Putting Passion Into Practice

Three Generations, Crystal is in the middle.

Copyright © 2018

by Ralph F. Couey

Almost exactly seven years ago, I wrote a blog post about our middle daughter Crystal.  She was approaching graduation, with a degree in Mathematics and Education, and as the months ticked down towards the end, one day she sent me an email.  It was one of those messages that becomes immortalized within that magnificent treasure chest that is the human heart.  In it, she stated that she didn't just want to be a good teacher, she wanted to be a great teacher.  She then asked me for advice on how she could make that happen.

At the time, I worked with people in the Intelligence Community who had come from the education field.  I asked them to send her emails with their advice, which they graciously did.  I contributed my own snippets of fatherly wisdom, and sent it on its way.

For her to get to that graduation moment was a tough road.  In the last year just before she was to start her practice teaching, she had a snowboarding accident which resulted in a severe concussion.  A lesser person would have set things aside and taken time to heal.  But that's just not Crystal.

She's one tough cookie.

By sheer force of will, she gutted her way through those classroom hours, and managed to complete her classes as well as her senior thesis. During this entire period, she experienced massive difficulties with memory, cognition, along with physical symptoms such as severe headaches and trouble sleeping.  Somehow, and I still don't understand how, she got through it all and graduated.  We came out to Denver for her graduation, and witnessed her, standing tall and proud, accepting her degree.

Her plan was to start teaching soon after, but as it so often does, life intervened.  Two pregnancies, neither one planned or anticipated, resulted in two wonderfully intelligent and fun kids.  Now, several years later, her offspring have grown enough to send to school and daycare, and she has landed a job teaching math.  Her students are troubled kids. Some leave school to go home and care for their siblings, and thus have no real time to study outside of class.  Others have to go to jobs in order to support their families, resulting in the same thing.  The list of challenges which have been thrown at these young lives would daunt most adults.  And yet, they soldier on.  It's a rare day when fights don't break out, and she sees in their eyes their struggles, as some days, all they can do is stare into space.

Having returned from our last contract assignment, we are spending time with her family, and this evening we went out to eat.  Crystal began to talk about her job.  At first she bemoaned the workload, 12 to 14 hour days with no overtime.  But then she began to talk about her students, and a magnificent transition took place.  Her face lit up, her eyes glowed, and her voice came alive.  The challenges were certainly daunting, given the nature of those she was teaching, but I could see that she loved her job.  She embraced those challenges.  She talked about how when she looked at her students, she saw "the hope that is in their lives."  Only on the job for three weeks, she nonetheless defended the kids in a staff meeting, pointing out that many of her kids had huge responsibilities at home which left little time for study, so she advocated eliminating homework.  Ever the mathematician, she pointed to her own research that showed that the tardy rates soared when there was homework due.  She was refusing to assume the background role of the "new kid," challenging the other teachers to see the students as she did, loads of potential, but weighed down by life.  

One day, she introduced a new learning concept applied to a particularly difficult set of math problems.  When she finished, there was dead silence in the room, broken finally by one student in an awed voice who said, "Guys...we just learned something!"  The room broke into a spontaneous cheers.  She has two students who speak no english, but by using imagination and a translation app on her phone, she has been able to reach them.  She spoke of feeling tears in her eyes as she watched her students excel in academics and sports, 

Alas, she is a bit like Don Quixote, tilting at windmills.  A federal retiree, I know intimately that changing the course of a bureaucracy is like trying to shift earth's orbit by stomping on a sidewalk.  But, as she has always done, she refuses to give in to "business as usual."  As long as she is there, she will fight with all she has to teach those kids, and try to lead them towards a better life. I get the impression that her more...seasoned colleagues don't agree with her.  But Crystal still sees hope, still sees promise.  The stress and long hours are reviving her concussion symptoms, which adds to an already difficult situation.  But she loves her work.  She believes in the school's mission. And most importantly, she knows she can make a difference.

Crystal will be a great teacher.  She won't accept anything less.  She understands she still has things to learn, and there are things the system can teach her.  But her passions are in the right place, in those desks full of the hungry minds she faces every day.

And yes, I am very proud of her.