I would count “dogged perseverance” as one of my strengths. My husband, George, may mark that down in the weakness category and call it “stubbornness.” It was that dogged perseverance that sent me down the aisle with tassel bouncing to receive my B.S. in mathematics in the spring of 2005 at the age of 48.
Math department chair, Dr. Skully, had raised one eye-brow with his skeptical response to my query about becoming a math teacher three years earlier, “Only 40% of the applicants complete the degree and you have already admitted that mathematics is not your strongest subject.” He hadn’t mentioned the gray hairs on my head but I saw him sneaking a decidedly dismissive glance at them. It was the raised eye-brow that kicked in my stubbornness and I graduated Magna Cum Laude.
Although the first year of teaching was overwhelming I found why teachers are hooked into a career that has low financial rewards, long hours and unbearable responsibility. The teacher/student bond is a heart response that cannot be experienced anywhere else. And there are those special students who make worth all the late-night hours of lesson planning and paper grading, the frustrations of classroom management and the embarrassing moments of white-board blunders.
Faven was one of those students. My second year of teaching Faven entered our school. She and her two brothers had been orphaned in Eritrea, Africa and recently adopted by a Minnesotan family. Every Eritrean name has a meaning as I was to find out later. Faven means light. Even though Faven had been in the United States less than two years and was still struggling with English skills, she was my top trigonometry student.
Faven's brow would furrow with concentration as she worked to gain mastery over a concept, and then…that smile and the light-bulb-going-off look for which teachers live. She loved to learn and she earned a 4.0 GPA that year she was in my high school. She was the all-school student of the month in April, 2007. I got to know Faven better as she was part of a small group of students who came up to my Northern Minnesota farm for what our school calls May-term. It is a five-day event that offers the students an out-of-classroom educational experience. Faven had such a grace about her, looking out to the needs of others before herself.
The next fall Faven was assigned to my advisory group. I was looking forward the new year and was disappointed when Faven didn’t show up for the first week of school. I sought out her adoptive sisters, also students at my school, and asked where she was. “She decided to go to Park Center High School” was their parent-coached lie. I would ask the girls occasionally how Faven was doing in her new school and would get various non-committal answers. In October I found out why with the following email:
Dear Ms. Johnson, this is Faven your student from last year in trig. class. First of all i would like to say,how are u doing? well I am emailing you to tell you that i am facing a big problem and ask you if you can do something to help me. i was adapted with my two brothers almost two years ago.this summer my mom brought as back to Africa to see our relative and go back to the US and start our school, but when we came she told my grandparent that she was going to damp us (leave us in Eritrea).Then after begging her many times they told the governmenrt and the court decided that she has to take us beck or give us our documents.She didnit stop there but she appealed to the high court and they are about to give the same decision.So please i realy need your help,i am just sitting here with out education and not much to eat.you can talk to Mr.Carlstrom he knows about me and email me back as soon as possible,Please. Thank You. Within a week after receiving that email, God gave me a love response to Faven that launched my dogged perseverance onto a path that could not, by the strength of Jesus, be deterred.
There are good works that we as Christians do daily. God has prepared these beforehand for us to walk in (Ephesians 2:10). And then there is at least one GOOD WORK that God has prepared each one of us uniquely for to accomplish. Maybe I didn’t recognize at first that this was the BIG ONE, but as I look back I can see that God used all of my strengths and especially my weaknesses to do the work He planned.
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