Pulling into the parking lot the first week of school still feels heavy.  Classrooms are usually bursting at the seams with students.  Bells ring, and the halls are slow-moving rivers of humanity with wide-eyed freshmen trying desperately to find their classes.  Upperclassmen saunter along, rolling their eyes at the slow crowd, and teachers run in and out of classrooms making copies and sending last-minute SOS emails.

This year, my projector and AC were both broken.  The first day, students walked into room 212 to a temperature hovering around eighty degrees, and if they looked too long at the blurry screen on the wall, there was the very real possibility of getting migraines.  I apologized for the temperature and the broken projector, promising they’d be fixed soon, but the next day was a block schedule, and the prospect of teaching one-hundred-minute classes in that heat felt, well, overwhelming.

The morning of that first block day, I walked toward the double doors of our brick building and said a quick prayer.

“Jesus, I need you,” I whispered.  “Please carry me through this day.”

Eventually the bell rang, and students came pouring through my door.  They found their seats, and for two periods, things went pretty well despite the heat.  I gave them reminders about putting away cell phones and being on time.  I told them if they came late twice, they’d be writing a poetic explanation of what happened, which would be read in front of the class.

Eyebrows raised at that idea.

“There’s also another option,” I told them with a sly smile.  “If you’d rather not write a poem, you could sing a song.”

“What!” students shouted.

“And I have hand motions for it.”

That really riled them up.  Students turned toward their peers, like sharks on raw meat, and joined a frenzy of conversation. Others laughed and shook their heads.

We moved on, reading the first paragraph in the syllabus about “listening to life”—the philosophy of the class—and then we got to the moment when I mention Jurassic Park III.

“We’re gonna act this out,” I announced.

During 4th period, I turned to Mia, sitting in the second row.

“Can you make a creaking sound?” I asked her.  She smiled awkwardly, paused, and then. . .

“Crreeaak,” she said under her breath.  She giggled, and the class giggled with her.

“Nice!  What about you, Sydney?” I asked.

“Crrrreeeaaaak!” she bellowed, and everyone roared with laughter.  I almost fell backward.

“Wow, Sydney!” I shouted.  And the smiles and the sound of the kids’ laughter was like cool rain chasing away the heat of anxiety smoldering inside me.

Kids were still chuckling when the HVAC mechanic walked in with a ladder.  I wanted to hug him, but he clearly wasn’t in the mood.

He creaked his way up the ladder while I pointed at half the class to make creaking noises with each imaginary step I took across the Jurassic Park bridge.

To add to the drama, the other half of the class made wind noises, and then things got weird.

I screeched.

I became a pterodactyl and attacked one of the students, hoping the mechanic, whose head was now in the ceiling, wouldn’t freak out.

The mechanic finished, probably wanting to get out of there, and as soon as he climbed down the ladder, the ceiling started to hum.

“Oh my gosh, guys!” I shouted.  “Do you hear that?”

The motor kicked on, and cool air started circulating through the room, mixing with the sounds of laughter.  Our classroom wasn’t a hot jungle anymore.  It was the shady base of a cool, Jurassic waterfall, a public-school oasis, and we were loving every minute of it.

We talked about how good movies like Jurassic Park III put us in the shoes of the main characters like good books, and as we read further down the syllabus, the conversation shifted to writing.

That’s when I told them about Heather.  To deal with her grief, she wrote a letter saying goodbye to her friend who died in a climbing accident.

“Writing isn’t just for English class and tests,” I told them.  “It’s also helps us process life.”

The bell to leave was 4 minutes from ringing when Laila walked up with her notebook.

“Could you take a look at this, Mr. Ahnfeldt?” she asked.

She opened to a specific page, and when I looked at the first two words, I was hooked.

“Dear God,” she wrote.

I looked at the clock.  Three minutes left.  And the classroom echoed with the sounds of zippers and shuffling desks.

“Could I look at this after class?” I asked.  She nodded her head, and then after the bell rang, she handed me her letter to God.

Students filed out, and she watched me read.

Her honesty moved me.

“Sometimes I question what to believe,” she wrote, “but somehow I always end up coming back to you.”

In the midst of cell phones and social media noise, the thought of a 15-year-old girl reaching out to a God she couldn’t see settled my heart like the laughter that filled the room a few minutes earlier.

She wrote about reading the Bible and her struggle to do what it says.  And then she mentioned a person.  She thanked God for sending Brendon who helped her faith grow.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“This is beautiful,” I said, still reeling in the wonder of her faith.

“Is the grammar okay?”

“Laila,” I said, “when you’re writing to God, the grammar doesn’t matter.  This letter is right from your heart.  That’s what matters.”

She smiled, and I gave her journal back to her.

Watching her walk away, I couldn’t help but think about God watching both of us.

The day had started with a prayer for help, crowded hallways, and hot rooms.  But, like the cool air now moving through my room, it ended with the refreshing truth that God was with us, bringing the gift of laughter from my students and stirring up hearts to seek Him.

Whether I acknowledged it or not, my heart needed to know God heard my prayer when I cried out to Him earlier that day.  And Laila proved to this old pterodactyl teacher that He most certainly did.

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