By Jim Weber
Reprinted from the Touchstone Support Team Letter, August 2006.
It was the second day of school. I was standing in the main lobby of Stratford High School, chatting with Gloria, the attendant at the sign-in desk. Melony and I had met with the principal, Brenda Elliott-Johnson, to plan our involvement with students in the coming school year. We had walked through the school greeting students and teachers we knew and meeting some we didn’t. It was a time of enthusiastic greetings, “Great to see you!” and re-connecting questions, “How was your summer?” Melony and I had split up, as we often do, to make our own rounds of the building, but the afternoon was wearing on, and we both had work waiting for us back in the office. I knew Melony would show up soon, so I waited.
Gloria is a campus supervisor, hired to help maintain security. Her primary work station is the front desk. When people enter the building she asks them to sign in or out and directs them to their destination. While I was standing there, several people came and went. But the situation of a man in his twenties caught my ear. He had been called to pick up a student who had come to enroll at Stratford. Unfortunately, that student’s paperwork had not followed him to Nashville yet, and he couldn’t be enrolled in classes without a file of transcripts and other records. So he was free to go home, and he had called his older brother to come pick him up. The problem was, the older brother didn’t know where in the school to find the younger brother. Gloria couldn’t just let him wander around the campus looking, so he was stuck.
I had nothing to do, so I volunteered to go looking for the younger brother, Ricco. I went to guidance and told them Ricco’s name and what I knew about him. Guidance sent me to another office where new students were waiting to be enrolled. When I arrived at the second office, I found Melony, sitting with a tall boy. She introduced him to me as Ricco – the same Ricco I was looking for. I told him that his ride was waiting for him in the main lobby. As he got up and gathered his things to go, Melony continued talking to him. She was encouraging him to come back tomorrow. Things would get straitened out, and we, or others here, would be sure of that. We wanted him to do well, to succeed, and to have a great year at Stratford. As we walked with him toward the main lobby, she continued to encourage him. When we met his brother, we both echoed that encouragement and explained a little bit about our work at Stratford.
As we said good-bye to the two of them, Melony and I both had a sense that there was something symbolic about this situation. We had found someone who was essentially lost, discouraged, and ready to give up. We had listened to the need and responded by going when they needed someone to go, asking when they needed someone to ask on their behalf, encouraging when they were ready to give up, and challenging them to hold onto hope that good things were ahead of them. That is what we do at Stratford. Today we did it physically. In a few weeks when we start our groups, we will be doing it emotionally, mentally, and relationally.