Save Reagan

Missional Community-Reagan High School from The Austin Stone on Vimeo.

When I heard that the state is planning to shut down Reagan High School, I was shocked. It broke my heart watching this video in church, hearing the statistics of the low number of students that would continue with school if Reagan is closed, and seeing the students pouring their own efforts into saving their school.

I'm a professional at seeing or hearing about a bad situation, having my heart break, start feeling sorry, and then do nothing about it. That is awful. I hate that about me. I wanted this to be different. When I saw the several ways to get involved to help save Reagan, I knew it was just too simple to not do anything. There were things like tutoring, going to sporting events, cleaning up around campus, and adopting a teacher...whatever that looked like, but it sounded simple yet significant.

When I first signed up, they said that the major needs for the weekend was tutoring and cleaning up around campus. Then I received another email saying that due to the TAKS testing this week, they will mainly just need tutors. To be honest, I was leaning more toward the cleaning since it has been a very long time since I have done anything educational. I could picture how the tutoring would go: I'd be sitting with a kid who avoids eye contact and would have the enthusiasm of a water heater as a result of having to be in a library studying on a Saturday morning, while I stare blankly at their studying materials and create awkward silence...for 3 hours.

It turned out to be AWESOME. Not only were the students I was working with eager to learn and anxious to do well, I actually knew what I was talking about! Apparently I'm decent at revising and editing! ...who knew.

The particular boy I was helping out with improved his revising and editing from getting about half right on the first story to everything correct on our fourth and last story! And he said that he was failing English! I was so proud and I pray that he continues to improve.

These kids were an encouragement to me. I knew their family situations may not be that great yet they were motivated to try and do better in school. They were receptive and comfortable enough to joke around with us throughout our time there. As we were leaving they even asked if we would be there next Saturday!

Again, the Lord showed me that whenever I go into something with the mindset of hoping to be of help, I always come out feeling that I was the one that was blessed by the experience. I am very excited to continue tutoring and serving at Reagan High School in whatever way is needed to help this school stay open for these awesome kids.