The Worth of Child

My 6^th year of teaching has been one of my favorite years of my teaching career.  I started the year in a new county and a new school. During our beginning of the year staff meeting, principal Kristina Frame began to go through our morning routine and procedures for the first day. In discussing the arrival of students, the principal laid out how and where the students would enter and where they would be directed. As she did, principal Frame, asked her staff, “Does anyone know where I can get a red carpet?” an interesting question to me and maybe to a few others, I’m not sure.  It was intriguing at best. But of course, the story does not end there. 

Principal Frame describes her vision to welcome the students with a red carpet while all the staff greeted them as they entered. By the end of the meeting, we had established that the teachers would form two lines, one on either side of the main entrance doors. As the students entered, they would walk through the lines of teachers to get through the building to the cafeteria. How’s that for an entrance?

At the time, this seemed like a warm and inviting welcome. What a way to start a school year right? A little fanfare and a little bit of excitement for the beginning of a new school year. It was a fun, creative, and out of the box idea, which I had never, nor have I ever since, heard any principal suggest it before.  Nor, most likely, will I.

While this was a great idea, the vision of this act didn’t quite hit me until many years later. You see with each passing year, our kid’s self-worth has decline. Each year the kids come with no concept of who they are, and no clue how much they are truly worth.  For so many, there is no one at home telling them they are valuable. There is no one coming to their parent/teacher meeting or taking time to check for homework. If all we see when we look at this generation is entitlement, we will not reach them. If all we see when we look at them is a lazy and unmotivated generation, we won’t be able to make any difference in their lives.

In case you haven’t noticed yet, the game has changed folks. The kids we taught 10 years ago are not the same kids we are teaching today.  There is a severe lack of adults instilling value into our kids. They aren’t just drama queens, bullies or mean girls who love the spotlight. I would propose dear ones, that maybe, just maybe, they seek others’ approval, and put others down because they don’t know who they are themselves. They have no sense of identity or self-worth. Most likely, there is no mom or dad to ask how their day was when they walk in the door. How can we expect kids to value each other if they don’t know their own value? And HOW can they value education if they don’t value themselves? It’s an unfair expectation then to do so.

The truth is, we come with a head full of knowledge and passion about knowledge, and the whole foundation of value in many cases has not been laid.

Value and worth first come from within.

They must first see their own worth before they can see the worth in someone else. And they must value themselves before they can value education. If this foundation is not laid, then we are working in vain to produce something that is working against us. We MUST begin to see with fresh eyes. We MUST begin to see our kids for who they really are, God’s prized creation.

Yes, we all may know the Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, we’ve just been so busy we haven’t seen this massive shift in our culture to its fullest degree. We have been playing a new game with the same equipment. This game change has happened so quickly, we haven’t been able to keep up. It feels overwhelming and impossible to meet its demands. Maybe we can change it, but maybe it won’t be changed from the top down, but from the bottom up. Maybe it will be changed by elevating our students not labeling them. 

That first morning as students arrived, this wise principal made it her first priority to make sure that when her students walked off of the bus, they were shown, not told their value. Students were greeted by a parade of their teachers and smiling faces. Although a literal red carpet was not retrieved that day, the students were in fact the stars of the show. 

You see, it will never be a waste of time, money, or effort to invest in the fundamental truth of our students’ identity. They are worth so much more than the Department of Education could ever provide them with. Without a solid grasp of this concept, we aren’t going to reach them. We will spin our wheels in the mud, making no forward movement. Don’t just look for the good, dear teacher, look for the value and call it out. Even when others can’t see it or they themselves can’t see it, our students need educators who will mine for the gold and the diamonds in the rough which are hidden out of sight. With everything laid on the teacher, what if it ALL centered around a foundation of identity? What if our time and efforts were placed here and we built on the concept of value as our first priority? What would this look like, what would it sound like, and what would it feel like? Let’s follow the lead of principal Frame in rolling out the red carpet and make our kids the star of the show.

Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

Matthew 6:26 (New King James)

*Any names mentioned in this blog are preapproved by the individual.*

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