Teaching is a work of heart
A “never finished, always start”
A tough begin no end in sight
Where darkness turns to marvelous light
Where night and chaos fade away
Illuminated by some day
When it clicks and they say to me
“I once was blind, but now I see”
From start to finish and restart
Teaching is a pure work of heart.
Kisha GreatJoy Spencer

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Of heart and capacity and emotional lifting and perpetual healing and continuous failure and little visible gain.

It is the art of bending already solidifying mindsets around the truth that we all have purpose, and that in order to find that purpose we must set ourselves to discovery. More than the content (much of which kids will never use in real life passed ACT and SAT and entry exams), what true teachers do is point lens to self, challenge faulty systems of beliefs, and (if you’re magical) shore up the foundations of value and belief that create behaviors which make a life: perseverance, inquiry, questioning, inductive reasoning, inference, the importance of context and collaboration, the power of independent thinking, the self satisfaction inherent in excellence in all you do…

It’s a hard and heavy lifting—back breaking—to chip away at hearts and minds already distracted by flashing lights and false reality. It gets tougher every year to maintain the lifting and do any building worth the time and effort. There’s so much more pouring foundations now while holding up dreams built on sand so that those dreams collapse too soon under what the world will slap them with and they give up before they know who they are and who they are to be.

Harder to keep lifting. Harder to build sure foundations. Harder to set their feet on a solid rock to STAND.

But we press.

I know that despite my very clear distaste for children in general (I am the melanated maleficent school marm in these streets), God graced me to teach. I am the definition of “Not by power, nor by might, but by His Spirit says the Lord” in a classroom of any kind. Cuz it’s His power that causes me to triumph. I’m nothing but an insulated, inwardly turned learner, often incapable of figuring out why anyone would want to be less than a than and puzzled by the genuine lack of true curiosity in the world. Why does everyone take anyone’s word for it? Why not find out for self what is true and what is not? It baffles me, to be honest.

Anyway, I am grateful regardless to be graced with the task of leaning full force into sowing seed in whatever ground I find myself tending. Busting clods, pulling weeds, fertilizing dry land, hauling in better soil, defending from predators, praying for the next one to water what I plant and trusting that God will increase it. #day7 #gratitude

In gratitude for the gift and calling of God that has been given without repentance (He won’t take it back and I be this thing whether I want to or not),

GreatJoy