It is a paradoxical planet with lives steeped in irony and complication. Yet at the same time the world is incredibly simple. It is world of big dreams in a small town. It is Friday night basketball games and school pride blended into an explosive mix of discontent for the zip code listed on every piece of mail from universities near and far wooing them away. It is all the freedom of youth while being saddled with chains of small town living. For many it is home and it is Hell.
For many of those 181 days I roamed the halls as outsider to their world. I was there to take attendance, start the video, hand out the worksheet and yell "quiet" a couple hundred times a day. I was there to fulfill a role and collect a paycheck, they were there many just trying to survive until lunch just to suffer through the rest of the day. What I never expected was to become someone they liked.
Youth pastoring gives you authority to speak to matters of the heart and life. Students have entered into your "space" knowing that you are going to say something about God, life and somewhere down the line SEX! As a youth pastor, you have a level of permission - permission from the powers that be to preach, permission from the students to a certain degree to challenge them and the way they are living. But when you enter "their" world wearing a blue and white name badge that is the substitute teacher equivalent of a Hello My Name Is...they know that you don't belong. They smell the fear in your heart, the sense the quiver in your voice and what they know is that you don't in their savanna. You are a wounded zebra and they are the pride of lions just itching to tear you apart and feast on your dead carcass. Fresh meat...and somewhere day after day in your khakis and collared shirts they realize that chase as they wish, wounded as you may be they are not going to chase you out of the field.
What I never expected to happen is to see what I saw, hear what I heard and learn what I learned. Students openly admitted drug use, sexual partners, big dreams and broken hearts. I never expected students to find me on my prep hour just to sit and talk. I never expected of all things a Facebook group dedicated to me as a substitute teacher. What I learned from those days teaching math, science, culinary arts, chemistry, and the occasional P.E. class amounts to more than anything I could teach them. I learned a lesson in small town and dreams. If I was Malcolm Gladwell I would scientifically and eloquently dissect the differences in the two varying factions in a small town. But all I have to work with is my days in the classroom.
These groups were not so neatly divided into those with BIG dreams and those that will never leave this small town. While groups may not be neatly divided, the lines oftentimes are clearly drawn. What this blog will not answer is why? Why one group will go one way and the another the others. All I am saying is the line is there.
One group will venture off to schools with University and College neatly tagged in the title. From there they will set up residence in neighborhoods in cities that are larger than the town they grew up in. The other group will stay...stay in this small town, raise kids in this small town, make a life in this small town. This is not an statement on one choice being more right than the other. It is simply an observation. The recognition of a dividing line that sets course for the lives of students in this one small town. But if I were a betting man, I would bet the house on the fact that this one little small community is much like every other Small Town, USA.
to be continued....
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