By Derrick Brown (follow on Twitter @dbrowndbrown)
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Amazing Grace (54th and 55th Days of School – October 23–24, 2025) (1426 Words)
(54th and 55th Days of School – October 23–24, 2025)
By Derrick Brown (Join Our Mailing List!)
I. The Weight After the Test
Grace is easiest to extend when grace is returned.
The days following the PSAT revealed how fragile that exchange can be.
My students carried the residue of back-to-back assessments … frustration that disguised itself as arrogance … exhaustion that wore the mask of defiance.
I expected turbulence, but expectation does not make experience easier.
The PSAT week had already stretched them thin.
Thursday arrived carrying the weight of two earlier exams … and the promise of another challenge.
Even with foresight and insight, I underestimated how much emotional “tweaking” awaited me.
The air inside each class felt heavy … like breath that had forgotten how to believe.
II. Small Fires of Frustration
1B’s BR began the morning by holding his phone in his pocket during extended test time. I confiscated his test (not the phone) and relocated him.
After we both cooled down, I approached him again.
“How is it going?” I asked.
“Bad,” he replied.
“I could tell,” I said.
“My bad,” he answered.
“We will work it out,” I concluded.
Grace met humility halfway, and we both survived.
Later, 3B’s MM2 refused additional time with open defiance … her facial expressions sharp enough to slice patience.
I handed her the next quiz cold, warmed her up, but withheld the kind of step-by-step guidance she entered my class expecting … to her repeated disappointment, dismay, and frustration.
I took her outside for a monologue … not a conversation … the phrase “a word with her outside” is now a familiar refrain in my week.
I offered correction while suppressing her desire to retaliate.
Discipline without dialogue echoed through my mind ... the same pattern I had recognized earlier with LM.
The best grace I could offer in that human moment was to identify the line that had been crossed … and to prevent the crossing from becoming chaos.
I told MM2 that her progression from casual to overt disrespect was enough to earn a suspension.
I snuffed every attempt she made to argue … because argument would have deepened the wound.
Still, I know that invited silence can sting as sharply as speech.
Stifling her preserved order … but injured spirit.
Allowing her to vent would have protected spirit … but risked explosion between a male teacher and a female student.
No, thank you.
I see now, though, that I must learn a middle ground ... perhaps through mediation with the help of her friend (and classroom cornerstone) MM1.
3B’s RMR followed testing with a movie on his phone.
We spoke outside.
He said, “My bad.”
I said, “We will work it out.”
A pattern repeated … violation … recognition … contrition … repair.
3B’s BG slipped on his headphones before testing.
I stopped him.
Later he accused me of targeting him, of never helping him, and of always having something “smart” to say.
I told him he was right … and dead wrong.
Right about how he feels … wrong about what is true.
The classmate beside him wears headphones for a reason BG does not need to know.
Transparency must coexist with confidentiality.
I promised to honor his feelings while guarding my facts.
Grace again stood between empathy and boundary.
III. Seeing Patterns in Chaos
Each incident, isolated, looked like minor misbehavior.
Together they formed a mirror.
My exhaustion invited short temper.
Their exhaustion invited rebellion.
Between us stood the thin fabric of grace stretched taut by fatigue.
I began to notice how helplessness hides beneath defiance.
When students groan at the request to stand and submit tests, the complaint is rarely about movement.
It is about the discomfort with the challenge of independence … that they quickly claim to exhibit “freedom of speech" … when it is convenient … and “safe” … and most inappropriate.
Requiring them to rise from their seats to ask questions is more than classroom management ... it is symbolic pedagogy.
Rising physically rehearses rising mentally.
Get up, get out, and get something (for yourself).
Standing to seek help is the first step toward standing to seek purpose.
It also subtly reminds them, “I am your teacher, not your waiter.”
Watching them turn in tests revealed another layer of learned helplessness.
Even the simple instruction to place the answer sheet on the left … and the test booklet on the right confounded several students.
Their confusion was not about direction … it was about attention.
Many have been conditioned to look without seeing … to mimic without meaning.
That realization turned frustration into focus.
My role is to reteach SEEING before I can reteach COUNTING.
IV. Pockets of Redemption
Amid fatigue, grace still found entrances.
LM greeted me warmly again.
AW smiled.
Those small gestures repaired something that discipline alone never could.
I held to those moments like lifelines.
CoachTM and I talked about shared history ... his current players, my former students, and the family lines that intertwine through generations of classrooms.
His 1B student JT and I have “history” … JT was a participant in my 2019 “Nine Men’s Morris Tournament” <SNIP>.
In the same conversation, I told CoachTM that I recently discovered that I taught the mother of one of his current players (#20).
Connection always heals faster than correction.
During planning, I shared my PSAT essay with colleague CS, hoping to encourage her as she navigated her own classroom pressures.
Offering reflection outward keeps bitterness from turning inward.
Writing is mercy in motion.
V. Transforming the Energy
By the end of class, 1A was spent.
I was, too.
Instead of lecturing through the exhaustion, I pivoted.
3A received a PSAT-style “show what you are thinking” quiz (a subset of the questions assigned earlier in the week) … then an UNO tournament.
The transition felt playful ... but purposeful.
UNO teaches what tests disguise ... strategy, patience, sequence, fairness, and focus.
Students argue house rules … debate colors … monitor turns.
Without realizing it, they practice reasoning, communication, and self-control.
Every card flipped is a miniature act of metacognition.
They SEE, SAY, and SHOW … without the burden of formal assessment.
The room became loud ... but alive.
Laughter replaced lethargy.
Order returned … not through reprimand ... but through rhythm.
Tables remained clean … tempers stayed cool … sort of … Uno generates a lot of “contained” … but LOUD … disputes.
Our Friday finalists ... DRM, JS, KW, and JT ... stood like champions of renewal.
In that noise, I heard grace humming quietly.
VI. Echoes of Humanity
Small details filled the close of the week.
A 32GB flash drive dropped to the floor during Uno’s fervent furor.
It looked like one I had purchased from Goodwill earlier in the week.
DL said it was his … and that it came from the same place.
We laughed.
Two drives from the same thrift store … two lives intersecting through coincidence ... that felt like parable.
Even discarded things find new purpose.
That is grace.
Later, 4A’s ELV left elaborate pencil art on his desk.
When I asked him to clean it, he responded with a sharp remark.
I teased, “Be careful about talking back.”
He looked up seriously.
“Wait … am I not supposed to talk back?”
His question carried innocence and irony.
The world indeed has changed.
The boundaries between respect and self-expression blur daily.
My job is to teach both … to show that disagreement can exist without disrespect.
Even that exchange ended in laughter.
VII. The Lesson Beneath the Labor
These two days reminded me that “amazing grace” is not sentimental ... it is strategic.
It is the art of maintaining peace in proximity to provocation.
It is extending mercy when logic demands justice … choosing dialogue when silence feels safer.
Grace is not weakness.
It is the disciplined strength to respond with calm precision ... rather than reactionary chaos.
It protects both dignity and authority.
It tells students that accountability and compassion can share the same sentence.
I see now that every “outside talk,” every confiscated test, every misinterpreted correction, and every warm greeting participates in the same curriculum ... the study of human restoration.
I teach geometry, but the real theorem this week was about lines of grace … intersecting with planes of conflict.
When the final bell rang on Friday, I felt more relief than pride.
Yet even exhaustion carried instruction.
Grace, once again, proved measurable … not by ease, but by endurance.
The week’s noise ended in quiet understanding … the world has changed … students have changed … and still I rise.
Bring on the weekend.
Selah.
(The "Follow The Leader (changED - Volume 2)" Audio and Video Album / Mixtape is also available at TeachersPayTeachers.com)
(The "changED (Volume 1)" Audio and Video Album / Mixtape is also available at TeachersPayTeachers.com)
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I am a “standup storyteller.”
I fuse rap, spoken word (poetry), oration (traditional public speaking), singing, and teaching into messages of hope, healing, and change that I write, direct, and produce to help people who help people.
Everything must change - and stay changED.
Tradition begins and ends with change.
Change begins with me and the renewing of my mind ... then continues through efforts to effect small-group discipleship (equipping others to equip others) with audiences that respect and embrace mentoring, mediation, and problem solving as tools of change.
I am the product of my mentoring relationships, peacemaking (and peacekeeping), and problem-solving ability.
My education began when I finished school.
After school, I enrolled in a lifelong curriculum that includes classes in ministry, entrepreneurship, stewardship, literacy, numeracy, language, self-identity, self-expression, and analysis / synthesis.
My projects execute a ministry that has evolved from wisdom earned through lessons learned.
I want to share this wisdom to build teams of "triple threat" fellows - mentors, mediators, and problem solvers.
We will collaborate in simple, powerful ways that allow us to help people who help people.
I now know that power is work done efficiently (with wise and skillful use of resources, interests, communication, and expertise).
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