Embarrassment

My greatest embarrassment this year happened on Thursday, and it started when I gave my class hot chocolate. It was a cold, blustery day, and I was feeling the holiday spirits drifting in. We were preparing for that night’s Holiday Sing in which all the third and fourth graders would perform with voice, kazoo, and percussive instruments for a multitude of parents and one senator. The kids had practiced since October and they really sounded good.

Last week, a parent had a brilliant idea for the Holiday Sing. She asked each kid to bring in a holiday picture of him or herself. Her intention was to scan all the pictures in and make a huge digital slideshow to display while the children sang. The only problem was, she didn’t follow through. The pictures came in, but she did not collect them and assemble the slideshow. I guilted myself into not only collecting the pictures and creating a slideshow, but also into purchasing material to build large symmetric screens on either side of the stage. And considering the performance was only a few hours away, I was beginning to feel panicky. This is my flimsy excuse for what happened next.

I wanted to get the screens raised. Fifteen minutes was all I needed, and I asked the class to work in their Reading Workbook. It was intelligent work that we were ready to do anyway, and it was review. I thought, “Why not give the kids hot chocolate while they work?” I cracked the windows open to let some of the winter in and broke out the hot chocolate.

In hindsight, I guess their reaction was predictable. I asked them to be calm, to be mature, to work quietly in their seats for fifteen minutes. But it wasn't happening.

“What if we have to go to the bathroom?” one student asked.

“Wait,” I replied. “Wait fifteen minutes. Don’t leave your seats for any reason; I’ll be right back.” And as extra precaution, I detailed my expectations for how the class should look and sound and what they should be doing.

They were antsy and squirrelly. It took ten minutes before I felt they were calm and focused. Then I went to work on the screens.

I came back sooner than expected. Mrs. Ferguson, the teacher next door, told me what happened. The kids had all come running and screaming into the hall while some teachers were administering assessments in the hallway. Apparently, after I’d left, some kids started talking and laughing, and other kids took it upon themselves to be the quiet police and wrote messages on the blackboard such as “Be quite pepole!” Then one boy ran up to the blackboard to add his two cents, but he spilled his hot chocolate everywhere. He had taken his lid off. The spilled hot chocolate triggered the mass hysteria.

Mrs. Ferguson came in and tried to quell the tide of children flowing in the swell of noise and bedlam. Then Parker knocked his drink over.

I was angry that the children had behaved this way, and embarrassed that other teachers knew about it and became involved. To have a teacher tell me all the gruesome details of my class’s behavior was humiliating.

I went into the classroom. The kids seemed oblivious to their own behavior. So, I took ten minutes to tell the children how frustrated, embarrassed, and disappointed I was. They knew what I expected of them, and they completely missed the mark. During my very stern lecture, one boy kept raising his hand. I kept telling him to put it down. Eventually, I asked, “Do you have a comment?”

“No,” he said.

“Do you have something to say in your defense?”

“No,” he said. “I have a question.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Can we have extra recess?”

I couldn’t believe it. “Did you hear anything I just said?”

He looked confused. “Yeah,” he said, as if to ask who could not have heard what I just said. It was more like he was saying, “Yes, but you are completely irrelevant.”

“No,” I said. “No, you will not have extra recess. You will lose five minutes of your recess for asking that question.”

He looked like a contestant in a game that had just broken a secret rule that no one could know about, and he was trying to figure it out.

I spent the rest of the day being angry.

And then I found a toy on the floor. Toys are not allowed at school, so this made me just a little more upset. I picked it up. It was a spin-off of the classic nun toy boxing puppet, except it was a clown. When I held it and squeezed the triggers, it’s puny arms flailed out comically. It looked ridiculous. When I let it punch the palm of my hand, it felt weak and ineffective. It was exactly how I felt--ridiculous and impotent.

Later, in the middle of the night, it occurred to me that I am often on the other side of this scene. God has given me explicit expectations concerning my behavior and I often choose not to fulfill them. Then, an accuser comes to Him pointing his finger at me and tells God everything I am doing wrong, as if God didn’t know. “Look!” he says, “Look at him! He claims to be a follower of You, yet he commits the same offences over and over again! He is taking the breath You gave him and uses it to speak unkind words and to do evil things.” And the accuser does not have to make anything up because he has enough material to work with. How humiliating that must be for God!

And in that position, what do I crave? I desperately need grace and mercy. My life depends on it, really.

And what does God do? He gives me a job I love, a great family, a big backyard, and a car that hasn’t broken down for over three years.

Friday, the kids came into class quietly. They knew I was probably still frustrated about the previous day’s behavior, and I was. But I had also decided something. I wrote the morning directions on the blackboard and added at the bottom, “You will learn the most important lesson of the year today.”

After the morning had progressed a little, I asked the kids if they knew what the words "grace" or "mercy" meant. After a few guesses, the class realized they did not know the meanings of these two words—words they had heard and used themselves. I used the definitions I learned when I was a child. Grace is getting something you don’t deserve. Mercy is not getting what you do deserve. As an example of mercy, I told a story from my own class. Someone had stolen something of mine and I had caught her. She deserved a suspension, according to school policy. Yet, I did not suspend her. That was mercy.

I asked for an example of grace.

“If Meghan dumped out my desk and I didn’t tell on her,” a girl asked, "that would be grace?"

“If you didn’t tell on her,” I replied, “that would be mercy. If you cleaned it up and then tidied up Meghan’s desk, that would be grace.” I could see the idea was shocking. The kids looked around with their mouths open.

“But,” a boy said, “that wouldn’t be fair!”

“Grace is never fair,” I said. “That's the point. It’s about treating people better than they deserve to be treated. It’s something you need to practice because sometimes you are going to mess up and want someone to treat you better than you deserve.”

Bethany figured it out. “So if you gave us hot chocolate today, that would be grace.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, it would. And what if I gave you hot chocolate and candy bars?” I pulled out the hot chocolate packets and the candy bars. “Do you deserve these?”

The kids did not answer. They didn’t want to jeopardize any chances they had left.

“I am giving these to you today as a picture of grace,” I said. “Can you treat each other like this? If someone is mean to you, can you still be kind to him?”

“I don’t deserve hot chocolate,” said the boy who had spilled his cup while running in the room.

“No, you don’t,” I agreed, “but you’re getting some anyway.”