I turned 53 on Tuesday. Birthdays have gotten pretty routine; I won’t concern myself overmuch with birthdays, as long as I keep having them. Mine started with a FaceTime conversation with my best friend Wayne, who remains on the mainland. One of my classes sang “Happy Birthday” to me, about as well as you might expect an 8th grade class to sing it, and I treated myself to a burger at Teddy’s Bigger Burger in Lahaiana Gateway:
...but otherwise didn’t do much, and that was fine. I am pleased that at the age of 53, I am as fit and able as I’ve been in probably 20 years. I can keep kidding myself that “I’m not getting older; I’m getting better!” for another year.
This week was “Renaissance” nomination week at Lahaina Intermediate School. Teachers nominate students for a variety of awards relating to academic excellence, character excellence, and improvement in those categories. Teachers also nominate teachers for “Teacher of the Month” awards and students also get to nominate who they consider to be the “Teacher of the Month.”
I’m the “new kid”—I really had no expectations of being nominated by either colleagues or students. It’s a small school, and it is reasonable to assume at a small school that the people who have been there for a while would be favored over a newcomer. I know many students like me, but that does not mean that they ought to nominate me as “Teacher of the Month,” and my colleagues are a long way from knowing me well enough to know what to think of me.
But 10 students nominated me for “Teacher of the Month.” That wasn’t enough to win—the winning teacher received more than 60 nominations—but it really is an honor to be nominated, especially when you’re the “new kid” and you do everything a bit differently than any of their other teachers do.
Any teacher who is nominated by students receives all the nomination forms in an envelope, and reading those forms was both humbling and uplifting. Several clearly indicated that the students need some help articulating their thoughts but they were heartfelt, and a few just made my day. One student said, “Because he’s BEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAST!” Two or three others talked about how I helped them understand things they hadn’t understood before, and one said I was “inspiring.” Those nomination forms are treasures.
I’m really lucky; I love my job and I love my students and I love my home. I take some credit for that “luck”—I am the one who made tough decisions and took real risks—but I can’t (and wouldn’t want to) take credit for all of it. Call it what you will—random chance, fate, karma—I call it God.
Last night was the “Welcome Back Dance,” a fundraiser for the Science Club. I was assigned to maintain the perimeter and keep students from going where they shouldn’t. That meant I spent my time outside (a blessing on many counts).
Sunset, shot between the cafeteria on the right (filled with sweaty middle-schoolers dancing madly) and a classroom building on the left:
After the dance, I joined a few staff members at LuLu’s for an after-dance snack (and, for the drinkers, a cocktail or two). Then I met some local scuba divers at Olowalu Beach to try for lobster; the season opened at midnight.
Conditions were’t ideal—entrances and exits at Olowalu are tricky, it was dark despite a gorgeous full “blue” moon and clear skies, the water was a bit turbid, the swim out was long, and we didn’t see a single lobster—but it was still diving on a gorgeous night in gorgeous waters and it was diving! Wait’ll next time!
I got home at about 3:30 AM and fell, exhausted, into bed. Woke up about 8:30 to this view:
...had a ridiculously huge breakfast (per my usual habit), went down to a nearby dive shop to get some information about trips, buddies, gear, and the like, then went to scout out Honolua Bay, a marine preserve that features (among other things) a Honu (Hawai‘ian green sea turtle) colony.
I didn’t get any pictures of honu—my iPhone is a decent camera, but not for shooting protected ocean wildlife in its native habitat—but here are some pictures of the ocean, the sky, and the beach:
Honolua Bay, looking toward Moloka‘i
Da’ Beach
Just around a promontory; here be Honu!
It’s Labor Day weekend. Funds are tight (payday is “Po‘akolu” Wednesday), so I’ll stick pretty close to home. My one lengthy excursion will be to church (and to Costco for gas) tomorrow.
No deep insights this week—I’m sure I've had some, but nothing leaps to mind—but just “routine.”
Pretty amazing routine, isn’t it?
No comments:
Post a Comment