100天

100天是很长的时间. Imagine eating the same dinner for 100 days. Or watching only one tv show, or wearing the exact same thing for 100 days! 这似乎是不合理的. 但其他时候, doing the same thing for 100 days can be so fun, 它能让时间飞逝! I’m 100 days in, working at ECHS… and time is flying by!

来到ECHS是一次掷骰子的机会. When you leave one organization (especially a fabulous one) for another (reasonably unknown) one, 信仰成为焦点. The night before my first day on staff was one of mixed emotions, 也就是兴奋和希望, if hope can be classified as an emotion. I had that desperate feeling of hoping I’d made the right decision. Hoping ECHS had made the right decision offering me the job in the first place! Hoping that I was following God’s voice! Hoping and hoping, and of course, feeling a bit of jittery anticipation.

And just like that, here we are – 100 days later! Every morning as I gather my belongings and clamber to the car in the dark to get to school by 7:40, 我感到平静. 主要是. There’s sometimes the communal family panic of running late, the occasional three point turn in the middle of the street to head home for a forgotten textbook, the sleepy frustration of busy mornings, 有时很尖锐, 多余的词. 但在跟我丈夫吻别之后, my daughter (and sometimes a friend or two) buckled safely in the car, 还有我们需要的东西, we make the 20 minute drive to the steps of the high school in peace.

我们谈论即将到来的一天, sometimes do a bit of last minute studying, 跟着收音机唱歌. 生活是美好的. 这种紧张情绪基本上得到了缓解, and my days at ECHS have been some of the most rewarding of my adult life. That’s a bold statement: that these past 100 days are among the most rewarding of my life. And yet it doesn’t seem absurd or overstated. The reasons for such a brave statement are two-fold.

第一个:我的个人经历. My technical job title at ECHS is “College & 就业办公室助理.” In short, I assist those who work in the College & Career Office, Paige Visser and Jesse Struck. There are lots of tasks to do that keep me busy: managing report cards, 邮件记录, helping with college applications… I’ve come to see that in order for a school to run well, 有成百上千的小, 移动部分, and it takes many hands to ensure all of those pieces stay in order and make it to where they are supposed to. It takes even more cooperation to ensure that 400 people are safe and secure each day.

I enjoy executing my part in keeping those little pieces in order, but it’s been in the little things almost no one would see that my heart has melded to. It’s been in the reasonably unnoticeable, non-academic moments that my soul has taken root; things that can’t be represented in a job description or discussed at an interview. Like the moments we spend supporting a hurting child to see a smile return. The investment of time well spent when a student is accepted to college. 笑声在大厅里回荡. 在教堂礼拜时举手. 新鲜甜甜圈烘烤的味道. 少女们愉快的闲聊. The tenderness of the hearts of freshmen. The dozens of unspoken moments when humanity trumps scholarship, and this academic building becomes a center for community.

And that ushers in the second reason for the peaceful drives to school each morning. 我的十年级学生, 知道她, 太, experiences the community found inside these walls.

We brought her to ECHS from a brief stint in a New Jersey public school followed by years of homeschooling. It is an understatement to refer to her transition as a ‘leap of faith.’ It was a clash of mixed emotions like she (nor I) hadn’t experienced before. 但我们得到了回报. ECHS并没有令人失望.

当然，也有困难的时候. Days when kids are mean, when homework feels a bit overwhelming, and when sleep has been elusive. But these days are few and far between. The majority of her days at ECHS have resulted in fits of laughter on the drive home, 一起过夜的新朋友, plans for the weekend with said friends, beautiful artwork hanging on our fridge, 和一般, 重新爱上了学校. 一次又一次, 在她每天的点滴时光里, when teachers encourage and new friends offer smiles and the cafeteria staff bakes fresh cookies… it’s in the times when a teacher reviews with her just one more time, 包括她在内, when she’s reminded in Who’s image she is created…

这些时刻是买不到的. There is no price point to assign to them because there is no price high enough. They are simply part of the air we breathe here at ECHS. They are part of the spirit of this place; 125 years worth of the common purpose of thousands of students and teachers who have walked these halls. 追求真理. 追求卓越. To serve one another and to uphold this sacred community.  And those are the unseen things that are happening all around me each day in this place. They are moments of unscholarly perfection. And they are where our souls are finding peace.