Category: Teaching

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Imperative Prayers

Daniel 9:19 “Lord, listen! Lord, forgive! Lord, hear and act! For your sake, my God, do not delay, because your city and your people bear your Name.”

There are times when it feels like all my academic training has done is ensure that I am never fully convinced of anything, that no matter what my stance on a topic is that I will have failed to cover all my bases.

I feel like this when I pray. God, if it be your will…God in taking into account x, y, and z, please…God, if this and this are fine, then maybe this thing too if I am…
It’s exhausting.

Or worse, I only let these endless caveats fill my mind when I’m outside my devotional space and never confess them to God. It may be helpful to actually ask God what to do with the complications I’m feeling about how and when to extend mercy to a student, the best way to discipline my daughter or how best to talk to my wife.

What a bracing tonic, then, to encounter this passage from Daniel where the prophet uses the imperative in his prayers and calls for God’s immediate action.

What a progression! First that God would listen, then that God would forgive, then that God would act on our behalf…

This is the confidence of a believer certain of his own incapability and equally certain of God’s power.

Not every moment demands this kind of prayer. I pray that I am ready to pray this kind of prayer when the moment comes.

 

 

 

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Washing Feet

John 13:14 “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.”

What is our culture’s equivalent of washing someone’s feet? What is the educational version of that act of service?

Christ speaks to me as a teacher in this verse. He has just demonstrated his willingness to make himself vulnerable in caring for them, and now he calls on them to do the same.

Today in class, we read a sample essay that responded to the prompt my students are currently working on. It was one of those drafts that appeared solid on the surface, and for a rough draft, it really was promising. It featured motivated research, a clear thesis, decent organization, and some really compelling information about dormitory visitation policies.

The more closely we looked at it though, the more flaws appeared. The research didn’t really bear on the project, and so many citations were missing that the author’s authority was shot by the end of the second paragraph. The essay is supposed to be a report, but it turned into an argument at its end, and by the time I was done discussing it, it seemed like the paper was awful.

So what do we do with that?

Well, in class, I left them to start their own research, and it seemed to me the sample essay now felt like a cautionary tale.

But was it?

Well, I would thank God if my students came up with that draft by the end of next week. They would have two weeks to work on the revision, and they might up come up with something really special.

And as I sit here writing this, I know that what I need to do for this particular sample is write the revision. I need to do the work and offer it to my students on Monday as an example of what they can do. Our discussion will come out of those improvements.

I can’t write a revision for everyone, just as Christ could not wash the feet of everyone in Jerusalem.

But I can wash the feet of this particular essay, and from that attitude of service I can call my students to begin the process of washing one another’s feet and helping each other become better readers and writers.

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Teaching Children

III John 4 “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.”

When Catherine was first born, people asked me if I felt any different now that I was a father. I could honestly say no and that this was because I had always felt like a dad; I just didn’t realize it.

This feeling came primarily from teaching.

My students were never kids, and I made sure never to call them that. They were of age, capable of enlisting in the military or voting, when they came into my classroom. But I still cared for them like I would my children, a collection of sons and daughters even if they were (as was sometimes the case) older than me.

I’m now at the time of the month in my prayer calendar where I send a prayer to former students once a day. Over the past few weeks, I’ve contacted Zack Cook, Logan Crowder, Shayla Hoff, Hugh Pressley, Erica McCrea, Sarrah Strickland, and Chris Reyes to name a few…

Some are caught in purgatory, still looking for that post-college landing spot. Some are teachers or professionals and have made the transition successfully. Some of them are living out their faith in ways that I long to emulate. Some are struggling with their relationship to God.

No matter, I count it one of the privileges of my life that I get to reach out to them once a month, let them know I’m praying for them, and share God’s love with them.

And when I hear that they are walking in the truth? Incredible joy…

 

 

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Human Praise

John 12:43 “…for they loved human praise more than praise from God.”

I’m selective enough in my desire for human praise that I can tell myself I really don’t want it. But I do.

The fact that I don’t want huge swaths of the public to adore me doesn’t change the fact that I want very specific kinds of human approbation.

I want my wife to think I’m the best husband.

I want my daughter to think I’m the best dad.

Even worse, I want other people—often strangers—to think I’m a good dad when I’m out somewhere with Catherine.

And yes, I want my students to think I’m a good teacher and my scholarly peers to think I’m intelligent.

I’ve had two experiences, one professional and one personal, that has alerted me to my weakness in this area, the kind of susceptibility to temptation that sends me to my knees when I read a verse like this one in John.

The first came during my first professional gig at Charleston Southern. A couple of years into the job, I looked up to realize that I was writing my papers differently. I was looking for truth, not looking to be interesting. It was a distinction I had long ago blurred as I sought to make a compelling and theoretically sophisticated argument in my dissertation. I realized, in hindsight, that I had sought to please my dissertation director more than God. This wasn’t as a result of some Faustian bargain on the type of my director. He let me determine the subject and argument. No, the irony was that I had tempted myself. I had made his praise—and by extension the praise of every other smart person who could potentially hire me—more important that the wisdom of God, often to the detriment of my own argument.

The second came about six months ago as I realized that in parenting, I was unnecessarily worried about what strangers thought of my parenting skills. I realized that if Catherine were screaming her head off in a store, I would worry more about quieting her for appearance-sake than for taking care of her problem. I could feel everyone’s eyes on me, and it caused me to compromise clear parenting dos and don’ts in an order to covet approval from people I didn’t even know.

Our hope, of course, rests in the fact that God doesn’t actually see us at all when he looks at us. Instead, he sees Jesus, the model of sacrificial love in all his perfection. If I’m excessively worried about receiving praise from people, I won’t be willing to properly love or sacrifice myself for them. One of Christ’s profound lessons is that he loved you and me while we still sinning: that is, before we were able to praise him for what he was going to do.

I pray for the patience to wait for God’s praise, for the humility to set aside excessive energy devoted to coveting or disavowing human approval, and the wisdom to love my wife, daughter, students, and peers in such a way that they would praise not me, but God.

 

 

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Feedback and Discipleship

Today, we had our first peer review day in my English Composition class. Typically, I try to have the students grade a sample paper using my rubric to get their hands dirty and then use the insights they make from that exercise to look at their own drafts and the drafts of their classmates with fresh eyes.
But before the game is the game. They need to know what good feedback looks like before they can provide it.

For the past couple of years, I’ve given my students Seth Godin’s post on giving feedback as a conversation starter. While his piece is more about giving feedback in the context of a business or corporate environment, it’s all the more powerful for that reason. It lets my students know that the ability to offer quality feedback is not just something they need to be able to do in a classroom. It’s something that will serve them well in their careers and lives.

Godin gives three pieces of advice… Continue reading “Feedback and Discipleship”

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“But Patience / to prevent that murmur…”

Proverbs 16:32…“Better a patient person than a warrior, one with self-control than one who takes a city.”

 “Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
   I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
   Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
   Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
   And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
   They also serve who only stand and wait.”
                                                    John Milton, Sonnet 19

 

I hate when it’s quiet. In college and in my early days of graduate school I would fall asleep with the TV on a sleep timer. During the day, I would keep the quiet at bay with a variety of audiobooks, podcasts, music, and noise machines—anything to keep the static of the inside of my ahead from getting too loud, you know, the cliched deafening effect of silence.

My proclivity for noise is a product of my desire for effectiveness run amok. Or maybe that’s the lie I tell myself to excuse the really difficult truth at the heart of my unrest: my unwillingness to rest in God. Continue reading ““But Patience / to prevent that murmur…””

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Wisdom > Gold

“How much better to get wisdom than gold, to get insight rather than silver!” – Proverbs 16:16

I am impatient and want return on my investment right away. This proverb speaks to my desire for tangible benefits that will pass away instead of the intangible ones that reflect eternal value. The kicker, of course, is that it’s significantly easier to get and keep silver and gold if you have wisdom and insight, and if you have gold but no wisdom, you probably won’t have the gold that long. Continue reading “Wisdom > Gold”

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Thankful In Little

Luke 19:26 “He replied, ‘I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but as for the one who has nothing, even what they have will be taken away.’”

Yesterday, I received two emails that should have made me elated. They did make me happy, but I don’t think I held onto that happiness for very long.

First, a student I taught in the spring got a writing gig with his current employer. He was pumped about the opportunity, and since we had spent so much time working on his writing for the freshman writing course he was part of, he wanted to let me know the good news.

Second, my uncle—my dad’s oldest brother—responded to an email I sent him early in the week. We last saw each other about this time a year ago, and he commented on how much that particular vacation—where he had, among other things, gotten to see my dad, Elisha, and me—had meant to him.

These are phenomenal blessings: written records of gratitude and appreciation that show God working in the lives of the people I have been in prayer for.

And yet. And yet. Continue reading “Thankful In Little”

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Discipleship and Potty Training

Luke 19:10…“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

Christ’s words mean that he came to save everyone, since there is no one who is not in need of being found by him. Whether or not the lost acknowledge it—whether or not they even know they’re lost—Christ seeks them with the purpose to rescue them.

This morning, my wife and I started a three-day intensive potty-training session with my daughter. It went as well as it could go with only one major accident.

It’s an allegory for a certain of experience I have had as a teacher, namely this sequence:

  1. I’m not sure I am teaching my student anything new.
  2. Even if I was, I’m not sure my student could articulate what that something new was.
  3. The training has a pretty clear goal for the student, though. She either goes to the potty or doesn’t.
  4. Ultimately the exact reasons for getting the student to that goal are not as important as the student accomplishing the training’s goal.
  5. In this way, this training is an example of grace for both the student and teacher.

Before today, Catherine had never gone a day of her life without wearing a diaper. Whether she was ready or not, she had never done what a growing child should do: leave the diaper behind and begin to use the potty for herself. Whether she could have articulated that to herself or not, it was true. She was, in a way, lost.

I’ve been going back and forth over the past few months about my goals regarding discipling students, especially as it concerns leading others to Christ. I have decided to focus my prayer and goals on sharing the gospel more than the end result because ultimately am not responsible for someone else’s spiritual status; the holy spirit is. If I start holding myself accountable for someone else’s acceptance or refusal of the gospel, a number of bad things are bound to happen.

But just as my wife and I were the ones who led Catherine through the process of discovering a new way of using her body today—at least partially through personal example—I can be the one who can declare our need for Christ and the way that Christ sought and saved me. Whether or not what I said is responsible for the person’s conversion shouldn’t matter as much as the fact that someone new has been added to God’s kingdom.

God, give me the grace to live out your truth: that you sent your Son to seek and save us.

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Hurry Up and Fail

In Mere Christianity, CS Lewis suggests that one way for people to see how much they need Christ is to seriously attempt to rely on themselves. This is because

No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.

Only when we confront our own inability to be good will we truly rely on Christ. This is where real faith begins.

There’s an analogous principle in academic work, especially in the process of writing something as large and unwieldy as a research paper. I like to tell my students, “Hurry up and fail.” What I mean is that they often won’t know what kind of work they really need to do on a project until they attempt it, no matter how messy it is. The problem is not the rough draft: the attempt to be good. The problem is waiting until the last possible minute to hand in a rough draft: the attempt to be good never led to a new sense of reliance.

Lewis lets us know that the serious attempt to be good on our own can lead to a significant spiritual insight: not that we are lost forever but that we can never be found until we have faith in God.

The point of emphasizing failure to students is this: we ALL need to revise. Go ahead and start writing now so you can ask for help in improving it. Do it sooner rather than later.