There's No Debt...

Confession: I'm an NPR junkie.

I have a rather long commute to and from work each day and I love listening to NPR. My oldest son even enjoys listening to it when I bring him down to spend a day with my parents. I love getting caught up on world and national events, I love learning about "all" the things that they talk about on All Things Considered, I love when I am doing errands on Saturday and can catch snippets of Car Talk and Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me.

My favorite part, however, has to be the three to four minutes a week on Friday morning when they play excerpts from Story Corps. It is a project to record people's stories from around the country and it is incredible. This morning's story hit me hard. It was a dad and his grown son reflecting on an excruciating time in the son's life. It was incredibly touching to hear the two speak with such love and honesty. The line that got to me was toward the end when the son said, "I owe you so much. You saved my life." To which the dad replied, "There's no debt."

There's no debt.

I immediately thought of my two boys. My oldest is four and doing all the things a four year old should: getting dirty outside, jumping off of anything he can climb inside (though we try to discourage this one), asking a million questions before lunch, dressing up as Batman, learning to read, and throwing fits and testing his boundaries. My wife and I are admittedly struggling with how to correct the fits, the tantrums, and the talking back. He has had a particularly difficult week this week and we spoke often with him about him asking for forgiveness for his actions or words towards us, and how we will always forgive him, no matter what. We spoke to him of clean slates and fresh starts. We spoke to each other about how to offer correction and grace at the same time.

There's no debt.

We will not view him today through his poor choices of yesterday. We will always offer a fresh start and do all that we can to help him grow and choose what is best, not what is easy.

Here's the catch. He starts preschool in two weeks. I worry about that for a host of reasons. The big one? I want everyone he encounters to offer him the same fresh start. I want his teachers to extend grace as well as corrective guidance. I want them to do what is best for him, not what is easiest for them. I want his teachers to not hold his mistakes or errors over his head from day to day or year to year.

All this has been on my mind and heart but came to the forefront this morning when I heard the dad and his son talking. All of the thoughts that I have had about my son, and all of the thoughts I have had about my students came together somewhere between home and school. Just as I want what is best for my son from his teacher, someone somewhere wants that from me for their son or daughter.

Each and every one of my students deserves to be "debt free" in my class. Each student has someone worrying about him or her. Someone is hoping and praying that his or her teacher is doing what is best and not what is easy.

So today I make a commitment to my students and to their parents.

There's no debt.

I will not view my students through the lens of all of their past mistakes. I will give fresh starts each day or even each moment if I need to. I will not participate in discussions that come anywhere close to keeping the students in a perpetual state of judgment for past actions.

I will do my best to do what is best for my students and not what is easy for me. I will remember that my students are other people's children and those parents desperately want someone to "get" all the strengths and weaknesses and quirks of their children and support them in every way possible.

I want my sons and my students to know that when they are around me, there's no debt.