This is the first post in the series, Jesus At the Blackboard. Check back every monday to discuss how different people came to different decisions in regards to education. If you are interested in contributing to this series, please contact me.

I’ve been talking about school choice since my freshman year of college. Back in 2002 charter schools were a new frontier of education that were just getting started. Magnet schools had already cropped up, but just barely. The choices families could make about schools were pretty much, public, private, or home school. That was it.

To say things have changed is putting it mildly. With the No Child Left Behind Law came not only testing, but a decree that no student should be forced to go to a school that could not meet the required testing bar. If a school didn’t make the right number for two years in a row it became a “school of choice” meaning the parent had to be given other options for the education of their child. Sometimes that means a charter school, sometimes that means a different school in the same district, sometimes that means a school in a neighboring district, sometimes that means the public school district has to pay private school tuition through a voucher. This is putting it simplistically, but that is pretty much the way things currently stand.

The first three years I taught were at a “school of choice” (which sounds like it is a school people choose, but remember that actually means it is a school you can choose not to go to due to low performance on test scores). I understand why this is an important rule. As a parent I don’t want to have to send my kid to a sub par school. As a teacher, this rule made my job near impossible. In order to get out of the failing school category, our school’s test scores had to improve. At the same time that our schools had to improve, our kids with the most educated and involved parents were deciding to take the extra time and effort to fill out the forms, go through audition processes, and ensure transportation to schools other than the one I was teaching at. We were left with the kids who did not have the resources to make these other choices, unsurprisingly these were the kids with the lowest test scores. At the same time we were expected to significantly raise our scores, the students with the best scores were leaving our school.

This put us in an almost impossible position, and made me so angry I could cry every time someone mentioned how awesome charter schools were. Even when a charter school doesn’t “cherry pick” and accepts everyone based on a lottery system, you still only have the kids in the lottery whose parents were willing and able to fill out the form. This is a major advantage. (Weirdly, charter schools are faring no better than public schools as far as test scores are concerned.) Schools are a product of the local community and putting all the active parents in one place is going to hurt the other school. When working in a school with a PTA with literally one P, I learned that what my parents used to say is accurate. “The best way to support your local school is to send your kid there and get involved.” When I had kids, I didn’t care where I lived. I was going to send them to the local elementary school and make it great!

Then I had kids. Suddenly, the thriving charter school within walking distance of my house looked very appealing. A friend from work had children who went there and the perks were pretty incredible. Her kids got African-drumming lessons on Fridays with the local drum circle, golf lessons with Tiger Wood’s golf instructor, access to technology I didn’t even know existed, all because she had chosen the charter school that I passed anytime I went anywhere. Was I willing to deny my kids all these perks to support my community elementary school? Was that fair to my kids?

When a friend’s rental went up for sale, I started seriously researching the schools in my area in the hopes that she would move into my neighborhood. It was then that I found out that my family did not qualify for the dream charter school down the street. While located less than a mile from my home, it was on the other side of the crooked county line and technically in the district next door. While hypothetically if there were spots available after all of the kids in the district wanted in then my kid could go there, I knew that there was a waiting list every year since the advent of the school.

It was then I started thinking seriously about homeschooling. My husband is in PhD school right now, and according to my calculations, if everything went perfectly and he was immediately offered his dream job, I could start homeschooling right as my oldest started Kindergarten. I have extremely strong opinions about education and they aren’t in line with the current political atmosphere. Maybe it would be better for everyone if I handled my kid’s education. The perks seemed pretty great to me too. I had visions of everyone in my house getting up when they felt like it and hanging out in our pajamas over breakfast while we learned. I thought about how college has extended Christmas breaks and we could just follow the college break schedule and home school on the road. I thought about amazing and educational vacation spots and being able to say yes to September weddings. Maybe homeschooling was the answer to all of my problems.

The more I prayed about it and thought about it, the more I was convicted that, for me, I wasn’t attracted to homeschooling for the benefit of my kids, but for the benefit of myself. If I am being brutally honest, I liked homeschooling the most on the days I was fed up with my own life, my own job. My kids already love the one school environment they are in for a few hours a week. Homeschooling is the right choice for some, but probably not for me and my brood.

So that pretty much puts me right back where I started, only with more information. My oldest turns three on May 1, she already knows much of what she needs to learn in pre-school, so for now we have decided it isn’t quite time for that. Next spring we will figure out which pre-k program to apply for. Looking ahead, I think, for my family, we have two options.

The local elementary school looks like it is headed in the right direction. If a school can reach an 80 percent pass rate, it is good enough for me. My concern is how the school is going about improving their pass rate. I would rather send my kid to a school with a holistic approach to education where less kids pass the test, than send my kid to a school where everyone passes the test because all they ever do is drill and kill. For that information, I am going to have to actually go into the school and observe some classrooms. Principals are surprisingly willing to let you do this. Most schools have some great things going on, and the principal wants the kid of the parent who is taking the time to tour the school to come there. Also, if your local school is great, your house is worth a lot more. There are some financial incentives to investing in the local elementary school, as much as we want to pretend this is purely a benevolent decision.

The other choice I have is a local charter school, one that I didn’t know about until I started doing the research for my friend. Just as close to us as our local elementary school is a charter school with an arts focus. Weekly piano, art and dance lessons that I don’t have to pay for seem like a deal that is too good to pass up. I am drawn to a school that uses the arts as a vehicle for teaching all material, and think it might be a haven in a world where more and more schools are completely testing focused (mostly because they have no other choice).

I am aware that this last sentence seems a little hypocritical considering the number of sentences I have dedicated to testing, but it is where we are at right now. I think testing data gives us important information, but I hate the way it is being used and how those numbers are driving the climate of the schools. So for now, we are watching and waiting and crossing our fingers that testing the life out of our kids gets chucked rather than tweaked as it pertains to educational policy. Which school will my kids attend? I guess we will know when we get there.

Tomorrow, in the state of Georgia, High School state testing begins. All across the state High schoolers will be taking the state tests for various subjects. In Georgia, after certain core classes a state created end of course test (EOCT) is given in lieu of a final. Ninth grade English is one of those classes, and Ninth grade English happens to be the love of my teacher soul. Before my students take this test, before my numbers are run, there are some things I want said, some things I want you to know.

The teachers are already doing everything in their power to ensure their student’s do well. Even when a teacher disagrees with the validity of the test, even when they wish that they could skip this test prep stuff to teach an extra novel, they don’t. They taught the things the state has mandated every way they know how. Lately, with states clamoring to get federal funding and Obama’s race to the top, a teacher’s pay is being linked to student test scores with the expectation that this will somehow improve test scores. This expectation of improved test scores is based on the assumption that teacher’s aren’t already doing everything they can think of to make sure our students succeed. I need you to know we are.

I need you to know about everything the tests aren’t going to tell you. You see, I am in an interesting position. When I taught at schools that are likely to be far below and just below the lines, I taught tenth grade, a grade that isn’t tested. It was not until I moved to a succeeding school that I started teaching a subject with a test. It would be so easy for me to shrug my shoulders, show you my test scores, and tell you that I am in fact an amazing teacher, that my colleagues at the schools I left behind are simply not as good as I am.

This would be easy, and this would be a lie. The colleagues I left work harder than you could ever imagine. They turn around entire sets of 100 plus papers in 24 hours, they track the strengths and weaknesses of their kids week to week, they offer tutoring sessions before and after school. They are doing more than you can imagine to give their students a chance, and their scores will not be as good as mine. I work in the suburbs now. They’re still on the front lines.

But theirs aren’t the only stories that aren’t told in the testing data. I think of my colleagues who teach ninth grade honors three doors down from my on-level class. I think about what a hard year it has been for them. Their job, as ninth grade honors English teachers, is to challenge students who have likely never been challenged in their entire academic careers. Students who expect A’s don’t take their first C lightly, often nor do their parents. Students who have never been pushed before sometimes resist the push these teachers give.

But these are students who could have passed the EOCT the first day of class, and they are students who have come so far. Yet the tests won’t show the challenging questions my colleagues come up with, or the meticulous way they grade papers. It won’t tell you how many drafts they grade in the interest of making their kids better. Writing isn’t even tested.

The test is not going to tell you about my English as a second language kids. It won’t tell you how their first year in ninth grade was also the first year in the general population of the school. It won’t tell you about the way they work twice as hard as everyone else, complain less, and watch out for each other. It won’t tell you about the poetry they can write if you just give them permission to use five words in their original language. It is beautiful.

And the test is not going to tell you about my favorite triumph this year. It won’t tell you about my student on the autistic spectrum who says hi to me in the hallway. It won’t tell you about the way he works in groups voluntarily. It won’t tell you about his peers who accept him for who he is and how he won their hearts by fixing their cell phones. It won’t tell you about the peace of mind his mother now has, because of the work he and his teachers have put in this year. It won’t tell you anything about him or the mountains he has climbed. The test will only tell you that he is proficient in English. There is so much more I need you to know about him and how hard he tries.

Some will argue that the EOCTs are on their way out. In two years in Georgia we will have a state test that is designed to track growth and not just proficiency. That my concerns are already being addressed. While I think we are headed in the right direction, if the answer to this country’s educational woes could be found in something that makes a profit (and make no mistake, these tests are making some  people very wealthy) it would have already been found. Unlike the tests we hand our kids every spring, there are no easy answers.

I’m not against testing, or holding teachers accountable. I am not against common standards being set. I am against using one set of data to determine the worth of a teacher and her students.  I am a teacher, on the eve of testing, who wants to make sure you get the whole story. Before the kids sharpen their pencils, before the numbers come back, these were just some things I needed you to know.

If you think that meeting up with someone you only know on twitter is weird, try doing it with your kids in tow! I should have known that Sarah and I had a lot of the same views on parenting when she agreed to it. Lucky for us, it worked out well. Sarah has some really smart things to say about immigration and raising a bi-cultural kiddo. Today I am guest posting at her place about one of my students who happens to be bi-cultural.

I ask them to write poetry in the style of Walt Whitman. We read his poem “I hear America Singing” and I ask them to copy this famous poet’s form, but find a subject matter that is all their own. I get ten poems about the football team, another three about the song on the lacrosse fields, a few about soccer and basketball. My 29 student class has only one girl. Most of the boys are of the athletic variety. The boys who don’t love sports love music. They write guitars and famous musicians. They wear heavy metal t-shirts. All of my students fall neatly into the two categories, except for Emmanuel.

Emmanuel immediately has a problem with the assignment. Walt Whitman wrote about America, and I have asked him to change the subject. He wants to write about America too. Emmanuel loves America. Read more about Emmanuel here.

The Peanut had a nightmare a few nights ago, and the next night I held her in my arms as she told me about the man and the monster who were coming to get her in her bed. Tears were streaming down her face and her mouth was curled just exactly the same way I know mine curls when I am truly overwhelmed.

“You don’t have to be scared.” I told her, “It is not scary.” She gulped in air and her bare tummy leapt. “But I AM scared.”

Isn’t that always what matters, what we are not what we should or should not be? I wrapped my arms around her and buried my head into the head of hair that I once fretted would never grow. It now cascades down her back and catches and holds the sun in its beauty. “Of course you are scared. You are allowed to be scared, and I will be there to hold you.” Slowly her tears subsided and her breathing became even enough to have her get back into her bed. I promised to sit on the floor in her room, click and clack the keys on my laptop until she drifted off to sleep, until I was sure she wasn’t scared anymore.

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About a week ago I got some bad news via a phone call on my way home from work. I sat in traffic and spoke calmly as tears streamed down my face. It wasn’t the kind of news that directly affects the moment to moment of my family, as least not yet, possibly not ever, but it puts giant question marks in the lives of people I love most, people I want to protect and take care of.

Somehow I managed to take this uncertainty, knit it into a garment and wear it as a robe emblazoned with the phrase, “if only I were enough.” If only I had better stats or a bigger platform. If only I were better at sleeping less and blogging more often. If only I could write the perfect book proposal on the first try, I could have already had a major source of second income lined up and I could take care of everything.

I know these feelings are irrational. I know they are lies. I tried to ignore them and fight them and tell myself that I didn’t feel all of those things, but the truth is, even if there is no monster or man coming to get me. I am scared. This is scary.

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I’m writing a book. Not like I have been writing a book in the past, like I had a document on my computer that I would open every six months and look at and type a few hundred words. I am actually doing it this time. I have a completed proposal. I have a query letter. I sent those things to people I think are very smart and they edited them for me. I have been sending emails to agents asking that they consider representing my work. My hopes have already been peaked and dashed once, and it is likely to happen again.

People lately have been telling me my words are brave, but they don’t feel brave. Whether book or blog, when I write I vacillate between thinking I am brilliant and bold, to being sure this is the stupidest thing I have ever done, thinking I a capable of being published. Clearly I am delusional. But this time it won’t leave me alone. It just won’t, so here I am scared. Scared, but doing it anyway.

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A nasty sinus, cold, allergy thing has descended upon my house. A few nights ago I laid with my oldest in the extra bedroom because she kept waking up miserable and unable to breathe properly, and I was so miserable I could not bear to climb up and down the stairs every hour or so when she woke up. I rubber her back as she drifted off to sleep, but quickly realized the glaring problem with this plan as I immediately was gifted a pair of sleeping, thrashing toddler feet to the ribs.

Sleeping wasn’t really an option, as I laid there at two in the morning sick and too tired to get up. My mind drifted to something I had heard once, that sinus problems can be rooted in issues of fear. I don’t know whether or not I believe that exactly, but I recognized the truth that I had been collecting my fears and keeping them quietly to myself. So one by one I released them to my God. I know I shouldn’t be sacred, I said but I am scared, can you fix that? In the corners of my mind I heard an ancient prayer echo: I believe, help my unbelief.

Yeah, I thought, that.

When I was 18 and wanted a tattoo I decided I simply was not old enough. So I gave myself a future date. If I turned 30, and still wanted a tattoo, then I could have one. Looking back this seems like a very mature and even thing for an 18-year-old wanting a tattoo , but I have in some ways been 30 since I was 15. This probably explains why, just 6 months shy of thirty I often feel like I am still 15. It seems to work the other way too.

I had always said I wanted an Ichthus, a Jesus fish. Two simple lines together to form an ancient symbol of the body of Christ. It was in fact, a non-believer who first pointed me to the problem with my plan, 12 years in the making. “Abby,” she said frankly (the frankness in her speech is something I hold dearest about her) “You can’t get a Jesus fish. When I was in New Orleans every douche bag frat boy who came down for a mission trip got drunk and ended up with a Jesus fish tattoo. Your faith means more to you than that. You can’t just get some generic tattoo” Later she would point out the deeply personal nature of my faith, personal is the way this God was passed down to me. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

This revelation was good for my soul, but difficult on my tattoo plans. It took me a year to let go of the Jesus fish entirely. I kept trying to incorporate it into various designs. I have blogged before of tricky church labels that never quite fit, about the desire of my heart to simply be a Jesus Lover. I even said boldly on this very blog that I would get those words, scrawled across my left foot in my own hand. I would label myself. But somehow, that isn’t enough for me either.

I have considered my “life verse,” the one revealed to me at Christmas two years ago. “Blessed is she who believed that the Lord would fulfill His promises to her.” Or recently, the thing I hope is one day said about my writing “Abby tells stories that are true.” Neither of these is enough. Either of these is too much.

I have considered an owl, (my dad tells me) owls are the new sign of the prophetic. They can see into the darkness. There is something mysterious and beautiful about this symbol, and I even had an encounter with one the day my oldest daughter was born. Am I really ready to explain to all who ask that I have marked myself as a prophet, one who hears from God? Recently i have heard talk of the modern-day prophet being one who imagines and speaks a better way into this world. I aspire to do that, here, with my girls, in my classroom, in the book I am finally getting around to writing. Speaking truth into existence, oh if the Lord could use me that way.

Ask my husband, my sisters, my bible study, my students, speaking in metaphor is a trademark for who I am. But for someone who speaks in metaphor as often as I , I am remarkably bad at thinking visually. I struggle to remember to accompany posts with pictures, I can never remember that my students think better with a chart in front of them. I am built for words, yet it is a picture I am craving to become a permanent part of me.

Six months from now, on my thirtieth birthday, I want the tattoo I have been dreaming of, But what exactly is that? I keep searching the internet looking for someone who could look around on this humble space, dig into the words here, and out of them create something that is beautiful. From blog to tattoo is apparently a market untapped, but it is the metaphor I want to wear for the rest of my life. It is something I am just beginning to believe: God can take my humble words and out of them create something that is beautiful.

Surely, one of you knows someone who could make this come true. I would appreciate you putting this into the right hands. Surely my life verse also applies to my tattoo. If you want to know about more Jesus people with tattoos check out the Deeper Story Synchroblog.

The more I write about my experiences as a public school teacher, the more a strange thing starts happening. People ask my advice on where they should put their kids when it comes time for kindergarten. Deciding about the formal education of your kid (or future kid) is a big decision that is scary to navigate. The way we talk about these decisions isn’t helping anything. There is in fact no single answer to “How would Jesus learn?”

Enter my new series “Jesus at the Blackboard.” The truth is there is not one best way for all people to be educated. This isn’t about people persuading other people to make the same decision they did. This is about sharing our stories about what worked for us and being honest about the reservations we have, the circumstances that lead us to these decisions, and the assumptions that proved false about the choices we made.

So what exactly am I looking for?

-Stories about your own educational experiences and how they shaped you

-An explanation of what you chose for schooling for your family. Why does it work? what is hard about it?

-A story about how you got to the decision you made. Many of us have winding roads in and out of various educational experiences. Maybe you home school two out of three kids. Maybe one of your kids goes to private school. Maybe you swore you would never be a crazy home schooler, and now you love it. Maybe you think dropping out and getting your GED was the best decision you have ever made. I want to hear all of those stories!

If you are interested in participating, email me at accidentaldevotional (at) gmail (dot) com with a desired Monday, and I will let you know if it is available.

I am excited about this conversation, and with an almost three-year-old at home, cannot wait to hear what you all have to say!

 School Choice: Why I hate it, why I need it by Abby Norman (Me)

 Choosing schools by Melissa Thomas

Understanding the Educational Smorgasbord by Laura Jacobs

A Journey through Homeschooling by Elissa Peterson

Choose Wisely by Lisa Bartelt

Education Decisions 1-2-3 by Jenn Lebow

You can only do your best by Sarah McCarten

Sarah and I met on twitter, and decided to meet in real life when we realized we were both in the same city. Our families thought it was a little weird that we would have a play date with a stranger, but our girls can concur it worked out swimmingly. I am excited to have her thoughtful perspective today.

Pretty much since I graduated high school and my decisions became “my own,” I’ve been in some kind of life transition. Choosing a major or career… Relocating or contemplating a move… figuring out who to marry… changing jobs… deciding if and when to have babies.

The season of the 20’s is an exhilarating and exhausting time. The world was my oyster, and that was a little (okay, a lot) overwhelming.

With both feet now firmly planted in my 30’s, the last two months of my life have felt more “settled” than I have known in years.
I’ve already chosen my husband. And after four years of job searching, he was recently hired at a great company that he truly enjoys. This development eliminated any lingering thoughts of “Will we need to move?” I’m in a groove with my own job, and we’re eagerly awaiting the arrival of our second child.

Suddenly, I find myself with fewer questions about the future… at least the immediate one anyway. There are no big decisions looming that I know I need to address. For the most part, I can kind of guess what my life will look like in six months. That has rarely been the case.

This sense of stability and rootedness has been freeing. I find myself full of enthusiasm and capacity to engage more deeply in my community, friendships and work. My mind feels clear to dream in more concrete terms since I have some general sense of the details.

However, something unexpected has occurred in my faith life. I find myself “out of ideas” when it comes to things to talk about with God. Wait… what?

Is it possible that all these years I’ve mostly been talking to God about “what’s the plan for my life?” Where should I go to school? What should I study? Who should I marry? Where should I live?

Somewhere along the way it seems I relegated my relationship with God to be that of “life coach.” I searched the Bible for passages that guided my next steps. I prayed fervently, waiting for peace around a decision to descend in my heart.

I sought advice about the directions I was traveling, but I may have neglected to nurture a deeper relationship. In my mind, seeking God in these important decisions and transitions was equivalent to “putting God first” in my life.

But now I am forced to reexamine this assumption. If I had a human friendship that I only pursued for advice, is that really intimacy? I’d say no.

So what does it look like to follow God when I’m not talking about the destination? Maybe the real question is what does it mean to be in relationship with God when I’m not only thinking about myself or how anything and everything affects me?

I’ve been convicted of my self-centeredness in my relationship with God. Do I know how to sit in the stillness and simply worship God for who He is? Have I learned how to truly intercess on behalf of others? Do I create space to pray and dream and ask what God hopes for my community, my neighbors, my friends?

I feel a little nervous. I had no idea I was relating to God in such a one-dimensional way. And I feel a tad lost with no pressing life decision questions. On the other hand, I am excited. My faith has sometimes felt like it’s on a one-way path towards dryness. Now I realize that could be because it was focused on me instead of God.

Perhaps this new season is one to discover a new face of Christ… to experience faith outside of simply how it benefits, directs or guides me. It’s tantalizing. And I’m eager to see where it may lead.

What patterns or ruts do you fall into in faith? How might they be limiting your full experience of the Divine?

Sarah Quezada lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband Billy and daughter Gabriella. She blogs about their multicultural family life at A Life with Subtitles. She is the Director of Operations at Mission Year, a year-long volunteer program. You can connect with her on Twitter @SarahQuezada.

We are only a few steps from worshiping something else. We are always just moments from finding another Lord. He repeats four times in the thirty minute sermon. The truth of it rings to so clearly I can see the waves of it hit my heart.

I used to ask,”how could someone do that?” I used to wonder how a person could walk so far down the wrong road, so far into the dark. Now I understand; one step at time. One more step never seems that much further, and suddenly you are at the point of no-return.

But, what in the eyes of my savior and God is the point of no return? “Your abundant compassion blots out my rebellion.” There is never too far, there is never too dark. The light can always be let in.

I taught with people once, who taught me that you had to beat the kids into submission, that the only way the students would listen was if you were the one yelling the loudest. And I yelled the loudest and brandished my stick and I told myself that it was out of love. I had to do, if I loved them, cow them into the right path.

Later I learned, simply by watching how love will always bring around a room. A teacher standing 5 feet tall with birds on her tights can be the biggest presence in a room full of boys who look older than some grown men I know. If you love them bold enough, they listen. Unfailing love blots away transgressions. I don’t even know if she had a blunt stick in her basket of teaching tools. Open arms and an inviting smile had her stray sheep following her happily down the best path.

I don’t know why I was so surprised. Isn’t that how my parents lead? Didn’t they learn that from our God? Compassion blots out rebellion, salvation washes away sin, love wins over blunt force. I am always a few steps from worshipping another, and yet He is always courting me back.

This post is part of a link up at Every Day Awe, many of us are reflecting on Psalm 51

Today I sat and listened to graduation speeches. I listened to girls, first and second in a class of over 500 students practice the speeches they will give to their classmates on the football field a few months from now. It is an honor and a privilege to speak at graduation, one that these girls earned by taking the hardest classes and still managing to get the best grades.

So why is it that both girls took their carefully worded speeches, and swallowed the back half of every sentence? Why did they drop their eyes and their voices at the exact moment they had the most powerful thing to say? Surely they knew they were doing this. We are talking about the two smartest girls in the school.

When they left the AP history teacher who is also on the judging panel remarked to me that he has a brilliant student who is constantly apologizing for saying smart things in class. He told me that even as recently as yesterday he had gotten agitated at this bizarre habit. Why would she apologize for saying smart things?

As he heard me talk to the girls about their bizarrely similar habit, he understood the pattern that had been happening in his classroom for as long as he had been teaching.

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It was my freshmen year of college in my first week of classes that she said it to me. It is an interaction that has moved across me like sandpaper scrapping away the bits that don’t belong. This one interaction continues to shape who I am and how I present myself. I was meeting with Mary, one of my speech coaches, about the events I was working on and what she thought my strengths were. Mary can see in and through people almost as soon as she has registered where they are standing. “You know that cute thing you do, where you up-end your sentences?” “Yeah!” I chirped upwardly, attempting to be adorable and disarming. “Yeah” she inflected downward, turning it in to something with power. “I am going to beat that out of you.”

And she did. Four years of speech coaching where every up-speak was questioned. Every time I threw away a line that mattered, it was picked back up and handed to me. Here, try that one again. Every sentence that came out of my mouth, my coaches wanted to know, did I really mean that? If it matters, say it like it matters. I learned which stories mattered most to me, and I learned how to tell them like they were important, to not apologize for them.

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I am in the eighth grad and not quite as ugly as I was in the seventh. My poorly chosen bowl cut has since grown into a bob and the retainer (weirdly enough colored like the american flag…why did I choose that? Why was that even a choice?) the size of my fist has been replaced with discreet upper and lower braces. (Perhaps not stand alone discrete, but comparatively there isn’t even a contest.) I am no longer mistaken for a boy. This does not mean that boys are interested in me. They aren’t, even on the days where my skin is mostly clear.

My friend with the perfect bone structure is trying to help. Boys have been chasing her around since we played with the plastic zoo in the church nursery. “You know,” she tells me, flipping her stylish haircut her mother won’t yet let her highlight, “boys would like you better if you didn’t act so smart. Stop answering all the questions. Say you don’t know.” I explain to her that I am so smart, I do know all the answers, I am not going to pretend I don’t know something I do. I tell her that I am not interested in boys liking me if they can’t like me for being so smart. This is a huge lie. I am a 14-year-old girl. Of course I want the boys to like me, even if I have to pretend to be stupid. But I cannot understand why they don’t like me smart.

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I am standing at the doorway of my mother’s bathroom. She is putting on mascara and lipstick, Wine with Everything. She is reading my report card where all is proficient. She flips the card over to the back where my teacher has written her comment in cursive pen I am not yet fluent in. My mom reads the comment, about how capable and ready to move to the next grade I am and the part that comes after the but….”But Abby is very outspoken.”

I ask my mom what that means, outspoken. Why did someone assign that word to me? She   perses her lips and blots the extra lipsitck. “Well, it means when you have something to say, you make sure to say it.” I scoff to the best of my 9 year old ability. “I don’t think that is a bad thing.” She smiles at me, sees me. “It’s not.” I didn’t get the star girl award that year. That was for my friend who was a little more reserved. My mom told me she didn’t care, but I did. At least a little bit.

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I’ve noticed recently that I use mildly negativ adjectives to describe my girls. Hilarious, naughty, audacious. Endearing words, but not totally positive. I am far more likely to tell the stories of them growling, pretending to be monsters and chasing each other, or the stories where they find the patch in the yard where the grass hasn’t grown and I find them literally rolling in the dirt.

I recoil a little at words like sweet, nice, good. It isn’t that I don’t think my girls are those things. It isn’t that I don’t appreciate it when other people call out the goodness, the sweetness, the kindness they see in my girls. It is simply that I know how those words can draw a box around a person. I know how comfortable those boxes can feel, how a person will shrink herself up to stay in them, contort her words, contort herself.

I don’t want my girls to think that they have to be “a good girl” in order to be good. I know how often people throw those words around to mean pipe down, smile for the camera, don’t make waves. I know how it feels when someone tells you, you would be more attractive, easier to stomach, better somehow with less opinions. I know how the world feeds you those lies, and how sometimes you swallow them, even if you are being fed truth at home.

I don’t want to raise good girls. I want to raise girls who are wild and free, girls who hear the voice of their God and cling to the goodness He has tucked into them, and oh how His goodness overflows from their little hearts. But I hope that they aren’t good girls. I hope they are simply too out spoken for that. Turns out, it isn’t a bad thing.