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Show "The True Measure" j i y-. .A ; ' IL1LILJ I MUJLJ.U I ifrll I It ' - J and coffee. More than a few students came from such homes. I knocked on the door and was invited in. There were about five cats inside. I soon learned why this student faced challenges beyond the normal. The mother and father were raising little pigs in the trailer. The student slept on a padded bench in the "kitchen" near the pigs since there was only one bedroom in the trailer. All this was beyond her control. Those who have worked in a school understand that kids are a lot more than test scores. The wealthy young man sitting in the shade with me knew much of pain as a child. He needed to know what every child needs to know. He needed to know that he was loved and that people really cared about him. It is interesting to note that in the obituaries no mention is ever made of how well a person scored on standardized tests. No mention is made of ACT or SAT scores. The young man who was recently killed in an automobile crash near Farmington, Utah was never cited for his profound the money from book sales. He just wanted to share a message. As we sat in the shade and visited, my mind raced back to those days when he was a student and I was the teacher. He was dreaming of things beyond the classroom, and I was hoping he would focus more on the material we were covering in class. Steve Baugh, the former superintendent of the Alpine School District, once reminded people that teaching school involved a whole lot more than holding home evening for 30 minutes once a week. An elementary school teacher will engage up to 30 children a day for six hours. A junior high or high school teacher will take on many times more children for shorter periods of time, as many as 180 children. Physical education, choral and band teachers will engage even more children. In any given classroom, children will come in with a variety of emotional and intellectual challenges. Some will come hungry. Others will lack proper clothing. Some will have been or are currently being abused. Too many will come from broken homes. Home for too many is a war zone. Some will come unable to speak much English. In some schools, as many as 35 different languages will be a child's first language, with English being a new language for them. Some children will come to school in pain because they lack adequate medical and dental care. I will never forget a teacher coming to my office with a concern about a student in one of her classes. Students refused to sit by this student because she didn't smell very good. I visited with the student but found nothing particularly offensive. The teacher returned a few days later with the same complaint. I decided to make a home visit. The student lived in a single wide trailer located in an industrial area not far from Geneva Steel. As I approached the front door I could smell the strong odor of cigarettes by Mark Bezzant The other day there was a knock on the front door. The fellow at the door asked to see me. It had been decades since he sat in my classroom. Since that time I had interacted with thousands of students and his story was another reminder about the value of each child. He had become a very wealthy man and was now writing a book and working on an advanced college degree. He didn't need intellect. Story after story mentioned how he cared for others and made them happy. Even when a long life is eulogized the focus is almost always on what the person did to O love and care for others. Often mention is made of doctors, nurses and family members who gave exceptional care. "Bezzant" continued on Page 6 "Bezzant" continued from Page 2 Let's hope that we never let test scores become the measure of a human life. I saw something far more important than test scores when I looked at a hyper young student decades ago in a place we call school. What we read in the obituaries is a far better measure of a life well lived, even if that includes time spent fishing. |