Friday, February 23, 2007

Confusion, outrage, mission money

Here we go again with another post about school, don't you all just love these. I horribly offended one of my former teachers today. I know everybody just loves this part but I feel the need for details and background information.

To start with, as I have mentioned in previous posts, I am the official runner at my school first period. Among my other responsibilities, I collect mission money from the Junior High and one of my old religion teachers who doesn't really want to take the money up first period.

The junior high kids love to try to beat each other with which class can raise the most money. Some people feel like this shouldn't be the attitude behind giving, but the really have a lot of fun and enjoy doing it. Because I go around and get the envelopes with the money the kids will often ask me who "won" this week. Often if the totals are close then the kids will pull out there spare change and try to top the other classes total.

Today was a rather unusual day. The mission collection was to help the family of one of the students in the elementary school who has cancer. The money is going to help them with traveling expenses between here and Cleveland. Because of this everybody pulled out all the stops this week and gave a lot of money.

The junior high kids in one of the classes tried there best and came up with $75 total. This in and of itself was pretty amazing. They thought that they had a really good total and they did. However, when I got the envelope from the one teacher in the high school they had over $102 collected. I remembered at this point that I had $20 dollars in my pocket that I hadn't spent and didn't have a specific plan for. I decided that I would help the junior high out since they wanted to beat the record.

They managed to scrounge up some more money and got a total of over $104! This was exciting for everyone. They thought that it was great and I felt that was good that we were able to bless the family. Side note, that verse in the Bible about a cheerful giver, these junior high kids were doing their "conga line". It was pretty funny.

The high school teacher who ended up with the second highest amount found out what had happened. I was astonished to find out that she was furious with me. Apparently she felt that I had betrayed my position collecting the envelopes and I should have never told the other class what her classes total was. With all the hard work they put in I shouldn't be upstaging them, etc...

I was very surprised by this entire thing. The highschool doesn't really have any rewards for giving the most or anything like that. I didn't disobey any rules at all, and I thought that the fact that we were able to raise more money for the family was a good thing. I was rather upset by the whole thing because I saw this teacher right before she left for the day and she was still upset.

So, I'm fine now, I just needed to get that out. I don't understand the entire affair at all, but this is how it turned out. I guess I will just have to see what happens.

P.S. this teacher has decided that I am no longer to be trusted to carry her money envelope. Oh well, less work for me I guess.

7 comments:

Sandman said...

Don't worry about it, its not the end of the world. She tends to overreact to everything. You're right about giving though its not meant to be a competition.

My advice for you is just to avoid her for a while.

-Storm-

Anonymous said...

Hmm! You are such a giver--that's great. But, I'm wondering about CS?

baritone_dude2009 said...

ok if this former religion teacher is who i think it is im kinda confused about why she would be "upset" about you giving your extra money to the mission because i do believe she has always been like "dig deep in those pockets now kids this is for a good cause." but i have a tendency to agree with storm. Although i do realize that you do have to get the attendence slips from all the teachers...regardless this teacher of yours might have forgotten about it by monday...


anyway i wouldnt worry about it she probably didnt really mean it.

matt b.

Laura said...

:-( Sorry that happened... Some teachers are just like that, I guess, but she shouldn't have permanently taken your job away. You were just being thoughtful!

Alicia said...

honestly.. I think that sometimes people overeact in the spirit of giving especially when it's for competition purposes. I think that if we give from our heart and its the Lord telling us to give it shouldn't matter where the money goes.. because in the end God's the one who supplies all our needs.. and money is just a simple thing it shouldn't be anything to fret over. I encourage you to pray for that teacher.. giving isn't about competition it's about doing what the Lord tells u to do.

I don't have all the answers, just the right ones. said...

Don't let it bog you down. Some people can't see the forest for the trees.

AmericasNextFreak said...

Hello, This is Sylvia, and i Finally got a blog!!!!!

But yeah, that's totaly out of line. I'd just be happy that the family got enough money!

By the way, thank you for telling Karolyn about... well, you know who. I really appreciate it, you saved me from getting into a whole big mess.