Reflection
Very often I have some sort of flashback to my teaching days. Today I find myself recalling the different teaching positions I’ve had, the assortment of curricula over the years entrusted to me for teaching and guiding my students, and the fact that that’s exactly what I used to get the instruction for my classrooms. I was under the authority of my school, my boss, to use those lessons and to teach them to my students. And I did.
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Reflection
It seemed pretty simple: cover these lessons in class and teach them to your students.
Teaching was never a difficult task for me. I loved (almost) everything about my classrooms. It’s possible I loved my job a little TOO much as my priorities were heavily slanted toward work (but that’s another story altogether). Even so, one year things took a different turn. The masses, and I do mean masses (parents and students) were not happy with the amount of nor kind of work being assigned. I learned quickly, though the principal and school board had made a plan of attack to redirect the English department, the administration’s requirements and goals for my job were not outlined in any way with my teens or their families.
Tough position.
Still, I had a job slated before me, a commitment to doing my best as I always did and a group of challengers begrudgingly seated in front of my chalkboard by the hour. It didn’t take long for the students’ murmurings to walk through my classroom door via their parents. Comments such as, “She’s not in college,” “This is too much writing,” and “Homework shouldn’t take an hour,” were echoed for miles.
Thankfully it wasn’t all of my classes, students and parents who were disgruntled, yet I’d never heard so much crying about school work. Even my lower grade classes spent the time at home without all the complaints. In fact, there was only one complaining parent in the previous 5 years of my teaching. So, this was pretty big to me. Honestly, I did understand where both the students/parents and our administration were coming from. I realized (late in the game) that this was a huge difference from what the students were learning previously in English class and that it was certainly a big jump in time and work being required on the students’ part. Then, after grading the grammar assessments as we tried to get the year started, I even better understood the urgency to what my principal was trying to accomplish in the English department. I was in the middle of an unwanted but necessary message.
“Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.” ~Arnold Bennett
Meeting after meeting and the reality unfolded; the problem wasn’t me, it was the curriculum. I was only preparing lessons, teaching my classes and grading papers accordingly. I loved my students, but they did not love the guide (grammar, writing and vocabulary) we were using for their classes. Why would parents, especially, think I would be able to separate myself as a teacher from the curricula I’d been instructed to use? Of course I wasn’t perfect, but I was faithful in doing what was expected of me regardless of the misunderstanding or divisiveness. Uproars eventually calmed down as my wonderful high schoolers realized that I was powerless to change what was written in front of me and them, and, well, they wanted to get out of high school.
“I wasn’t perfect, but I was faithful.”
This reflection mirrors today’s society and many of the popular viewpoints I hear about faithful Christians. I’m not defending hateful people, so please don’t even go there. I’m talking about faithful Christians. People like me, who aren’t perfect but who serve the perfect God. Those whose lives are inseparable from their faith because it’s a relationship. A relationship, not a religion. Those whose faith is given through grace and spirit and truth in the Lord. I’m talking about those whose Lord is the author of our guide for life: the Bible.
Please don’t ask us to separate, to leave aside or to dismiss all that is us, for we can not.
I am a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mom… and no matter what, these relationships define me to a large extent. I could never be who I am by removing any one of these from my life. Aside from the fact that it’s not even possible: Not only would I not be me without each of them, I wouldn’t be the kind of mom, wife, daughter or sister I am without the Lord in my life. My thoughts, my love, my actions, my decisions in my life all result directly from my personal relationship with Jesus. And while I fail Him every day, He never fails me.
Please don’t ask me to separate, to leave aside or to dismiss all that is me, for I can not.
Joshua 24:15
And if it seem evil to you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom you will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.
