Observations – Page 4 – R. Tyler Horner

First Sunday at Church

Today was Caroline’s first day at church and there was one first during church, one first after church, and one interesting discussion that followed:

One First During Church:

We dropped Caroline off at Little Village, which is the children’s ministry at our church. We put our parent pick-up sticker on her, left some instructions for the lovely ladies in the nursery, and made our way to church. We sat with some friends of ours and the service started. Haley was nervous since this was the first time we’d left our baby with the church nursery. The service began and everything seemed fine, until five minutes later when the nursery paging service illuminated our parent code which meant we needed to check on our baby. Haley left to go see what was going on and when she came back approximately 20 minutes later she told me that Caroline had been hysterically crying and had spit up all over one of the nursery workers. She had gotten her to fall asleep in one of their baby rockers and we held our breaths until the end of the sermon, and then grabbed her and moseyed on our way. Definitely not how we envisioned Caroline’s time in the nursery, but not the worst I’d ever heard either.

One First After Church:

We met with a girl we knew from church about the possibility of her moving into one of our guest rooms for the fall semester. We presented what we thought was a great blessing for her, and she thought it would be great. We’re hoping that this works out and that we can use the gift of our house to bless others. We really wanted our house to be a ministry opportunity for our family and beyond. If this doesn’t work out that’s completely ok, but it would be a great opportunity for us and her. We’ve tried to think through all the possible downfalls of this and really be intentional about making sure we’re above reproach. The major hurdle was the possibility that Haley were to go out of town. The solution we came up with was for me to go to my parent’s house for the evenings Haley is out of town just to make sure there is no way for anyone to call anything into question. Hopefully this won’t be the only time we can use the house God blessed us with as a ministry opportunity.

An Interesting Discussion:

The sermon at church was talking about the local church body and how they are being very intentional about the ways they are encouraging our discipleship. They laid out their plan for every level of church, from children to adults. While most of the age ranges made sense, the issue of youth ministry at our church left Haley and I with a big discussion. Haley grew up with a strong youth group that allowed her to forge lifelong relationships with her friends at school as well as provided adults that consistently loved and discipled her. Our church’s stance is that they don’t use a “program-driven” youth ministry, and they outlined why that is. While Haley and I both understand their point-of-view on the topic, we don’t necessarily agree. Our stance for now is going to be to see how the youth ministry morphs over the next few years and make a decision about youth ministry when Caroline is closer to that age. Haley and I both agree that we love their children’s program as well as the theology of the church, but we want to have other adults than just ourselves pouring wisdom and the gospel into their lives as they grow up. It was a great discussion for the two of us and one that we will have to revisit later.

Hypothetical vs. Reality

I feel like compared to a lot of classrooms I was presented with during the teacher certification process I have done a really good job of innovating in the classroom and putting into practice a lot of the neat ideas that we are presented with at any number of conventions and seminars we attend as teachers. I wouldn’t call my classroom cutting edge or overly progressive, but I would put myself further on that continuum than the old fashioned, sit and get methodology that we know to be archaic and outdated. Recently though I’ve had a tough time marrying the big, new ideas of the people attempting to revolutionize teaching and the reality of the classroom that I have to teach in.

I see a lot of educational bloggers and authors talking about how we should do away with learning standards and how we should end the push for a common core. I would tend to agree with the idea that we for sure have too many standards and that standards tend to make us teach to the lowest common denominator, not push our students to achieve more. I would love to be able to throw out all standards and just teach what is best for kids. There’s only one problem with that, I would probably lose my job. The administration at my school and even my district is among the most progressive group in the wonderful state of Texas. On top of that, we are among the highest performing districts in the state as well. With all that being said, if I didn’t teach the state standards to every kid in my class, my administration would find a way to get me out of teaching…and they would have a good reason to. We can all debate the points of state standards, standardized testing, and how they should be reformed, but until that day happens I will be teaching the standards that are put in front of me by the state I teach in. Knowing the content that you are expected to teach well enough to relate it to kids in ways they with receive it and have it change the way we look at the world is the essence of teaching. I’m not in the business of making kids read a history textbook, take endless notes about the reading they did, and test them over it in by having them regurgitate exactly what I told them the previous few days. I am in the business of teaching kids the big ideas of history, the cause and effect relationships in history, the amazing stories of epic people in history, and having the kids internalize history to make it real to them in modern times. All this is done keeping the state standards in mind so that I can be above reproach with my administration and teach the kids the topics and ideas the state wants them to learn in my classroom.

As my brain wandered through these ideas, I started to imagine a school where the teachers all taught what they thought would be best for kids and completely disregarded the state standards. I imagine the super-artistic teachers completely going off on tangents that have little or nothing to do with anything the kids need to cover during their tenure at our middle school. I see the overly political teachers standing on their soap boxes going off on their political tangents that make them look like talk show host. I see people that cover only a chapters worth of material in a school year because their belief is that the state got it all wrong. Call my cynical if you like, but without some sort of standards we are doomed to the whims of people who have taken up the mantle to teach. People tend to be fickle and that is exactly why we need some standards. Not to mention if everyone taught their particular passion in life, the kids across the country would get vastly different educations which would be very difficult to measure in any quantifiable way.

The problem with the modern day idea of state standards is that we have seen them as the bar for teaching. Our outdated attitude is “all kids need to know are the standards” and once they have those committed to memory our job is done. Speaking as someone who has only been teaching for four years, the standards gave me legs to stand on my first years of teaching. I luckily teach in a district that does not prescribe exactly what I need to teach and at what pace, I am given the ability to teach things how I see fit and how it would best make sense to my kids in my classroom. We walk a fine line calling for teachers to forget the standards and completely teach with passion alone. While I’m sure there would be wild creativity and imagination there will also be far less new teachers with much stamina in the teaching field.

Burdens

I was reading this article, and it seemed to be a perfect metaphor to what I can become if I quit pushing myself as a teacher. I run the risk of becoming stagnant in an ever changing workplace.

The bike in this picture was simply lost and left alone in the path of a growing tree. Fast forward a few decades and the bike has been swarmed by the rest of the tree and could now be considered a burden to the rest of the tree. In the same way if we do not continue to evolve and continue down the path of growth as a teacher, could we not be a burden to our occupation? I really hope that this picture never describes me as a teacher. I hope that I will have retired as an educator long before this depicts me. The children we have the opportunity to teach deserve better than having someone collecting a paycheck rather than do what is best for kids.

Classes Are Done

Monday Haley and I finished our pre-baby coursework. Our hospital offers three classes for new parents, and while they aren’t mandatory they are recommended. At first I was a bit hesitant, but after going to them all we really learned a lot and feel better about the prospects of taking home our child in six weeks or so.

The first class we took was called “Prepared Childbirth.” Of all the classes we took, I feel like this was the most important because it at least gave me a basic understanding of what to expect when we motor off to the hospital. They went over hospital procedures, choices we needed to make, and generally got us to understand how you birth a child at their hospital. We also got to go on a tour of the pre-natal and postpartum areas of the hospital, which will come in handy.
The next class was the “Baby Care and CPR Class” which was super-helpful as well. They told us about basic baby care and when we needed to seek medical attention. We also got a crash course in infant CPR and what to do if the baby begins to choke (which is pretty likely). We also took another tour of the hospital during this class.
The last class was also the one I was most weary about going to, “Breastfeeding Class.” While I still maintain that I would have been fine not going to this class, the understanding of how everything needs to happen as well as how often it should be happening was very helpful. They offered another tour, but we declined.

Overall I wouldn’t say that I’m ‘prepared’ for the big day, but I feel like I have a better understanding than I ever had before. We’ve also gotten the nursery done (pictures to come) so now my only thing left to do is pack a backpack for our trip to the hospital.

Dim Sum, Ducks, and Trains

I’m finding myself observing how little kids act as I go about my day to day activities, and it’s making me more and more excited to welcome our baby girl into the world. Some friends of ours invited us to our first dim sum, basically Chinese brunch, and then to go visit the North Park Mall Train exhibit today, and we said we’d love to. Their son is almost 2 now, so it was fun walking around and seeing him interact with all the stimuli of a mall alongside hundreds of other children of all ages.

Dim sum was actually really good, but I was happy someone knew what to order, because I sure didn’t. Somewhere during the meal I channeled my inner Andrew Zimmer and ate my first chicken foot. It wasn’t what I would call ‘bad’, but I can assure you it’s not something I’ll crave any time soon. We sampled various types of dumplings and noodles and it was all really fantastic.

We then headed to North Park Mall in Dallas for walking, talking, and trains. I remember going to the model train exhibit at the Galleria Mall when I was a boy, and it was very similar to the one we visited today. Tons of awesome trains and models wound around the venue and it was packed with parents trying to take pictures of unwilling kids and mothers grabbing the hand of little children before they grabbed a train straight off the tracks. I was happy to see that Big Tex’s legend will continue after he met a tragic end this year at the State Fair.

While we were walking around the mall we stopped at a little group of ponds that had turtles and ducks floating around in it and kids stopped in their tracks mesmerized by the little animals. It was funny to see how boys and girls alike looked in wonder at a few turtles that barely moved and it gave me a minute to think about baby Horner. I wonder if she’ll be an animal lover, if she’ll be shy in front of the camera like her father was growing up, or if she’ll love wandering around the mall when she’s little. I wonder how I’ll react when it’s my daughter screaming when she doesn’t get her way, when she wanders off in a crowded place, or when she gets a little too close the the ducks in the pond. I wonder so much about my baby girl and I can’t wait to meet her.