39. Into the Furnace

© 2020 Daniel Yordy

August 2004 – July 2006

The Fall Semester of 2004
I had leaped out of the “frying pan” of the move only to now find myself in the “furnace” of a godless educational system. Yet I was never outside of God’s hand and heart. God was taking me straight to what He knew was coming towards me two years later, and I needed to be ready, that is, I needed to be more desperate than I knew was possible.

The 2004 school year began with great promise and excitement for me. We had a new principal at the junior high, named Donna Ulrich, who was one of the best principals I have been privileged to work under. From her came a sense of excitement and energy for the new year. I would be teaching eighth-grade English, again, but this time, my room was in the upstairs with all the other English teachers. 

I had taught the whole year’s curriculum in the prior year, so this was a first for me, that I would teach what I had already taught, which meant that I could make good improvements without having to “wing it,” like I usually do. 

I prepared for classes, and was excited that I knew what I was doing. At the same time, I was asked to mentor, just a bit, a first-year teacher who had her room next to mine. School started and the first couple of weeks were awesome. (I taught regular English and Kyle was in AP English continuing with Miss Carol.)

Then, before the end of the second week, I saw a notice on the board outside the school office, asking for anyone who had a Texas administrators license and who was interested to apply for a new administrative position in overseeing the creation of a new disciplinary unit for Sheldon ISD, called DAEP, that is, Disciplinary Alternate Education Program. This possibility caught my breath, and I went straight to Miss Donna with it. (In the south, all women teachers are called “Miss,” regardless.) She encouraged me to apply.

And so I did, and in a short time learned that I had received the post. Suddenly, my eighth-grade classroom was no longer my job, now I was engaged with something new and exciting. In fact, I was an administrator with Sheldon ISD.

There are two types of “disciplined” students, and when I say “disciplined,” I mean those who have done something that requires more than detention after school. The first type is those who have violated school regulations to such an extent that the administration feels they need such discipline. And the second type is those who have broken the law, but not enough to be sent away to juvenile prison. This second type is in the disciplinary unit under the supervision of a judge. 

Up until this fall of 2004, Sheldon ISD had sent its disciplinary students to the High Point facility, just down the street from our home. They had to pay for this, however, at a much higher cost than what any student brings in from the state. The Sheldon school board had decided to attempt an in-district disciplinary unit that would save the district money. 

Most of the students in the new disciplinary unit came from the high school, but there were a few from the middle school as well. The facilities for the unit were an unused section of the middle school jutting out into the parking lot from the special education area. 

When I look on Google maps, I see that, after building a brand new high school, Sheldon ISD turned the high school where I taught into a junior high and sold the middle school where I taught to the Methodist Church. Nonetheless, the picture from the street is still when it was a school building, so here it is.

The DAEP unit itself had an outside door as access, but the students came in through the side entrance. In order to keep them separate from the regular school kids, however, the DAEP was held in the late afternoon – evening. The hall through the side entrance connected with a hallway angling in from the main hall in the school. You then went past a small office, through double doors into a larger room that was, in fact, a complex of rooms all as one unit. The larger center room could hold maybe twenty students in desks. On either side were two small rooms, four in all. On the outer wall, next to the DAEP entrance were bathrooms for the unit. 

My job was not to teach, but to oversee and administer. Each student was focused on their own laid-out work in front of them. As time went on, we were able to place quite a few on computerized courses. Other teachers from the high school were paid extra to come in the evenings to work with the individual students; there was never any group teaching. 

A policeman was assigned to the DAEP as his full workload. Sadly, I do not remember his name, but I worked with him all the time through this semester. He was a great choice because he was honest and true and shared my care for the kids. I will call him, “Terry” because I want to regard him as a person. He was a short, but well-muscled man, similar to Charlie Jones at the Ridge in a number of ways. At no point did I deal with the students without Constable Terry hovering in the background.  

Let me describe my students in the disciplinary unit, most of whom had broken the law, and many of whom struggled to cope inside a system that they could not comprehend or escape from.

I will start with the most difficult, the only student I taught in the public school that I would call “irredeemable” in the present time. He was Hispanic, which was unusual, because most Hispanic boys are easy going and congenial. He was a bit large and muscular. His crime was dealing drugs. His mother worked in the school cafeteria and he would often beat her. When he first came in front of me, Constable Terry was immediately behind him. I challenged him and saw like a serpent slither across his face and body with all hostility against me. I did not challenge him again, because doing so was pointless. When he acted up, which was often, I simply suspended him and sent him home. That meant he would be hauled before the judge and his mother fined another $500. He simply did not care.

I had a young black man, a twelfth grader, whom I liked very much. His problem was that his stress level was very low, and he would turn violent easily. I had no problem working with him, but I had to deal with his mother more than once. She went into attack mode any time any teacher or policeman attempted to bring correction in the young man’s life. The anointing and grace of God helped me there more than once.

I had a ninth-grade Hispanic boy who was likely the biggest pain-in-the-rear of any student I have taught. He was defiant and disrespectful just all the time. I would have classed him as “beyond the pale” as well, EXCEPT – I had him in my classroom the next year, and I saw a broken hurting boy who did not know how to survive in a world that always seemed to be violently against him. I hope that I brought some care into his life, but that’s for later in this chapter.

I had a young man from the middle school, a special ed kid, who was happy-go-lucky and no harm to anyone. He did like to fantasize and to play tricks on his teachers, however. One day he had a bunch of stuff crammed into a jar, nothing of consequence. But he told his teacher he had made a “bomb.” Sanity left the public school system after 9/11, however, and so this was treated as a great “crime.”

There were a couple of girls who had stolen. The list goes on; I don’t remember all. I will share a couple more in the next section, however. 

Because my job was in the evening, I had the mornings at home, which was awesome. I was able to do more writing, but I also worked on my gardens and some on the house. And I was at home for the children’s home school. Because my job was in the evening, however, my mind did not function as well on the job. I had no problem whatsoever working with the students, but my mental capacity to tackle instructional writing and development was limited. 

Of the two little rooms on the far side of the unit, one was my office and the other served as an overflow room for the computers when we had more students. On the side nearer the two entrances, Constable Terry had his office, and the other room was for storage. Because I did not “teach,” I spent a fair bit of my time in my office, with the door open. I was always fully aware of the students, however, and walked out among them regularly, as did Constable Terry. In fact, we worked very well together, in full harmony, through this entire semester.

But because my mind diminishes in the evening, I did spend much of my non-engaged time on the Internet reading world news, which is my wont. I suspected, though I don’t know for sure, that all Internet usage on school computers is monitored. I can’t not read, though, and I do not waste my time on officially “approved” websites. Nonetheless, this was a failing on my part, one that may have struck against me, again, I do not know. If it had been morning time, I would have worked on developing a better curriculum for the DAEP. Mornings at home were mine, however, and I would not be using them as unpaid work for the public school.

For a short time, I allowed snacks during their break time. The high school principal came through, and that practice ended abruptly.

The principal of the high school was my primary oversight. I do not know his name. I did not connect well with him, and, since Donna Ulrich was just down the hall, I went often to her for advice and direction. She was always very helpful to me. But as time went on, I began to realize that administration requires a political ability, that is, the ability to make people believe things that aren’t true, and to manipulate other power figures for your own agenda. I was slowly sinking into the realization that I had no ability in that entire arena.

Nonetheless, on the practical side of administration and working with the students, I was quite capable and did well. In fact, because I was now an administrator with Sheldon ISD, I had a place at the table in the administration building when the disciplinary unit was under discussion. I attended a couple such meetings during this semester. At this point in time, Vicki Giles, the lady who had hired me, was now an assistant superintendent. In the year after I was no longer with the district, she became the superintendent and served well more years than most. In fact, she was superintendent still when our daughter Katrina graduated from C.E. King High School. I will bring her in again at that point. I count it an honor to have had some small relationship with a woman of such respect and competence. 

Then, because I was an administrator, I could also sit in the decision sessions for special ed students and sign off as the administrator. At one point, I was asked to sit in on a decision meeting for a student over at the High Point unit. I think it was because no one else was available, and I had the afternoons free. The student’s mother, regular teachers, and special ed teachers were there, and I was the “administrator” for the session. 

The boy in question was autistic. That didn’t mean anything personally to me, however. But I sat there listening to his mother talk about her son. Slowly, an awareness began to grow in my understanding that she was talking about me. This was quite a thought; one which I had never considered. Nor did I take it as anything consequential. I was a highly trained teacher and administrator, how could “autism” have anything to do with me? Nonetheless, the thought of such a thing had been planted in me, and there it rested.

Then one day, probably in October, I was called over to the High School principal’s office. He was very angry, and his anger was directed against me.

“I have heard rumors,” he said, “whispered around the school, that there is a man in the DAEP who respects and cares about students. That is NOT what discipline is for. I want their time in the DAEP to be miserable. I want them to hate it. The purpose is for them to stop acting up, to stop breaking the rules, and do what they are supposed to do in the regular classrooms. You will make it awful for them.”

Discovering What I Am Not 
I can testify that I am NOT a politician. 

You can imagine that I was quite shaken by this. Shortly after, however, I was asked to go with the high school principal and Miss Donna up to visit an established DAEP unit in the Splendora, Texas high school in order to see and learn from how they did things. 

I rode in the back seat with the two principals in the front. They were talking together the whole time. The high school principal was driving and as soon as he hit the freeway, he was 20-30 mph over the speed limit. Sure enough, flashing lights stopped him, somewhere north of Humble. He got a ticket for speeding. When we arrived at the Splendora High School and went in, the first person we met was the constable connected to the DAEP there. And the first thing he did was show her the ticket and ask her if she knew the policeman who had written it. She did, and like any skillful politician, he talked her into seeing that it was annulled.

You have to understand that such dishonesty is simply overwhelming to me. They showed us their program, but before our time was over, the high school principal got a call saying that a bomb threat had been made against the school and that everything was shut down and the police were all over the building. We hastily drove back to C.E. King.

I stumbled home that evening, torn to pieces inside. I sat down in my chair, Maureen sat in my lap and held me, and I sobbed in great distress. 

How can you punish children for “breaking the rules” and then play such a cynical game with the rules yourself?

The “bomb” threat was a prank, and the high school student who thought it would be funny to pull that prank was soon sentenced by a judge into my DAEP unit. He was an intelligent, studious, and good-mannered boy who had made one foolish teenage mistake that would ruin his life.

It was conveyed to Constable Terry and me that it would be a good thing if we could press the criminal Hispanic boy into a violent action against us so that he could be found guilty of a larger crime and shipped off to a state facility so that the district would no longer have to pay for his expense. We talked about that request together and both agreed that it was, to us, immoral, and that we had no intention of complying.

The older brother of the ninth-grade Hispanic boy whom I called a “pain-in-the-rear,” came into the unit for a couple of weeks. This young man was a senior and the leader of the Hispanic gang in the school. This young man carried himself with dignity, and he was a natural leader of great respect. The thing he did not respect was the falseness of the school system that bound him and others to a dance they did not comprehend. Nonetheless, his presence in the DAEP was a great help to me because I easily enlisted him to corral his little brother and make him behave.

A mother brought her son into the DAEP to talk with me. The judge had just assigned him to the disciplinary unit. This kid was bad news from the get-go, and she did not like her choices. I pointed out that, by state law, she could home school her son. She thought that would be a great idea, but what I did not realize was that such would not be an option since he was under the jurisdiction of the judge.

About a week before school was out, in December, I was informed that my time as an administrator was over, and that I was being replaced by a “battle-ax.” It was several years later that I woke up to the realization that the kid and his mother probably conveyed my advice to the judge, and that I was most likely penalized for that reason. That was frightening to me when I realized it until I then remembered that it was years in the past and good riddance anyhow. 

The last week was gloomy, but on the last day of school, as the parents were coming by in the late evening (around 10 PM) to pick up their kids, I forget what happened, but there was a great scafuffle, I think some were getting too excited, and Constable Terry had to take police control of the group. That meant that the parents had to wait outside for awhile until things were settled and then take their kids as they were released one by one. Well, like kids, like parents. So that did not work very well, because the parents were more out of control than the kids. 

There was no saying goodbye, and the unit closed under someone else’s control. When everyone was finally gone, I went home that last day of DAEP, feeling kicked by a horse.

Just a few days ago, my son, Kyle, who was attending school as an eighth grader in that same building at the time, reminded me of something I had not fully realized. He said, “You know, Dad, your respect and care for those kids made a bigger difference in their lives than you might know.” I know that that is true. And whatever I lost in the view of Texas public education, I would far rather gain in the lives of a handful of confused and hurting teenagers.

Family Times
In the fall of 2004, we went our first time to the Texas Renaissance Festival, which Mr. Leahy had also pointed us towards. Although the children were dressed up in “Lord of the Rings” elven/ranger cloaks that the girls had made, Maureen and I did not dress the style this time. Again, that was a mistake we did not make the next time. It is so much better to be part of the flow and entertainment rather than just an “observer.” The Renaissance Festival had replaced all things Christian in Medieval times with pagan custom, and so that was disappointing because it was untrue.

The first weekend of December 2004 was our second time at Dickens on the Strand as a family. You can see that we went all out in joining the style of the event. This picture represents the most important thing in my life. Whatever difficulties I might have been facing in my work life, our family life together was far more important to me. 

Let me bring in here first Kyle’s experience in the middle school in the fall semester. He continued to perform in the theater class, and was again a leading character in the school play. At a certain point through the year, however, a girl in his class who was a bully targeted him with a terrible false accusation to the assistant principal, who happened to be Mr. Applegate.

Kyle was very shaken by this, but I counseled him to be fully respectful to Mr. Applegate, to accept whatever fault might be his, and to trust Mr. Applegate. That’s what Kyle did, and thus Mr. Applegate was free to find the truth of the situation and that the charges were false, made just to hurt Kyle. 

This kind of stuff is common when you place foolish children together so many hours. And I do not believe in teaching your child to endure such nonsense. For that reason, we together made the decision that Kyle would return to homeschool for the remainder of his eighth-grade year. By Texas law, we did not have to inform the school district, but because public schools often violate the law concerning homeschooled students, we knew from the Texas Home School Association exactly how to write a letter to the school, and so there was no problem.

The Spring Semester of 2005
The school had signed a two-year contract with me, so they had to keep me employed until the end of the 2005-2006 school year. In the spring, they moved me back to the high school, to a classroom in the adjoining former elementary school. I was given two groups of students, first, four classes of ninth-grade students who had failed the state tests and who needed special work to enable them to pass, and second, a class of high school seniors taking AP English, the smartest students in the school.

Come to think of it now, in spite of the deep discouragement under which I had been cast, these two groups of students in this semester were by far my favorite groups of students in my time with Sheldon ISD.

Not long after the semester began, however, there was some sort of scandal, and the high school principal was gone, replaced by a woman who had been an assistant administrator in the district. Now, I have worked under many highly competent and wonderful woman bosses in my life, some who will be coming into the picture as we go forward. This woman was not one of them.

But – let’s start with my seniors. There was a sadness in this group of students. They were the smartest and most capable overall of any I have taught. Every assignment I gave they returned to me completed at an A level. But it was, in part, like teaching to empty shells, as if a light had gone out in them. They were finished with the absurdity of what school has become and were simply filling in the time until it was behind them. 

Two young ladies, however, sat near my desk and soon developed a good conversational relationship with me. They were very literary-minded, and we found similar interests. Except – they were Gothic, with the chains and spikes and black leather persona. This was an extraordinary thing I discovered, that typically this type of student, though small in number, were among the most thoughtful and conversant in literary things than most other students. I always liked my “Gothic” students.

There was another young man in this group, a tall, thin, black boy from a poor but Christian home. I have a reasonably high IQ, but this young man’s IQ was way beyond mine. Every paper he handed in or response he gave was not just brilliant, but literary and fluid, bringing in meaning and connections beyond what anyone else could see, yet doing it naturally and without effort. There was nothing I could teach him, nonetheless, I was incredibly honored by him when he brought his application letter to Harvard Medical School to me for help. I was even able to give him a few pointers. Sure enough, he was accepted out of a poverty high school on the east side of Houston straight into Harvard without anything in-between. Yet he was an example of the gentleness and humility of Christ.

I really liked my four groups of ninth graders who had failed the state test in English Language Arts. Many of them were special ed students. I enjoyed my seniors, but I liked teaching these students best in all my public-school experience. I had them only three days a week, however, and another teacher, who was proficient in teaching reading, had them two days a week. So my load this semester was reasonably light. 

The principal of the school told me that none of these students would pass the state test, regardless, but that we were just to do our best. The problem is that most teachers think that filling their minds with more content knowledge was the way to help them pass. I know that teaching test-taking strategy is the way they pass the test. And it’s not hard to weave content knowledge with testing strategy. 

My own mental ability is geared much better towards breaking complex things down for less gifted students to understand rather than teaching to those with capable minds. This group of low-performing students had their own sets of personal problems, but I really enjoyed them all.

All ninth-grade teachers were to teach Romeo and Juliet this spring. When we had completed that teaching, all the other students hated Shakespeare and thought he was boring. My less-gifted students loved Romeo and Juliet and thought Shakespeare was cool. What I did was to explain a scene, read some of the text, point out Shakespeare’s dirty jokes, show how his writing was ultra-current and hip. Then, we would watch one act at a time from Leonardo De Caprio and Claire Dane’s Romeo and Juliet. And the truth is, Shakespeare in his day was like that up-to-date rendition rather than the dull performances most choose to put on.

My students understood and enjoyed Shakespeare; for most of the rest, he was immediately forgotten as irrelevant.

I also found a way to bring into their study some of the exciting things I was learning from the Thunderbolts Project.

Two-thirds of my students passed the state test, beyond anything the administration expected. At the end of the year, when I was informed that the district would not be renewing my contract, I pointed out the high passing mark of my students. The principal assured me that was because of the other reading expert. I knew that they learned little from her, for they told me that she confused them. But such could never be argued, so I held my peace.

(Forgive me for any self-boasting in this part. What I want to share is not my “cleverness,” but rather the joy and meaningfulness of these two groups of students that I continue to hold as great value in my heart. I found greater depths of character in both groups than in the normal run of high school students.)

Before the end of the semester, I visited with Constable Terry again about the DAEP unit. He told me that the discipline was neither more nor less than mine (and I had kept a tight discipline, there was no looseness), but that my replacement, while ruling stringently, had no other care or thought for the students. Constable Terry was not pleased with the direction the DAEP unit had taken.

When the school year was finally over, and I had stumbled through all the complicated things teachers must do to “close out” the school year, I went home without any remaining strength. I was sick for a week, with another week needed to slowly recuperate. I loved working with my students, but the entire political arena of the public school was becoming more than I could bear.

Our Trip to Meadowlands 
I believe that it was during the summer of 2005 that my work on the house stalled out. I was becoming physically weak again, a slow downhill slope. Part of the contribution to that was that I had bought the materials to build two canoes for my sons as their Christmas present, but this required a lot of painting with fiberglass resin. Then, weeds from our garden had spread throughout the yard, and I attempted to be rid of them by spraying Roundup Ready all around. I am certain that these two blasts of chemicals pushed my liver back over the edge. 

At the same time, we had rung up a fair amount of debt in remodeling our home. And any new project, even if it was seemingly small, racked up ever more cost. I was halfway through working on the cabinet doors for the two bathrooms when, because of the pressure from these two sources, something disconnected between my mind in the front part of my brain and the working in the back part. I will try to explain that a bit more in an upcoming chapter.

The point is that I suddenly stopped working on the house, unable to continue. I would do more work on different parts of the house as we go forward, but those were brief enthusiasms that ended as soon as that project was done.

We had planned a trip to Meadowlands for this summer, to visit mom. In fact, most of my other siblings were also planning to visit with mom this summer, a family reunion. In July, we loaded up our green van and headed up I-45. I even obtained a cartop carrier to carry our stuff. The green van had always had a problem with over-heating when loaded, however, and soon up the road it became much worse. Finally, at Madisonville, I realized that it was simply too loaded down. Rather than return home, however, I rented a storage unit there, just off the freeway, and we made the hard decisions of what stuff we did not need, including the cartop carrier. We were able to continue, but with some difficulty.

Our trip plans included a stop in McAlester, Oklahoma. Cindy Dix, who had married Steve Schneider, and whose little boy, Matthew, was Johanna’s age, was from McAlester, and her parents were elders in the move in the small fellowship there. They were living at the move community in Upsala, Ontario, just north of Duluth Minnesota, at this time and often came down to Oklahoma. 

Cindy’s parents, Ray and Jan Dix, owned two houses side by side. One was their home, and the other was where the fellowship had their meeting place. We stayed in a bedroom in the back part of the fellowship house. We probably arrived on Friday and stayed the weekend. There was a brother there who looked at our green van, and with Steve Schneider’s help, was able to make it work better. We had a great time visiting, and I was able to share a word in the Sunday-morning service.

Then, at this same time, Peter and Barbara Bell were in the process of moving from Fort St. John down to the states. They had been awhile in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but had settled in Kingsport, Tennessee by this time. Peter was visiting again in Tulsa by himself while we were driving through. Tulsa was not on our route, so I drove up on Sunday afternoon to spend a few hours visiting with Peter. We, as usual, had a great time together, talking non-stop. I shared with him my change of thinking concerning the redemption of all. Peter expressed full agreement with what I shared. 

Meanwhile Maureen and the Schneider’s had planned an outing for that afternoon that included some rock climbing. Steve Schneider shared years later that as he watched Johanna with Matthew, and especially when Johanna was being herself, that is, climbing up the rocks, the Spirit of the Lord whispered to him that God meant them for each other. The truth is, I was sensing the same thing, even at that point. Neither one of us gave an indication of that, however; Matthew and Johanna would have to find their own path towards each other.

We drove on up to Meadowlands, then, without any more problems with the van. Tim and Frieda were there, and Cheryl had flown in. Jenelle had married again, a man named Eric Frederico, and they had two little children, Grace and Sean. Sean was the youngest of all mom’s grandchildren. The Frederico’s had all come as well.

We had a wonderful time. Our children and Glenn and Kim’s children were around the same age, and they had great fun playing together. Mom’s trailer was no longer there; she had been given a cozy house just behind Mark and Cindi Alesch’s house. I spent many hours sitting in her comfortable living room, just she and I, conversing together. We had more in common than I had once known.

I shared the word in the Sunday morning service, and it was well received by all. In fact, Eric Frederico said to me that he was especially moved by what I shared. I was so blessed as I saw my mom in the midst of the family, and the place of honor she was given, especially by Mark and Cindi. Mark shared with me at this time that he was no longer connecting with the word Buddy Cobb was preaching. The community was still “in the move,” but not for much longer. We returned home to Houston much refreshed.

The Final School Year Interrupted 
In August, then, while I was still teaching at C.E. King, we enrolled Kyle and Johanna into a Christian school that we had seen often, right next to Beltway 8 about six miles from our home, called Family Christian Academy. Johanna was in 6th grade, and Kyle was in 9th grade. Kyle would complete all of his high school years at Family Christian. Because Maureen was also working, we could just afford the private school costs, which were lower there than most.

There is little to share about my final year of teaching at C.E. King. I was back in the regular English hallway with six groups of tenth grade students. That did make my workload simpler, because I again taught the same thing six times each day. At the same time, I had a homeroom group first thing each morning for a short time, a mix of all four grade levels. We were supposed to be student advisors, etc. during this time.

This school year was interrupted, however, by a major adventure. By the third week of September, Hurricane Rita was headed straight for Houston, gradually increasing to a Category 5 hurricane. Category 5 is not to be messed with, it will flatten everything in its path and kill many of those foolish enough to remain at home. By Monday, the 19th, all of Galveston county had been ordered to evacuate. Beltway 8, just beyond our back fence, was packed with a slow-moving exodus. Already, the immensity of evacuating seven million people was showing. 

As teachers, we were not dismissed from our posts until Thursday. All the millions of people living south of us had to pass before our turn to evacuate came. At this point, Maureen had purchased a little blue Chevy Prism for her work vehicle. We boarded up our windows and doors and loaded our essentials into the Prism and the green van and split the children between the two vehicles. Maureen followed right behind me. I thought to avoid the massive choke of vehicles on Beltway 8, and thus we drove up to Crosby and took the route north through Huffman, and thus over to route 59, heading towards Lufkin. I was mistaken, however, for this was the entirety of Baytown heading north. We drove for nine hours. Once we finally were on the 59 freeway, there were not three lanes, but five, for the two sides were used as lanes as well. The other side of the freeway was empty, however. We stopped at the Walmart near Porter and got into the long lines using the only restrooms available to thousands of people. The movement on the road was go a bit, then stop, go a bit, then stop. 

I was listening on the radio to the official news and began to realize that we were heading into a terrible bind. First, Rita had shifted its direction, and was now moving just to the northeast of Houston, with Beaumont, Texas on its hardest side. We were heading straight for where the hurricane would pass. Then, it was announced that our route was not “official” and so the state would not be sending in gas trucks for these hundreds of thousands of cars trying to get to Lufkin. Except we WERE on the route the state had earlier told us to go. I now saw that we would spend the night alongside the road somewhere, huddled together in our two cars, out of gas, and with a Category 5 hurricane going right over us.

I said to Maureen, "Forget it." We whipped over to the empty side of the freeway and drove home. Nine hours up became forty-five minutes back home. To my amazement, a gas station not far from our home still had gas. We were able to fill up both vehicles. Back home we turned on the TV to watch the path of the hurricane. It had not yet arrived. Saturday morning, then, the 24th, the outer winds of Rita began passing over us. Without hurry, we got into our vehicles and drove straight west to San Antonio on I-10. This was one of those surreal experiences in life. The city of Houston was empty. The freeway, the widest in the world, was empty. 

This is what I learned. A hurricane comes onshore at only several miles an hour. We were driving away from it at 70 mph, with no traffic. And we knew the exact path of the hurricane and could easily avoid it. I will never be caught in such a foolish rush of crowds again, if I can help it.

All the way to San Antonio, the sides of the freeway were littered with empty vehicles that had run out of gas. Many had stayed the night in their cars. The officials had opened the east bound lanes to be used by the exiting traffic, called “contraflow” (they did it late and did not do it at all on 59), and so, even though we were the only vehicles on the road, I went to the other side so we could go 80 mph on the opposite lanes, just for fun.

In San Antonio we had been invited by Linda Kaufman to stay in their home for the evacuation time. Miss Linda had been Linda Friedman at Bowens Mill, and had been one of Maureen’s main teachers in the school and her mentor as Maureen began teaching. Sid and Linda Friedman had even lived at Blueberry for a period of time, before I arrived there. Sid had passed on since then, and Linda had remarried to a man named Al Kaufman who lived in San Antonio. 

We were welcomed with open arms into their home. Miss Linda’s two daughters, Debbie and Miriam, also lived nearby with their own families. We had known both of them in their growing up years at Bowens Mill. 

Al and Linda Kaufmann were Jewish, and although she remained a Christian, she was also very involved with the Jewish community and synagogue in San Antonio. We had long and interesting conversations with both of them. At times, I sat and visited just with Al. He was very interested in my teaching experience but expressed prejudice against minority students. We observed their daughter, pushing her own children to be the top students in their classes. Miss Linda spoke much of the Jewish people and their culture. 

On Sunday morning, we attended the church in San Antonio pastored by Max Lucado. He ministered the word, and, because Miss Linda was acquainted with him, we got to meet him personally.

We were invited to the gathering at the Synagogue, probably on Monday evening. This was a unique and different experience for all of us. Different ones spoke on different topics and I remember some sort of skit that they put on. By the end of the evening, however, I was struck by something very wrong. Afterwards, Maureen went with Al and Linda, but I had all the children with me. I felt such strong concern, however, that I had to stop the car in order to share with my children what they had just experienced.

You see, the entire identity of these people, expressed through every different part of the presentation, and including in all that Miss Linda had said, was that “We are the special ones, we are the good ones – AND everyone else hates us.” I said to my children, “We have never identified ourselves by what our German forefathers suffered, but only by our life in Jesus now.” I had never heard of such an anti-identity in my life. I was so burdened that my children would know that our entire human identity was Christ alive and new in us every morning. 

When we returned home, we found that Rita had pretty much missed the Houston area, though Beaumont was devastated, as well as Lufkin, where thousands of people had fled.

Homestead Heritage
I want to include two things here before briefly recounting my depressing final year of public-school teaching. 

In my Internet searches, I had found a Christian Community, called Homestead Heritage, just north of Waco, Texas, that put on a great presentation to the public on the Thanksgiving weekend. We spent two days there, that Thanksgiving, spending the night in a motel. This community had a completely different relationship with the public than anything I had known in move community. There “beliefs” and private practices were of no interest to me, but their public involvement was of immense interest. I will explain briefly, but if you are interested, you could study their public involvement on their website.

Most every craft and work that the people of the community did, including the older children in their school, was orientated towards teaching the general public, and giving a wide customer base a place to come and to enjoy the good fruits of the community, both in purchasing hand-made items and in signing up for any of the many craft training sessions they give throughout the year. Most every single aspect of homestead and farmstead life as well as school learning was on display, and very often, the young people in high school were the ones presenting to the public and we were buying their work.

This even included their English work, of all things. Customers could purchase nicely bound copies of things written by high school students. And I can assure you that because their schoolwork had such value, they did a tremendous job with it. Their pottery was especially magnificent, and I would have bought Maureen an entire kitchen set if I had been wealthy, I did get her a lovely hand-crafted serving bowl. I bought something for each of the children, including old-fashioned dresses for the girls made by students in the school. In fact the girl who made those dresses was the one who sold them to our girls.

There were many different store and craft fronts to visit and special presentations for the Thanksgiving visitors. We went into a tent where the choir from the community sang lovely gospel songs. I was impressed, and what I saw there made a huge impact on my vision for Christian education and for the life of godly Community.

Then, through that fall semester, as part of our children’s homeschooling, we decided to sponsor a child in another country, through World Vision. We chose a girl in Albania, about Johanna’s age, named Anxhela Idrisi, and set up a schedule to send her money each month for her education and for nice things she could not have afforded otherwise. Though we have not had the chance to see her in person, Anxhela has become as a daughter to Maureen and me, and we share her life with her to this day.

Anxhela wrote to our girls, at first only through World Vision, but after a few years, we switched over to sending her money directly, once a month, and communicating diretly with her. We were able to help her afford musical training and a better education. Today, Anxhela is married with two lovely children, and is a schoolteacher. It is so good to be part of  her life.

My Final Year in the Public School
The first semester of the 2005-2006 school year was almost survivable. There was little that was meaningful in it, however. My inability to control my class was growing and I could not keep them from talking, especially the African-American girls.

I will share three incidents with students. First, Hurricane Katrina, in devastating New Orleans, sent a number of inner-city students our way. I had one young black man who was rather vicious. I had to kick him out of my room more than once. One day, he threatened violence against me. I stood in front of him and said, “Great, awesome. Hit me, hard. That way, I get two years off, fully paid, and you go to jail.” He did back down. Amazingly, I met him a few years later, now out of school, working at Jiffy Lube, and he greeted me as if I were the best teacher in his life!

The young Hispanic boy, Rodriguez, I think, who had been such a “pain-in-the-rear” in the DAEP, was now in one of my tenth-grade groups. Except this was different. He had come to know that I cared about and respected him. And so he found a place of refuge in my classroom. All his other teachers flunked him and kicked him out of their rooms. But quite a few times he came, then, into my classroom, even though it wasn’t his period, and sat in the back of the room. I was glad that I could give him a place of peace inside a world that was violently confusing to him, a world in which he could not function.

Another young Hispanic man was in my classroom, eighteen and old enough to be graduated, but still in tenth grade. His name was Jonathan. He was a great young man, very polite. He loved to dance and was a “ladies’ man” and carried himself very respectfully. But he was not gifted academically, and all his other teachers gave him F’s. I knew he wanted to be a welder. So, before the end of the year, I sat him down and said, “Jonathan, you’re of age, you can’t be forced to sit in school any longer. Stop coming back. What you need to do is take a break, then study how to beat the test and get your GED.”

He followed my advice. I saw him a year later in Lowes. “Mr. Yordy,” he said to me, “I did what you said. I got my GED, and now I’ve been hired in an intern program to be a welder.”

You can be certain that I had come to know the deep faults underlying modern schooling. Through this time, I read John Taylor Gatto’s books on why modern schooling fails children. His reasons are real and not false like so many public-school critics. Changing the content of what is taught changes nothing. Requiring more “disciplined” student work changes nothing. Yet I had arrived at the same conclusions independently.

Sometime this year, John Taylor Gatto was speaking in Houston. I went to his lecture and had the chance to meet and briefly visit with him. 

My final semester was at the bottom. The school administration was forcing all the teachers to follow an external “apply the objectives” program that had little relevance to classroom teaching. We had to go to lots of “professional training sessions.” I was so tired and limited in the ability to keep my students quiet. I often took off days “sick,” in fact, I had many sick days stored up and through this last semester, I used them all.

My first period class was bright and talkative, and the most difficult for me to keep quiet. One morning, one of the new “impose the objectives” administrators observed my teaching in that first period class. That was one of my weakest mornings. I could hardly teach that morning, and I could not get them to stop talking. The lady stormed out of my classrooms to file her official assessment of me. When I received it, it went straight into the trash. I was not interested.

The thing is that when the state test results came back, although the high school overall had done poorly, and the school was edging into the danger zone of being “looked at” by the state, my student test scores were the highest among the English teachers and among the highest in the school. That fact, of course, had no bearing on my employment.

The principal had all the teachers in the school gather in the auditorium after the poor test results. A former superintendent spoke first, and said some cruel things against all of us. Then the principal got up to speak. She ordered all the “elective” teachers to stand up, those who did not teach the courses that were tested. As they were standing in the midst of hundreds of teachers, it took me awhile to process what I was hearing. For some strange reason, the principal decided to blame them for the failure of the school. She spent several minutes treating them very cruelly without restraint. I was absolutely shocked.

I was only one of dozens of teachers who were not offered a further contract that year. I did not care. It had been all I could do to make it to the last day, and I was ready never to return. At least, on the final day of work, they processed us first, and though it was humiliating, I was soon gone. I went home, and all my defenses collapsed. This time I was sick for over two weeks, with another week to recuperate slowly.

The thing about this experience, however, was that, although it was hard, I had no personal connection to the public school, and thus it carries no painful emotions into the present. 

Yet I had failed, even more than before. You see, I had set myself to support my family by teaching school, and we had borrowed nearly fifty thousand dollars to enable me to do that. And we had been paying on those student loans. Yet my failure, now, to provide for my family brought me to a level of hopelessness, this summer of 2006, that was, in some ways, greater than the hopelessness I knew in 1998.

Here is one “what if” that gnaws at me sometimes. If I had known about Asperger’s as I know now, I could have gotten a clinical diagnosis fully paid for by the health insurance from the district. I had also purchased disability insurance, which would have paid me a two-thirds salary for the rest of my life. – But I give thanks, that Jesus does all things well.

Searching for a True Church 
Christmas of 2005 was our last time at the Church on the Rock in Baytown. Maureen and I loved the praise worship there, but the word that was preached was something entirely different. You see, Tommy Meekins had been a gospel singer. And in the present time, he was a leading figure in the Baytown Christian arena. His role as pastor was, one might say, a side task. But I have no interest in judging the brother, but judging the word he shared was another matter.

I tried. For all the months we attended that church, I really tried to hear God speak to me, even once, through what was shared from the pulpit. I never did. Well, I sort of did, once, but I think I was stretching it. How could we keep attending a church where there was no personal word coming from God? By the end of 2005, I could no longer do so. At the same time, in our distress, we had asked the pastor for counseling. His response was simply to ask if we were involved enough in the church programs. That was the last straw for both of us.

Through the first half of 2006, then, we visited a number of churches, including the big Grace Church on the south side of Houston and the big Church in The Woodlands. We went several times to the Grace Church, but I did not care for it. For one thing it was too big.

Basically, we did not go to church, then, through these months. We did have some sharing times at home, however. 

Through this whole school year, however, I was at a dead-end place concerning the vision of my heart, and concerning my desire to know the Lord as He really is, at least, that’s what I thought. Time and again, when I was driving by myself, I wept before God. “Who will speak for You,” I cried, “and for Your heart?”

I did not know the central truth of the gospel and I knew I didn’t know, and I wept much over my great ignorance and over the ignorance of God throughout His Church.

In March, we heard that a sister we had known at Bowens Mill, Diane Stockbridge, had passed away, in San Antonio. She had been a close friend of Linda Friedman/Kaufman and Miss Linda invited Maureen and I to the memorial to be held there. 

Prior to this time, Sister Nathel Clarke’s daughter, Anne, had moved to Houston with her husband, Juan Giron, and their three boys, Kyle’s age and just older. We had visited in their home and were able to leave Katrina and James with them for this trip. Kyle and Johanna stayed with friends. Katrina and James had a great time in the Giron’s swimming pool. 

We saw Don Stockbridge at the memorial, who, though once a traveling ministry in the move, had left that fellowship. His word had been one of the most precious to me, but somehow, his experience in leaving the move had left him empty and broken. 

Then, we were again visiting with Al and Linda Kaufman in their home. Linda’s two daughters were there with their husbands and children. Another sister who had spent a short time in move community was also there. 

During this weekend visit, Miss Linda filled the conversation with how great the Jewish people are. She shared her concern with me that all this talk about Jews “needing to be saved” was just wrong. Such a good and wonderful people had nothing to be “saved” from.

We were gathered in their large family room after the memorial. I was conversing with the sister who had once been in the move. In the conversation between just the two of us, I shared that, in spite of the things I now disagreed with, God was truly among us in the community. One of the daughters, who had lived at Blueberry through my first year there, overheard me saying that. She began to rebuke me, and all other conversation in the room stopped. Every eye was on me and my responses. The sister stated that she had sought God on her knees through her time at Blueberry and had never had any experience with any God. She said that no one in move community ever had any experience with “God,” and that the people who went into such a way of living were already psychologically deficient, that’s why they were so easily fooled.

I answered gently, and in great kindness, in attempting to defend myself. Afterwards Maureen said how proud she was of me. But the thing that got me the most was the eyes of all the family members on me, the gleeful joy to see how I would respond to such a strong accusation.

Now, I am including these things because this is an account of my life, and this is one of those several things that I must place out where I can bring the Lord Jesus into a full forgiveness inside my own heart. I have never been treated with such disrespect as a guest in someone’s home anywhere close before or since. I have not considered a revisit since. 

Yet, I am being careful to give only my own personal experience, and not to draw any larger “conclusions.”

Bringing All into Jesus 
This time period, then, is one of two, during our years in Houston, that I must bring fully into the Lord Jesus Christ past my own emotional objections. 

Let me begin with the DAEP first. Was I at fault? Most certainly. I should have spent my time working on curriculum for the students instead of reading Internet news and I should have been more careful in what I said to the students. I was not wrong, however, for caring for them and treating them with respect. 

“Father, I thank You for Your complete forgiveness towards my own inadequacy and foolish mistakes. Even more than that, I thank You that You share even my mistakes with me through Jesus, and that we together, in speaking good grace together, can turn all these difficult things into goodness and blessing for others.”

In the remainder of my public-school experience, the truth is, I simply did not have the strength or ability needed to function well in what the district was paying me to do.

“Lord Jesus, You were there, carrying me through every moment. And I place You, in all Your precious Person, upon every nuance of my inadequate and faltering humanity through this time. I am so grateful, Lord Jesus, that in every moment of my life, I lived inside of You, though I knew it not.”

“Oh, Father, I think about the more than five hundred young people that sat in my classroom through the four years I taught in Sheldon ISD. I know that Your Holy Spirit is always flowing out from me, bringing life into others, whether I see anything or not. And Father, because You brought every one of those children into my life, I have the right in You to bring every one of them into Your heart. Father, You and I together hover over each one, sending our shared Holy Spirit into their lives right now. Father, bless each one of them, lift them up into Your knowledge. I thank you, Father, that You share Your heart with me.”

“Lord Jesus, I thank you for our time at Church on the Rock in Baytown and for the good experiences our children had there. I bless Pastor Tommy Meekins with all my heart, and draw him into Your love shed abroad in me. I pray that right now, You would bless him with a measure of knowing You beyond what he has known and in goodness and joy.

“And Lord Jesus, I pray that you would bless Al and Linda Kaufman and their family. I freely and with all joy forgive them for any difficult experiences I may have known. They are precious to You beyond measure, and to me as well. Lord Jesus, I release them from all my emotional difficulty into Your liberty, that they might find their place inside of You.”

“Father, I see now the wondrous path upon which You were leading me, into great purpose. I see now that everything You took me through was critical towards preparing me to hear that most wondrous word when You opened the heavens to me and poured out into me what I had sought with tears through all my years.”

Disgruntled Agreement  
In the third week of July, Maureen read that Darlene Zschech, a wonderful praise singer from Australia, would be singing at the Sunday morning service at the BIG church in Houston, the largest church in North America. I did not like the big church in Houston; I did not like big churches at all. And I had successfully resisted any attempt to drag me to the big church prior to this point.  

This time, however, Maureen was insistent. I thought, well, it can’t hurt. So, on July 23, 2006, I climbed into our green van with Maureen and the children, and, compliant but disgruntled, I pulled out of the driveway, heading into Houston and to the big church I did not like.