Today changed my life...Misunderstood

I didn't know what I was getting myself into when I accepted a subbing position this morning at 5 A.M...

If you have not read previous posts I'll fill you in on my career this year.  I'm a full time nanny to a 1 year old boy and any days I get off I sub in the Metro Nashville school district.  I do this to network so I can get a teaching job next school year. I also do it because teaching is my passion and I would have missed it for a year.

The school I subbed at this morning was an inter-city school near the projects.  It was a 2nd grade classroom.  At this age you expect the kids to adore you and instantly seek your approval.  Today the exact opposite happened...Not one student was respectful towards myself or any teacher that had to come into the classroom.  I had students saying the worst possible words you can think of, telling me they wished they were dead, and telling me they don't care about me or anyone else.  I had to break up two fist fights and had to chase 2 students down the hall because they ran out of my classroom telling me they hated me and didn't care.  By lunch time I felt like a drill Sargent.  All the other teachers would get up into the kids faces yelling at them.  I tried that, but it didn't come natural.  To them I was a door mat and one more person who just didn't believe in them.

As write this I'm crying...

When my students left my classroom for lunch, I cried and prayed "God please make these kids behave the last 4 hours of school, turn their attitudes around, I'm going to burst any minute, I need your help."  I heard God just say "They need you to be proud of them, change your mind-set, it's not about you."  I cried some more...the word that came to mind for these students at this school was "Misunderstood"...

This feeling of being misunderstood is something I'm familiar with in my own life.  I have always felt that people perceive me a different way then I know myself to be.  OR, I have felt that I need to be what people expect me to be and when I either fall short of that or don't live up to that, I feel I disappoint people all the time.  Which leads to feeling so ashamed, that no matter what I would do they would always have a certain perception of me.

I never knew how bad I struggled with this until today. 

After lunch my students came back and I wanted them to know that even though they were misbehaving so badly and not doing ANYTHING I asked of them that I still believed in them.  After talking to God about it I felt my whole perception of these students had changed.  Getting in there face and yelling at them was doing only more harm to their spirits or they were perhaps immune to it because it's what they get at home.  I wanted them to know that even though they had been so bad for me and disrespectful that I still loved them, that I knew they were smart and capable of anything.  I have to admit that I was even offended by these 7 year olds, but I had this supernatural grace for them. 

After lunch, their behaviors didn't change....mine did.

Isn't that true in life though?  We want so badly for people to change or to do what we want them to and that's when we will forgive them, and that's when we will be proud of them and love them.  God tells us it's easy to love the loveable so he calls us to love the unloveable. I understand love and grace in a whole other way today and I hope it doesn't stop there.

I hope that even though I was with them just one day that they have an ounce of belief in themselves.  They came into my classroom expecting to be nothing and do nothing and I hope and pray that along the paths in their lives someone else recognizes how much love they need to survive.  I truly mean survive.

I'll never be the same after a day like today.  I see these kids who have nothing, and I complain about not being able to get an outfit I want, that I hate my phone, or I need a new laptop...wow...today truly changed my life.

P.S.- Shout out to my Dad who also calmed me down at lunch on the phone today and encouraged me to write a book for 1st year teachers (we'll see ;)). Love you Dad.