By Derrick Brown (follow on Twitter @dbrowndbrown)
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Let There Be Peace (Guarding My Heart) (1524 Words)
(49th Day of School — October 16, 2025)
By Derrick Brown (Join Our Mailing List!)
I. The Big Picture
Writing remains my eternal peace.
It is the place where I can pray, breathe, holler, reflect, think, create, “spit,” simplify, accept, affirm, account, and yield ... all in the same act.
It is the altar and the mirror … the confession, and the cure.
It allows me to convert chaos into coherence … and exhaustion into evidence.
Writing reminds me that even when all is not well, it will be.
I have a job that I love, though I do not always like it.
I work in a place that I love, though I do not always like it.
That place does not love me.
Yet I continue, because I also have a life that I love ... a daughter and a wife whom I love deeply ... and a mission that transcends the limits of my employment.
That mission is one of hope, healing, and transformation for mi gente, my people.
It is a mission that has become more urgent as my teaching environment has grown more precarious.
This year, I have been “set up to fail” through mechanisms I describe as strategic scheduling and strategic relocation.
These mechanisms are “cloaked conspiracies” … disguised as coordinated systems of subtle containment.
My class schedule alternates between authentic teaching … and what I can only call babysitting.
On “teaching” days, I feel purpose.
On “babysitting” days, I feel provoked.
Those “babysitting” days still provide opportunities to build “fine fellowship” … but they also expose me to environments saturated with distraction, arrogance, and intellectual apathy ... young minds performing rebellion without reason.
I feel these shifts physically.
My blood pressure rises on non-teaching days.
My head aches.
My face tightens.
My vision blurs.
The dizziness that follows is my body’s declaration that something inside is protesting.
These symptoms are not inconveniences … they are warnings.
They signal that I am approaching a “crossroad” … where I must choose between my job and my mission.
II. Yesterday’s Echo
Yesterday was a continuation of that tension.
I began with email outreach, reaching toward peace rather than waiting for it to find me.
I emailed my former student KM to share my Homecoming essay, and then shared both Homecoming and What Would Your Parents Say with DB.
Several band members ... MG, TBG, and LM from 1A; DW and NJ from 1B; and XMcD from ADV ... stopped by early to say that they would miss their 1A class (to appear on the local news with the football team).
In their departure, I saw affection … but also fatigue.
As they left, DW asked with mock surprise, “THIS is when you have time to write all that stuff?”
I smiled.
The answer was simple … I write to keep my peace.
I finished the essay Mi Gente Day during 1A … precisely to reclaim that peace in the midst of noise.
Writing restores what mindless conversation drains.
I then shared the essay with 1A’s TW and PC … after overhearing a deep exchange between them amid the chatter of their classmates.
They were speaking truthfully … in defiance of the classroom’s mindless hum.
It reminded me that freedom of speech requires discernment.
One must still “watch what one says.”
III. The Cauldron of Chaos
During 3A, I attempted to make peace instead of merely keeping it.
I rearranged student seats … to visualize, absorb, and accept whether more structure might restore “sanity.”
It did not.
The class reverted to its unstable “passive resistance” norms.
The effort revealed that my “classroom cauldron” was larger … and hotter … than I had assumed.
The core of the disturbance was predictable … JL, KW, AS, JahA, DL, and HW ... each a unique contributor to collective instability.
JahA … who had responded semi-sincerely to my earlier outreach, began the class with surface-level goodwill.
He even asked whether I would attend the baseball team’s pancake breakfast.
I appreciated the gesture.
But minutes later … he rejoined the cauldron … absorbed again into the gravitational pull of peer approval.
None of these students are evil or profane.
They are not malicious.
They are simply unformed ... weak in discipline, arrogant in posture, distracted in purpose, disengaged from meaning … and unaware of how fragile respect can be.
They are not unteachable … but they are unreachable … for now.
Their growth must precede my guidance … and I may not live to see it.
I accept that truth without bitterness.
However, I will not offer myself to those who will not respect my outreach.
I will not sacrifice my health to sustain a culture that does not value peace.
My wellness is not negotiable.
My mission is larger than my classroom … and my classroom cannot consume the vessel that carries it.
IV. The Moments of Grace
Later that afternoon, grace returned quietly.
TW stopped by after school to tell me that she had read Mi Gente Day … and loved it.
Her compliment arrived like a soft breeze after a storm.
It reminded me that someone was reading … someone was seeing … someone was being changed.
Sometimes peace does not come through transformation of the many … but through the encouragement of the one.
But peace was quickly tested.
As I prepared to leave my classroom, 1A’s JW appeared unannounced … asking for “tutoring.”
JW had earlier sat through the second day of an entire test review … and did not even have the test review.
His “tutoring” request was not a plea for learning … but a “performance” of accountability.
I gave JW what he “needed” … but perhaps not what he wanted.
I gave him help, honesty, accountability, and authority.
I accept that JW did not like some combination of my offerings.
When his attitude because flippant and “too chatty”, I ended the “session.”
I asked him to leave ... in a manner JW may have found harsh … or at least in stark contrast to the delusional benevolence that was expected.
I then called his grandmother … to speak both “my piece” … and “my peace.”
She shared that she instructed JW to “go to tutoring” … JW came to me and asked for “customer service.”
This visit … and that phone call … marked a boundary.
It was the line between professional patience and personal protection.
It reminded me that I cannot allow myself to become collateral damage in my own classroom.
Peace … once found … must be guarded.
V. Guarding the Heart
Guarding my heart does not mean closing it.
It means controlling access.
It means knowing when to let the world in … and when to keep the world at bay.
In this season, I am learning that the health of my heart determines the health of my mission.
Each day presents a choice … to allow the chaos of the institution to dictate my rhythm … or to impose my rhythm upon the chaos.
Guarding my heart requires the latter.
It requires boundaries that are spiritual as much as procedural.
I cannot heal what I permit to harm me.
When I say that I am in my “last days” of teaching … I do not mean resignation.
I mean revelation.
I sense that my season in the traditional classroom is nearing its natural conclusion … and that my mission must evolve into something broader ... something that integrates writing, mentorship, and public reflection.
I feel the horizon shifting.
The end of one calling may be the beginning of another.
VI. Let There Be Peace
The phrase “Let there be peace” has become both prayer and policy.
It is my declaration against exhaustion and despair.
Peace is no longer an emotion to pursue … it is a boundary to enforce.
It is a structure that protects purpose from decay.
When I write, I am rebuilding that structure ... stone by stone, sentence by sentence.
Writing is how I reclaim control of the narrative that containment tried to erase.
It is how I remember that … even when I am surrounded by disorder, I can still create order within.
My peace is not passive.
It is guarded, deliberate, and hard-earned.
It is what allows me to continue loving a job that I may not always like … and one that does not always love me … to continue believing in students who have not yet learned to believe in themselves … and to continue teaching even when teaching feels like resistance.
VII. Closing Reflection
This season has revealed that peace is both the reward and the requirement of teaching.
It cannot be outsourced or borrowed.
It must be built, maintained, and defended.
Writing keeps me whole.
It reminds me that my work is not limited to what happens between bells.
It teaches me that reflection can coexist with fatigue … and that love can coexist with disappointment.
I will continue to write.
I will continue to guard my heart.
And when my final day in the classroom arrives ... whenever it comes ... I
will leave knowing that peace was not something I waited for.
It was something I made.
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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