Are you ready for this?  Maybe you should sit down.  If you are a teacher (or any other caring professional in the field of education), I want to prepare you to hear some words you may never have heard before. First, take two really deep breaths. Next close your eyes for at least 30 seconds and with your hands upon your heart, feel the life that flows through you.  If you want to stay here for longer than 30 seconds and appreciate your breath, your dreams, or the birdsongs nearby…please do!  When you are ready, when you are quiet and still, you might be closer to hearing my words clearly.  Don’t read any further until you have prepared yourself for what comes next.
 
Okay.  I realize that you not only need to be prepared to hear the words that are coming, but I also want to say that they may take some time to sink in. 
They may fly in the face of everything you have been taught. 
They may be counter to a life-long way of thinking. 
They will not be blessed or appreciated by many. 
They will be hard to accept in the American society and even harder to accept by the educational profession. 
You may run far away from these words, once read, for you may immediately recognize the courage it will require to incorporate the meaning of these words into your life. 
You may already be exhausted in mind, body, and spirit, and if so, please feel free to come back to these words later… but truthfully, these words may serve you in the keenest fashion.
 
Now.  Take two more slow breaths in and out, and then let these words in…
 
You don’t have to be an A+ teacher.  You can be B+. 
You don’t have to work 50-60 hours a week AND be happy about it. 
You don’t have to give your week-ends to worrying about your students or planning the next car-load of recyclables that you’ll turn into the next lesson they will never forget. 
You don’t have to deny your family your energy because you gave it all away at work. 
You don’t have to be ‘teacher of the year’ or have perfect evaluations in your file that will rest forever in a dark, dank file cabinet. 
You do not have to be an A+ teacher. 
You can be B+.
 
Additionally, you are allowed to have many different feelings about your job. 
Yes, you can love it. 
You can love the children, your co-workers, and the devotion that so many good-hearted people have towards the cause and ideals of expanding the horizons of our youth. 
You can believe in the power of good education to change lives and improve the quality of the world at large. BUT… you may also have many other feelings. 
You may not like every child you teach and you may really dislike some parents. 
You do not have to agree with policies that are absurd. 
You may grow some resentment at times that you are not treated as the professional you are. 
You may also wonder over and over again if you might have been better suited to work with plants or machines rather than children. 
Or better yet, you may wish you had become a lawyer or doctor so you would at least be paid for all the hours you put into your profession AND still be A+ even when you lose the case or can’t properly diagnose the illness.
 
What you may need to know before this school year ends and the next one begins is that you do not need to achieve perfection to be a wonderful contributor to the lives of children and the world of education. 
What you may need to know in order to continue your work in this field is that being multi-faceted, being capable of mistakes, being capable of being a good teacher and incorporating all the other loves into your life is what actually makes you a teacher that draws students into learning. When you know yourself deeply, when you
know what makes you tick and what makes you tired, when you know how you work best and what pulls you into misery, and when you honor the entirety of who you are… then you have the potential to truly be a teacher wherever you are.
 
At this point, the questions begin to spin, right? How? 
How on earth can this possibly be accomplished? 
How… when, on a daily basis, teachers are pressured to be A+ in every subject, in the ability to manage behaviors and emotional turmoil, not to mention disabilities and poverty and wealth and prestige and entitlement…
all for the benefit of each individual student in a class of 30?  AND have every student arrive at the success of high test scores and those highly encouraged As on their report cards? 
Is perfection possible? 
Will ‘no child be left behind’ with the pressures currently in place not only on them but on those who teach them? 
What, in the name of all that is holy, are we trying to achieve?
 
Breathe again.
 
Today, in the spirit of the famous game card “Get out of Jail Free”, I offer you the “Get out of Guilt Free” card.  One of the reasons people get lost in the educational field is that they get caught up in guilt. 
“I didn’t do enough for that student.”  “I should have worked later/harder/over the week-end.”  “I should have
taken more classes on that topic.”  “I wasn’t creative enough.”  “I didn’t inspire them to work harder.”  Worse yet… they are told these things.  They are reminded of these things on their professional evaluations. 
They are reminded every year at the “Teacher of the Year” ceremony.  It is pointed out over and over and over again how teachers can improve.  You rarely will be offered an A+ and so… today, take the “Get out of Guilt Free”card and enjoy your B+.

Each day, with your hand on your heart, ask yourself these questions:
 Do I care about those I serve?
Do I want to see my students succeed in life …and exactly what is success in my eyes… and is this success something that I live?
 
All the rest, will have to wait.  All the rest, will need to roll off of the back.  It’s not going away, granted, but with courage and wisdom, impossible to standardize, the gift of a B+ can set you free. 
Rest assured, my friends, you are worthy of praise and joy and deep appreciation.  Today, let those accolades take root in your own understanding and then serve… with balance, with clarity, with good humor, and great wisdom. 
Trust that grades don’t tell the entire story… and go from there.

My daughter said to me once that if I ever wreck my car, it will most likely be because I was watching blue birds along the way.  I do have an affinity for birds.  It’s a joy born from childhood when I both fed and buried little
birds.  As I write these words, my little friends are chirping outside my window, reminding me the feeders need to
be filled.  They are charming gifts of whimsy and delight. And they are free… they are free in that they entertain and bless me at no charge… but they are also free in that they easily embrace both earth and sky. 
I am thankful for little birds.
 
My Dad has always loved hawks… red tailed hawks especially.  One way we always passed time on long trips to Carolina to visit grandparents was to watch for hawks.  Dad could spot them the easiest, the quickest (and he was always the one doing the driving… hmm).  I would be in the backseat, and I’d watch and watch the trees go by. 
I’d look at those long lines of wires, pole to pole, hoping I’d spot one before Dad.  Sometimes Mom would spot one, but rarely did I see a hawk first.
 
Yesterday, I was on my way home from a day at work that I was more than ready to leave behind.  It was Friday, and as I was driving, I was trying to let go what weighed on me so I could better embrace the freedom of the week-end.  Breathe out worries.  Breathe in peace.  Breathe out confusion.  Breathe in clarity.  I was working on it.  As I came up a hill and passed an elementary school, I noticed the beauty of this open field and all these little
songbirds flying low to the ground.  Maybe they were feeding on something in that field. It was this idyllic scene with the light hanging so golden upon their sweet wings.  And then this hawk flew right over my windshield, and it was fabulous! It was so beautiful, so striking in its wingspan and color. And the way it flew over to that field was like ice dancing straight out of the Olympics.  I had never seen such a glorious flight… with ease and grace it curved in its path and increased in speed.  And then, it dawned on me what was about to happen.  The little birds became aware, and they were trying with all of their might to be anywhere but there.  And of course, what seemed the smallest and the slowest became the target and down came the talons and small wings were tied to the ground to rise no more.  The hawk held tight, sitting still in that golden light until the young life ceased.
 
In all of my life, I’ve never witnessed this before.  All so quickly, right before my eyes as I passed by in my car… life, beauty, simplicity, peace, violence, death, simplicity, peace.  I know this is the nature of nature.  I realize the hawk must eat.  I understand the circles and cycles of life.  But what I am sitting with today is the little bird.  She fed on grains.  She roamed the fields and felt the warmth in the sunlight of a coming spring.  She sang. She perched in high treetops, and perhaps noted the wonder of her surroundings.  She was this little innocent, and I don’t want to believe that her purpose, her allotted role in life was to feed the hawk.  But she did.  And the hawk
will rise up nourished and stronger because she existed.
 
We must hold onto the purest truths in this life, my friends, even as the hawks swoop.  Sometimes the temptation is to retreat… to hold up in the safety of shelter and those who know and love us and remain far away from the eyes of the hawks. Sometimes we compare ourselves to the mighty, to the keen who are swift in their glory, and we feel lost to their vastness… and we retreat from our own songs and artistry.  But sometimes when we grow quiet enough to feel both heaven and earth pulsing through our own veins, we find the courage to live freely and truly even as the hawks soar.
 
Little sparrow, I am trying.  In your living and in your dying, I will follow your teachings and try to live true.  May my small life raise up something breathtaking.  May something in me nourish that which wounds. 
This is what I pray.