Are we crazy? I mean can someone please just answer the question: Are we, America, nuts?

I guess the entire world is bonkers so America is just running par for the course but wow, I gotta say… there’s something about being an American which makes me, well… care about America.

And I think we’ve lost our collective minds!

Let me backtrack.

Last week I spoke to about 2,500 students over the course of 2 days at four different schools in Hammond, Indiana (just outside the Chicago area).

While doing PD for teachers is fun for me, doing student assemblies where the place is jam-packed with teens… now that’s the lion’s den right there. And I love it!

Really, kids are kids are kids and I have so much fun doing student assemblies. (I try to not only rock the house with fun and laughs through stories and the such, but leave the kids really thinking about how they need to/ought to/want to step up and truly represent for themselves because getting young people to take ownership over their own lives is one of my critical messages whenever I speak to large crowds of teens). Basically, I work hard to do great student assemblies and last week I did a bunch of them in some Title I middle and high schools that were about as rewarding to me as any work I’ve ever done in education.

(Added note: Today’s teens do care about their own lives, their own futures and the state of their own community and no one is more hurt by the tragedies of violence that permeate SO MANY YOUNG lives than the kids actually living the reality themselves.)

So the assemblies were fantastic. However, upon entering campus, I had to sign in… and the front gate’s officer was armed.

And wearing a bullet proof vest.

Middle school security officers wearing bullet proof vests? What is this world coming to?

And then, I saw this. It’s a story about a truck dealer who is running a weekend special. Buy a new truck and get a free AK-47.

Visit any urban school in the U.S. today and ask the students how many of them know someone who has been shot and you will see scores of hands rise into the air. To me that means we have a problem with guns.

And yet, buy a truck and you get a free toaster over… I mean free AK-47 sub-machine gun to, I assume, blow the freakin’ antlers off of Bambi.

Is it just me, or are we just nuts?

Yes, we have the right to bear arms. But do we not also need to mitigate that right with a wee bit of civil common sense?

I know, I know, guns don’t kill people; people kill people. (People with guns kill more of them though.)

I could go on and on and on because I meet and speak with kids like Alex ALL THE TIME! This isn’t an anomaly for me. I really do meet kids who have been shot or know another teen who have been shot all the time.

And they really do want the mayhem to stop.

And they really wish the adults in this world could get a better handle on this insanity.

America, are we nuts?

Here’s an article on the 20 Best Prep Schools in America, as decided by Forbes (I assume. It’s their article.)

Here’s what they say about #1…

The top prep school in the U.S. is the Trinity School, located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, in New York City. Founded in 1709, this co-ed day school has an average enrollment of 960 students in kindergarten through 12th grade. There’s one teacher for every six students, more than 80% of the faculty hold an advanced degree and the school’s $40 million endowment helps assure the facilities are first-rate. Tuition for one year of schooling in the Upper School (grades 9-12) is $34,535, though the school offers financial aid.

And here are all the things my school has in common with #1.

• We were both founded (at some point, though they have a few hundred years on us, I think).
• We’re both co-ed.
• We’re both in the U.S.

And in what ways is your school similar to the Trinity School, I ask?

Should I feel bad that my school is not more like The Trinity School, I wonder?

Are articles like this designed to make me feel inferior about the school where I teach/the schools where I will send my own children or is that just my insecurity showing?

No, I don’t think all America should be held to this standard, but I do want to know, if you are teaching at a 6 to 1 ratio where tuition is $34K a year, which inconveniences you more: classroom management issues or your pedicurist canceling without providing you sufficient notice.

No, no, I jest. I am sure the teachers who work at Trinity are plagued with all kinds of issues that stem from holding the job of being an educator in modern America. See, that’s the one thing: kids are kids are kids.

And parents are parents are parents.

Some of the kids will make you click your heels in joy. Some of the kids will make you cry out in frustration. Some of the parents will make realize that being a teacher feels like one of the most noble and fulfilling jobs on the planet. And some of the parents will make you feel like dog-doo.

Yes, the Trinity School and Lynwood High might be millions of years apart in some ways, but in others, I am sure there is more common ground than mot people would, at first glance suspect.

Is it okay to feel good? Is it okay to be FIRED UP? Do we spend enough time genuinely recognizing the joy that is the teaching profession?

I mean I just got done with an IMMENSE amount of work. Papers, lesson plans, a trip to Jacksonville, Florida where I did a student assembly for a few hundred at-risk middle school kids about the value of school, education and making good choices (a total HOME-RUN, btw… I mean kids are kids are kids and anyone who doesn’t think so, doesn’t really know teens very well at all. They may put up masks, but inside they love to laugh, be inspired and feel validated!).

So does the crappy hotel bed, the 3 hour layover in Atlanta, the fact that every seat on the plane was taken on my way home and I had a dude the size of an NBA basketball player sit in the middle seat next to me for the flight across country bother me?

Well, it does if I let it — but if I focus on how great it feels to have just done a heck of a lot of hard, good professional work as the end of the month approaches, well… there’s value in that. Deep value.

Loving your job is spectacularly important and if you don’t remember to acknowledge and honor the love, and relish in the hard, strenuous, push you to the edge work, now and then, you are gonna burn out.

But if you do, you get forged into steel. Just like metal, the heat of our job can burn the impurities away. Remember what it’s all about. That’s the fountain of our strength!