I’ve always loved animals.  As a child, I dreamed of having a brown horse with a black mane and tail, just like the ones in the Laura Ingalls Wilder books.  But living in town, and having a parent who grew up having to take care of horses and other farm animals, ensured that dream would not come true.  We did own a family farm, though, and when I was 16, long after the dream of becoming a rodeo star had faded away, we moved there.  My dad raised cattle on the land behind our house, and after I recovered from the trauma of being transplanted to “the country”, I found that I enjoyed long walks in the pasture.  It was such a large space that the cattle could avoid me when I entered their domain, but after a while, they became accustomed to my presence and just ignored me.  They knew I wouldn’t bother them, and they didn’t bother me.  The lone male of the herd was a big ole’, laid back, lazy bull named Mitchell.  Mitchell was as gentle as a lamb and didn’t have any horns, but he was BIG!  I was never afraid of Mitchell, in spite of his size, because he was just too lazy to be aggressive.  One day, as I started out across the pasture, I picked some apples from the tree in the backyard to feed to the calves as I went along.  I had to toss the apples to the calves because they were too skittish to approach me.  One of those apples rolled right between Mitchell’s front feet.  He slowly leaned down, licked it once or twice, then took a bite.  That’s when I saw a side of Mitchell I had never seen.  He chewed that apple up, licked his lips, and began to sniff around for more.  Then he locked his sights on the apple I still had in my hand, let out a bellow, and started running toward me like his tail was on fire.  Did I mention how big Mitchell was?  I took one look at that massive beast thundering across that pasture toward me, and the only thing faster than me running for the safety of the fence was the liquid running down my legs.  

I developed a healthy respect for bulls that day.  Back in the 1990s, when line dancing and rodeos were the latest craze, I had a student, whom I’ll call Junior, who rode bulls.  Junior had red hair and freckles, and a personality that was as feisty as his hair.  I always liked to attend sporting events and other activities that my students were involved in, and the kids were always excited to see me there.  I had not seen Junior in a rodeo, however, and he kept after me to come see him ride bulls.  The thought made me shiver.  

One Friday, as we were learning to conjugate verbs,  I asked Junior to give me an example of a verb he had conjugated.  He gave me the verb “ride”.  He said, “By the way, Miss Beth, I’m riding in a rodeo in Lexington tomorrow night and I really want you to come.”  I said, “Junior, the thought of seeing you up on a bull just scares me to death.  Why do you want to ride those mean ole’ things, anyway?”  And he said, and I kid you not, “Because Miss Beth, there’s nothing like having all that power between your legs.”

Class dismissed.

I haven’t seen Junior in years, but I thought about him the other night at a football game when one of my students asked me how it felt to have all the power in the whole school.  That question took me aback a little.  It made me wonder if that’s what my students and parents really think, that my job is all about power.  I’ve certainly never thought about it that way.  Yes, I make a lot of decisions, because as the principal of a school, I am responsible for every single thing that happens here, good or bad.  But to me, it’s not about wielding power…it’s about empowering others.  

I like to think that I empower my students to be life-long learners and and to make those good choices that will ensure their future success.  I like to give them options, a voice in their own education, the power to make their dreams come true.  I like to think that I empower our parents by keeping an open-door policy, by inviting them to immerse themselves in their child’s education, by giving them opportunities to be advocates for their students.  I like to think that I empower my teachers by giving them the freedom to choose those strategies that will help their students learn best, to set goals for achievement, and to drive our vision that every child can and will learn.  It’s not about me.  It’s about our kids and their future.  They are the ones who hold the real power…the power of a good education…the power to forge their own destinies by filling their minds with knowledge and wisdom.

Ole’ Mitchell is dead and gone, and I imagine that Junior is still out there somewhere riding bulls.  I hope he is still enjoying all that power.  I prefer to give mine to others.

 

I normally don’t go for sappy romance movies.  Being a middle school educator, I experience drama on a daily basis, so paying $10 to see a movie full of it on Friday night is not usually something I enjoy doing.  However, I am somewhat of a Julia Roberts fan, so back in the late 90s when “Notting Hill” came out, I agreed to go with some friends to watch it.  Turns out, I really enjoyed it.   I was a single lady at the time, in my late 20s, and although I had not yet experienced a desire to yoke myself to another human being for the rest of my life, I was beginning to hear the faint ticking of my biological clock and was starting to experience fleeting moments of doubt about that choice.  Maybe that’s why, when Julia Roberts’s stared into Hugh Grant’s eyes and muttered, “I’m just a girl, standing before a boy, asking him to love her,” those profound but simple words would linger in my memory.

Fast-forward about 15 years.  It was the night before our students registered for this new school year, and the big topic on the news was the “border children.”  We all know the story…children, many unaccompanied by an adult, from Central America have been streaming, for the past several years, over the American border for whatever reasons, some too horrible to think about.   The big news in Tennessee was that 790 of those children had been sent by the federal government to our state and were expected to enroll in public schools that fall.  People reacted to this news, predictably, in two ways, both equally as passionate.  Some supported the re-location of these children to Tennessee, naming them refugees and demanding that the government grant them equal rights and monetary support.  Some were of the opposite train of thought.  To this faction, these children were illegal aliens who would place a drain on our society and should be deported immediately.  The public outcry on both sides was voluminous.

As I was driving to school on registration day, I wondered how many of those children would land on our doorstep.  We do have a growing Hispanic population in our community, and it just made sense that some of our families would act as sponsors for the so-called “border children.”  And I worried, too, because the issue had become so polarized even in our little corner of the world, about how our students and families would react if we did, indeed, have some of these kids enroll.  Sure, enough, around nine that morning, my Student Services Coordinator came to get me.  She explained that we had a family in the office who wanted to enroll a child from Honduras.  I really don’t know quite what I was expecting when I walked through the conference room door, but what greeted me when I entered was beyond my wildest imagination.  It was…..a child.

Not an immigrant, not an illegal alien, not a refugee, not a political pawn.  A child.  A scared little girl with long black hair and beautiful intelligent eyes caught up in a whirlwind of strange words.  At that moment, looking into her frightened face, I could hear the words play in my memory…”I’m just a girl…”  At that moment, she became one of “my kids.”   It didn’t matter one bit to me what the politicians and the public outcriers were screaming in the streets.  At that moment, she was OUR girl, part of our school family.  And I knew that, as every other child that walked through our doors, she would be educated and protected, and most of all, loved. 

I don’t know about the status of other “border children” who have entered Tennessee schools that year, but I can happily report, several years later, that “mine” is doing well.  We hooked her up with a couple of our Spanish-speaking students, and became creative in finding ways to communicate with her.  She added new sight words to her English vocabulary daily, and our math teacher soon excitedly reported that she could solve one-step equations!  Shortly after she timidly walked down our halls for the first time, she began to giggle when I greeted her in my limited but heavily Southern-accented Spanish, “Que pasa?”  But most importantly, she made friends and the frightened look left her eyes.  I think she knew she was home.