"Ferris Wheels...................."

Monday morning, with twenty minutes or so before I leave, a four hour on-line class awaiting me there that will nearly complete my annual demand for training. All staff will gather at noon in the cafeteria for a three-hour briefing, an initial indoctrination to inform us of changes in assignment, refresh us on rules of conduct, and just welcome us back, in general. Tonight is an “open house”, my presence there required only if the teacher sees need. This year is met with mixed emotions, a sense of eagerness, and yet a weariness as well. It’s good to be busy; the kids hold my heart, but the job, itself, like any other, with its share of organizational red tape… Tuesday morning, with a space to recover after fighting a computer system so bombarded by people trying to accomplish that required training, by noon we were still mired in its muddle. The overload, I suppose, would make us wait several minutes with each attempt to answer questions, abandon us in the middle of a segment so that it was necessary to completely re-enter the program, a process that brought our patience to the brink of profanity, a state overcome only by one’s humor and the Holy Ghost. The afternoon was over two hours seated at cafeteria tables designed to slowly impale whoever occupied them that long, videos, lecture, forms to sign preparing us for the leap into another run through the maze, the halls once again alive with the sound of music tomorrow. Before leaving, I learned our room has become a “synchronized” dual Special-ED unit, two classes side-by-side, a wall between with an inner archway connecting them, two teachers each with their own agenda, an assistant and two “floaters”, in truth an enigma yet to be determined successful… Today Beth and I are driving down to Lexington for a visit to Kentucky State College with the grandson who managed a “full ride” there, his baseball and academic skills earning him such honor. To say we are proud and pleased would be an understatement, but no more of him than all, my girls and the kids but the fruit from a life given unto Him. The journey remains the journey, for each of us; yet the path, no matter where we are located within it, is under His hand, the task met with a sense of His presence going with us, whether nineteen and stepping into independence, or seventy-one and daring to take another ride on the bumper cars……