White Walls

One of my favorite things about teaching is the newness of every school year.  Everything is new - students, parents, school supplies. Each teacher walks into preplanning with knowledge and insight gained from the year prior.  The drudgery of grading, paperwork, and frustrating red tape of the last school years has melted in the summer heat only to awaken a rebirth of excitement - school is starting!  On the heels of May, work ends with the promise of starting over at the beginning of August.  I am so thankful for the chance to start fresh!

In my four years of teaching, I have been asked to move rooms AND teams three different times.  When I learned at the end of the last school year that I would NOT be moving rooms but would get to stay in the little place I called home for 180 days, I was more than ecstatic.  This meant that I didn't have to transport all of my books and furniture to another classroom, move my bulliten board, take down my posters, and everything else that comes with such a cumbersome task.  My excitement lasted until I got the memo:  PLEASE TAKE DOWN ALL POSTERS ON THE WALLS.  I left my classroom at the end of May with bare, white walls - blank slates mocking me, jeering that I would have to put everything back up at the end of the summer.

This past week, we got the word that we could voluntarily come in and work on our classrooms.  I jumped at the opportunity!  When I opened the door, I saw those ominous white walls staring at me, daring me to attack them with my hot glue gun and laminated posters.  As I considered the task before me, I began to see the room differently now that all the posters were down.  I envisioned a new way of hanging them and a more efficient way of arranging my furniture.  The white walls enabled me to see a better way of setting up my classrom!

So often it would be easy as teachers to coast on last year's room set-up, last years rules and procedures, and last year's lesson plans.  We as educators have been given a great blessing that many in other professions have:  we get to start over!  I am challenging myself this year to find more "white walls" in how I teach.  Perhaps there is a unit I've taught the same way for the past two years that I can rework.  Maybe there is a way of grading that I am accustomed to that could be done more effectively.  Perhaps my approach to communicating with parents can be done differently. Just because I've "always done it that way" doesn't mean I should keep doing it.

As I think about all this, I can't help but be reminded of the Scripture in Lamentations that talks about God's mercies being new every morning.  Isn't it awesome that we have a divine Creator who allows us to start over, giving us metaphorical "white walls" to work with every day.  Perhaps there are some "posters" we need to take down in our own lives in order to give God a blank slate to do His work in us!  May we not only reflect on our profession this school year, but on our hearts as well.

My Prayer: 
"Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me."  Psalm 51:10