literature in the field of education. "The Daily 5" is a book I've picked up for a second time. There's a lot of stuff within it about best practices based on research. The hard part about it is that we're supposed to follow this curriculum that doesn't really allow time for the freedom needed to implement the Daily 5. As a result, I'm looking for ways to implement best practices along with my curriculum that we're mandated to do. I'm really tempted to just do away with my curriculum and go solely with the daily 5 due to it being based on research and best practices. It would seem obvious for our school district or at least our school to go with best practices but this is simply not the case. I have a feeling there's politics involved somewhere along the way of purchasing curriculum from different providers since we do this every 6 years.
Constantly changing has its pros and cons, to be sure. I've been at my school now for 6 years and change and have moved grade levels 4 times. It makes it difficult to become a master at any one grade level. Hopefully, I'll get to stay in kindergarten next year since I still don't feel like I even have my feet under me at this point. I never thought I would actually enjoy kindergarten, but I have loved it so far. The newness has worn off a little, and admittedly I do sometimes long for the times past when I taught 5th grade and the students were all independent. It never even occurred to me that students don't start out as independent. Boy was I ever wrong! Independence is a skill that is taught, and one I'm trying desperately to teach to my kindergarten students as the year progresses.
Last month, I ended up dropping out of grad school, for the second time in my life. Somehow, I get this notion that I'll suddenly be organized and efficient enough with time management that I can take on grad school no problem. This time I dropped not because of the time management part but rather because it was cutting into my goal of saving an emergency fund of 3-6 months. I'd like to do this as quickly as possible and I was finding that extremely difficult with $400 leaving my pocket every month. In our in boxes at school we're constantly sent emails that have grad schools advertisements. One of them said you can get loan forgiveness for grad school if you work at a Title 1 school. That has extreme appeal to me since I happen to work at a Title 1 school. It's something to look into at least. Who knows what the future holds though, I may not end up teaching there for the rest of my career like I think I want to at this point. There may come a day where I want to teach overseas or at least try it for a year or two. For now, though, I love living here in Sarasota and being close to all my friends who live here.
A while back, I was in correspondence with someone over an upcoming mission trip that I was scheduled to go on in the summer. Whenever I emailed her with questions, she'd faithfully write back and her sign off was always, "Enjoy God," and then her name. Personally, I always enjoyed reading those signatures from her as it was a good reminder that we don't serve God out of obligation but rather from a place of joy and contentment. This isn't always the case, obviously, we need to worship Him even in the midst of suffering. Ultimately, though, our praise stems from joy more often than not. Joy is not to be confused with happiness either; although it's my personal belief that if you are pursuing joy than you will have more happiness as a natural consequence as well. When I think of joy, specifically joy found in the Lord, I think of contentment. Being content no matter what circumstances you find yourself in is a discipline that is built over a lifetime. The apostle Paul had a really good grasp on it, one that I can only hope to attain one day. For myself, though, I find it really hard to stay content when my world is falling apart. When I'm in the throes of depression, for instance, or when my job is so overwhelming that I can't even see straight. That's when I have to say a special prayer and beg God to find contentment in the midst of my circumstances.
Speaking of work, we have just been given all this stuff about RTI, response to intervention. Now, the plus side of this coin is that we're focusing on meeting students' needs, which is always a good thing. Most teachers were doing this anyways. Now, however, we're supposed to document everything we're doing. This leads to an excessive amount of paperwork. Paperwork has never been my strong suit nor has organization in general so I'm starting to learn how to deal with it. It's a new learning curve, as are a lot of things within the field of education, so I'm slowly finding my footing along the way.
It is my desire to be the best teacher I can be, as cheesy and cliche as that sounds. My plan is to probe the minds of some of the best teachers at my school and to read more literature in the field of education. "The Daily 5" is a book I've picked up for a second time. There's a lot of stuff within it about best practices based on research. The hard part about it is that we're supposed to follow this curriculum that doesn't really allow time for the freedom needed to implement the Daily 5. As a result, I'm looking for ways to implement best practices along with my curriculum that we're mandated to do. I'm really tempted to just do away with my curriculum and go solely with the daily 5 due to it being based on research and best practices. It would seem obvious for our school district or at least our school to go with best practices but this is simply not the case. I have a feeling there's politics involved somewhere along the way of purchasing curriculum from different providers since we do this every 6 years.
Constantly changing has its pros and cons, to be sure. I've been at my school now for 6 years and change and have moved grade levels 4 times. It makes it difficult to become a master at any one grade level. Hopefully, I'll get to stay in kindergarten next year since I still don't feel like I even have my feet under me at this point. I never thought I would actually enjoy kindergarten, but I have loved it so far. The newness has worn off a little, and admittedly I do sometimes long for the times past when I taught 5th grade and the students were all independent. It never even occurred to me that students don't start out as independent. Boy was I ever wrong! Independence is a skill that is taught, and one I'm trying desperately to teach to my kindergarten students as the year progresses.
Last month, I ended up dropping out of grad school, for the second time in my life. Somehow, I get this notion that I'll suddenly be organized and efficient enough with time management that I can take on grad school no problem. This time I dropped not because of the time management part but rather because it was cutting into my goal of saving an emergency fund of 3-6 months. I'd like to do this as quickly as possible and I was finding that extremely difficult with $400 leaving my pocket every month. In our in boxes at school we're constantly sent emails that have grad schools advertisements. One of them said you can get loan forgiveness for grad school if you work at a Title 1 school. That has extreme appeal to me since I happen to work at a Title 1 school. It's something to look into at least. Who knows what the future holds though, I may not end up teaching there for the rest of my career like I think I want to at this point. There may come a day where I want to teach overseas or at least try it for a year or two. For now, though, I love living here in Sarasota and being close to all my friends who live here.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
praying for the nations and some thoughts on war
Today, I went to Siesta Beach and finished reading "Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream" by David Platt. He finishes the book by issuing a year-long challenge which he calls the radical experiment. There are 5 parts of this. One, praying for the entire world. Two, reading through the entire Bible. Three, sacrificing your money for a specific purpose. Four, spending time in another context. Five, committing your life to a multiplying community. In regards to the praying for the entire world part, he mentioned a book named "Operation World."
Several years ago, I meant to pick up this book when I was pretty interested in missions. I just ordered it off Amazon today and look forward to when it comes. It gives specific information about every country in the world and how one can pray for that country. Should be a good eye-opener. I try to keep up with world politics and different happenings in different countries but often fail at this. The nice thing about this book is that it adds the spiritual side to different injustices in the world and how you can specifically pray for different people groups around the globe. I'll be sure to include South Sudan in my prayers since they're a brand new country and I'm going to guess aren't mentioned in this book due to it being published before that occurred.
Gratefully, I have several friends in different countries that I like to keep in touch with. It reminds me that there are indeed places outside of the states. We live in a culture that places undue value on the individual and also a weird sense of pride about 'American exceptionalism.' As if we don't have our own share of problems that we've created ourselves. Implied in this line of thinking is that we are chosen by God to be the world's only superpower. When I read Scripture, I read of a chosen people as a nation, but that nation was Israel, not the USA. Furthermore, in the New Testament the chosen ones refer to all Christians, across all borders.
That means that in a very real way we have brothers and sisters who are just as chosen as we are living in nations that are experiencing war brought to them by our own nation. I cannot for the life of me understand how some Christians are seemingly so pro-military and therefore pro-war. We go on Sunday mornings to worship the Prince of Peace and yet we support a military industrial complex that keeps churning out more and more weapons and more and more reasons for endless war. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think of Christ as some hippy, there is definitely a fierce side to Him as revealed in different parts of Scripture. I think of peace as much harder to realize than war. Furthermore, are we not commanded in Scripture to take the higher road of enemy-love? Personally, I would rather leave it up to God to decide who needs to be punished and who doesn't than participate in a war machine that flexes its muscles to cover its innate fear of 'the other.' It's tricky ground, and admittedly I am very confused about this subject, particularly when it comes to places in the Old Testament where God commands Israel to commit genocide against another people group. But is not Christ the ultimate fulfillment of God's will? Should we not heed what He taught while He was on this earth. Somewhere I once read that for the first 300 years of the Christian religion Christians refused to partake in war of any kind. Maybe that's because they were closer to the original intent of Christ's work on this earth? I really don't know. One thing I do know, I think non-violent means of protest are much closer to the heart of Christ than mindless war.
Several years ago, I meant to pick up this book when I was pretty interested in missions. I just ordered it off Amazon today and look forward to when it comes. It gives specific information about every country in the world and how one can pray for that country. Should be a good eye-opener. I try to keep up with world politics and different happenings in different countries but often fail at this. The nice thing about this book is that it adds the spiritual side to different injustices in the world and how you can specifically pray for different people groups around the globe. I'll be sure to include South Sudan in my prayers since they're a brand new country and I'm going to guess aren't mentioned in this book due to it being published before that occurred.
Gratefully, I have several friends in different countries that I like to keep in touch with. It reminds me that there are indeed places outside of the states. We live in a culture that places undue value on the individual and also a weird sense of pride about 'American exceptionalism.' As if we don't have our own share of problems that we've created ourselves. Implied in this line of thinking is that we are chosen by God to be the world's only superpower. When I read Scripture, I read of a chosen people as a nation, but that nation was Israel, not the USA. Furthermore, in the New Testament the chosen ones refer to all Christians, across all borders.
That means that in a very real way we have brothers and sisters who are just as chosen as we are living in nations that are experiencing war brought to them by our own nation. I cannot for the life of me understand how some Christians are seemingly so pro-military and therefore pro-war. We go on Sunday mornings to worship the Prince of Peace and yet we support a military industrial complex that keeps churning out more and more weapons and more and more reasons for endless war. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think of Christ as some hippy, there is definitely a fierce side to Him as revealed in different parts of Scripture. I think of peace as much harder to realize than war. Furthermore, are we not commanded in Scripture to take the higher road of enemy-love? Personally, I would rather leave it up to God to decide who needs to be punished and who doesn't than participate in a war machine that flexes its muscles to cover its innate fear of 'the other.' It's tricky ground, and admittedly I am very confused about this subject, particularly when it comes to places in the Old Testament where God commands Israel to commit genocide against another people group. But is not Christ the ultimate fulfillment of God's will? Should we not heed what He taught while He was on this earth. Somewhere I once read that for the first 300 years of the Christian religion Christians refused to partake in war of any kind. Maybe that's because they were closer to the original intent of Christ's work on this earth? I really don't know. One thing I do know, I think non-violent means of protest are much closer to the heart of Christ than mindless war.
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