I Married a Super Stud

Awhile back, we went to an all-school party at the junior high in Wichita where Ryan teaches. It was like we were in a movie. Like one of those dance movies about some big inner-urban school. There were exactly 10 Caucasian people in the entire enormous building. The rest were every flavor of every other ethnicity known to Kansas. One of the only times in my life I've been a minority, and I loved listening to the different languages spoken. The place was overwhelming and smelly and literally bursting at the seams with energy. Everyone was soooooooooo alive.

No one cared what anyone else was wearing or buying. No one cared who was talking to whom. No one cared how loud they were being or if their kids were behaving. And no one was thinking about how they appeared. Everyone was simply moving within this giant pulsating gym of cotton candy, balloons, blow-up toys, cupcakes, cranked up music, and junior high hormones. It was awesome. It really was like another world. It is so wild for me to think that Ryan leaves us every day and goes to his classroom and teaches those kids to read and write.

Maybe this face is what makes him such a good junior high teacher?!

The kids took their state tests last week.  ___________________________________!!!  (That is the rant from which you've just been spared about state testing and what it has done to the school experience.  You're welcome.  It would've been long.  And painful.  For you....quite cathartic for me.)  His school was zero-based because they didn't meet AYP for several years.  The kids come from difficult situations that make learning extra challenging...poverty, unique family situations, lack of language skills, truancy, etc.  The teachers try their darndest, but those tests are daunting.  And (insert another rant here) state funding, also known as RYAN'S JOB SECURITY is based on their test results...

He has over 90% of his kids at the PROFICIENT level this year!!!  Last year it was 50%.  

Did I mention yet that he's amazing?!

I read My Posse Don't Do Homework and Madame Esme and imagined myself as some inner-city teacher. Instead I married a super stud who does it himself and makes it look easy while I get to stay at home with our kids. He truly does see each person as a person. Not a statistic or friend or enemy or number or object. Just a person who he could or could not interact with if he does or does not choose to depending on what is or isn't going on elsewhere. He is a stud. He's superman. And he does it while doing extra tutoring every afternoon and working at Prairie View (kids' residential mental health unit) on the weekends.  

My cup runneth over.