I was up for the adventure and it was about to start - I was a 1st year teacher and it was all happening so fast! So many new things. I had found a 7 foot standing cardboard cutout of Bart Simpson and I had redone the speech bubble above his head to say “English is cool, Man!” It was so stupid, but I loved it! This was all the class decorations I had and could afford! Ready, set, go!
I was teaching the ENTIRE 7th grade in 3 classes! 15 kids in 1st period, 12 in 2nd (I loved that class) and my HUGE class of 18 kids in 3rd period! That was it, 45 whole kids! I had graduated with over 750 seniors, so this little school world was a new concept to me. But here I was and I had to trust the process - the lessons I had learned in college, the examples and ideas my mentors/teachers had given me, the dreams I had dreamed and the risks I was willing to take….. Trust it!
Just like I trusted the people who prepared and took care of me to get to this point, there were a bunch of people that were about to trust me. The teaching and coaching part didn’t scare me. I loved coaching all the sports and being in that environment and I was always a page ahead of my English classes. However, I was told the month before I started that I was going to have to get my CDL driver’s license and drive a bus - A REAL BIG YELLOW SCHOOL BUS! Me! A 23 year old newly college graduate! I’d only been driving for 7 years and now I was going to have to transport young humans 4-8 hrs a week depending on the place where we were playing!!!! Who thought that this was a good idea? Trust it they said!
TRUST….It’s a big deal! Think of all the people that we trust on a daily basis to keep our lives going - the people who assemble our cars so they work, the cooks at our favorite dining establishments, our doctors giving us a diagnosis and medicine, the engineers who program the traffic lights and the list goes on! We count on SO MANY PEOPLE for our worlds to function. As kids from the time we are 5, we learn to trust our teachers, we trust the lunch ladies and of course we trust THE BUS DRIVERS!!
However, our world has gotten so cynical and suspicious that we are losing trust in everyday people and things. We think everything is a scam. “Scam” even comes up on our phones several times a day! Girl Scouts rarely go door to door anymore - you can order cookies online and they will be delivered directly to you without even meeting the sweet little girl scout. To me, this is sad. I remember the passion and fun I had as a young Camp Fire Girl selling candy! My best friend Carla and I would go door to door and alternate who gave the sales pitch! It was fun and a great learning experience.
I can’t help it. Because of how I was raised and the positive experiences I had growing up, I am a truster! I trust people! I have often been questioned why I am this way. My response is simply, “I would rather go around in a good mood, smiling, believing people are good than being tense, upset and on guard all the time.” I figure if I get burned then I will learn from what happened and be disappointed, but I will be ok. I will survive. As a teacher I would always trust my students - even the ones who might not have made the greatest choices in their past and that I was “warned” about. Those kiddos often became some of my best students and I think it was because we respected and learned to trust each other.
People deserve to be trusted - to get the benefit of the doubt. The world works and revolves on people and our differences and respecting them. If we get so worked up and suspicious about the “what ifs” we will miss out on “what is” happening now! So relax! Smile at each other! Ask people how they are! Get on a bus and TRUST YOUR BUS DRIVER!
Make a list - collaborate with someone and see if you can come up with a list of 10 people/situations/things that you have to trust in for your life to work. Next time you see these people stop and THANK them! (Example: I don’t really understand taxes. I really appreciate our accountant and trust him to take care of our taxes each year.)