I was 28 when I started teaching. When I walked into that
classroom for the first time, I didn’t have much “teaching” experience, but I
did have 10 years of youth ministry experience. I think that really shaped my
approach to teaching. I have now spent nearly 30 years teaching in a small
Christian school. For the first 15 years of my teaching career, my parents
didn’t really understand why I stayed at such a small school for so little
money. They kept encouraging me to go work in the public schools, or at least
at a bigger private school. That all changed when I started coaching
volleyball. It wasn’t the volleyball that changed anything directly, it was the
fact that they started coming to games. It was at those games that they started
to get to know my students and they started to understand that what I was doing
was more than a job, it was a calling.
Teaching, done correctly, is as much of a calling as
preaching is. Just as the minister is called to the pulpit, the effective
teacher is called to the… whiteboard? Podium? My philosophy has always been,
“Teachers teach students, not a curriculum.” Yes, there are things we are hired
to teach, but it is the other things that really have a lasting impact. I saw a
story about a rich man, maybe an athlete or CEO, it doesn’t really matter,
questioning a teacher as to why they did what they did for so little money. He
asked why they didn’t find a “real” job and get paid more money. He said, “I
make X amount of money a year. What do you make?” The teacher answered simply,
“I make a difference.”
When our kindergarten teacher starts the year in August,
babies walk into her room. In May little people walk out. Yes, they learned
numbers and letters and how to read, but more than that they learned how to be
people. In the elementary classes, those teachers take those little people and
start building them into the men and women that God designed them to be. The
students walk out as adolescents. Those adolescents come to us in the secondary
classes and we continue, brick by brick, to build them up. They walk out on the
verge of adulthood.
Most people are lucky to have an impact on one or two people
in their lifetime, teachers impact roomfuls of people on a daily basis. I have
been reminded of the impact that a teacher can have in many ways. I have had
several students that went on to become teachers tell me that something I said
in class made them decide to become a teacher. In a few cases they have told me
exactly what it was I said to them 5, 6, 7 years ago that inspired them to
teach. I have to take their word for it, because I have no recollection of
saying those things. I give character awards to the seniors every year. They
are fun, and everyone smiles and then we go on with the day. I didn’t really
think they went any further than that. Then I was at the house of someone that
had graduated a few years before to get a sofa and saw that he had his
character award framed and hanging in his room. I have had 2 students tell me
they were pregnant before they told most of their family. I have had a former
student that you can probably count on one hand the number of people that have
seen or heard him cry, call me tears because he was struggling with difficult
life decisions and he knew I would tell him what he needed to hear, not what he
wanted to hear.
Things like that humble me, but they also reinforce the
impact that a teacher can have. I am not special; I know teachers all over have
similar stories. If you are a teacher reading this, you are making a
difference. Building future adults is a special calling, do not grow weary in
doing good. If you are not teacher, you can still make a difference. Just stop
and actually listen to the people around you. Listen to understand, not just to
respond. Most people only require small course corrections and you may be just
the person to set them on the new path they are looking for.
