Starting School

September 11, 2001, was just like September 11th this year.  Bright sunshine and a beautiful blue sky and a day full of promise.  It was on Tuesday in 2001,  just like this year.  Who can ever forget that day?  Arielle began preschool that morning.  She was so very excited.  This time she is off to high school at a new co-op.  She is equally excited and ready to take on new challenges.  

Disaster can happen on a day like this.  But this day, for us, it doesn't.  We don't think about bad things when we pull up in front of the old church which has been rented for the school.  Our new school bags are weighed down with notebooks and textbooks and lunch.  Liana is a little nervous.  She has a teacher she has never met and will be in a class where she knows no one.  Like me when I was her age, this makes her anxious.  Not so Arielle.  She is more like Dominic.  I remember his first day of kindergarten.  I had walked him to school and when we arrived at the front entrance he turned and told me good-bye.  He boldly went to his classroom by himself.  This day I am a little anxious too.  I will be teaching two classes.

In childhood I had decided I wanted to be a teacher.  I wanted to be the one writing on the blackboard and sitting behind the big desk grading papers.  I loved the discipline and order of the classroom.  (I hear it's not like that today.)  I wanted to impart knowledge!  But life intervened in those dreams and set me on a different course.  In the past I taught Vacation Bible School, Sunday School, women's Bible study, chiropractic patient education, and, of course, my daughters' work all these years.  I've loved it all.  But now!  I actually have an academic classroom with other people's kids teaching them science.  It seems kind of like...real school!

Friends of mine told me about this co-op where their children had attended and I knew that it would be a good opportunity for Arielle, now in high school.  She is such an extrovert (unlike me) and I know she is energized by being around other people.   I saw on the website that parents were needed to teach some classes and it would offset the tuition.  I applied to be the middle school biology teacher.  I heard back from the director of the school.  That position had been taken.  But would I teach high school biology?  Oh no, I couldn't do that.  I told her I would think about it, but the more I thought about it, the more I didn't want to do it.  What an intimidating idea.  Then my wise daughter reminded me, "But Mom, you would have to teach it to me anyway."

I wanted Arielle to go to this school.  I had the biology book already since Arielle needed it, and I started to read.  Okay, I remember this.  Most people don't realize the number of science classes that are required for chiropractic school.  I assumed I'd forgotten everything, but that wasn't true.  So I agreed to teach.  A few days later the director called and said there had been many requests for a physical science class.  Would I teach that also?  

I recognize opportunity for God's provision.  Not only would the girls attend the school at no cost, but we would have a little income in addition.  So I said yes to this new adventure.  I believe God equips us for whatever he calls us to do.  So all three of us were off to school on this gorgeous, sunny day on September 11th.