Tag: Discipleship

Posted on

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”

Posted on

Somewhere Else

“Your love has given me great joy and encouragement, because you have refreshed the hearts of the Lord’s people.” – Philemon 7

Paul writes this verse from a jail cell. He doesn’t want to be there, but God has given him joy and encouragement through Philemon’s love, not in some future circumstance, but here and now. Not “Your love will give me” but “Your love has given me.”

So many of my daily frustrations are the product of my desire to be anywhere but where I am, even when my intention is spiritual. I want to engage in discipleship, but not in my own house. Give me strangers rather than my own wife or daughter! Or I want to read the one book on theology I don’t have at hand because that’s the one that’s going to have the answer that’s been plaguing me. Or I want to celebrate Christian community, except when I’m actually in the dull part of a sermon on Sunday.

I listened to this podcast with Seth Godin today, and the bulk of Godin’s conversation with Brian Koppelman is concerned with how to process negative feedback. Godin suggests saying to the nay-sayer, “That is fascinating. Thank you.” in order to diffuse the anger that negative feedback might engender. The grounding for this truth, that this moment really is fascinating and an occasion for gratitude, is rooted in the fact that God made it possible and that every good and perfect gift comes from him.

I want my students to feel joy and encouragement in my class, even though I know that the classroom is ground zero for the “somewhere else” feeling that education can provoke. If they can’t be present—mentally and emotionally, not just physically—in class, they will most likely have difficulty being where they are doing work outside the class as well. I pray that God gives me the love for my students I’ll need to transform that space into one of practice and learning and discipleship, not simply a purgatory where students bide time until they actually learn.

Posted on

“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…””

Posted on

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”

Posted on

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.

Posted on

Taking Time to Listen

I had 10 minutes.

To make it to my next class that’s a seven minute walk across campus.

To collect this pile of papers on my teacher’s desk because I rely on handouts so much that it takes a flurry of shuffling and paper clips after class to get things into or the kind of order necessary to even fit inside my bag.

To erase the board that’s filled, edge-to-edge, with class comments about the play Hamlet.

To thank my colleague from kinesiology who not only sat in on today’s class but brought with him a medical company skull for our performance of Act 5 Scene 1 (“Alas, poor Yorick!”) and actually read lines as the gravedigger.

And there they were, standing in front of me, two students with real questions about the play. One wanted to know more about Ophelia. Why did we keep calling it a suicide? Wasn’t it an accidental death? One wanted to discuss the “To be or not to be” soliloquy in more detail. She had always read the speech as referring to two responses to internal struggles.

And despite the fact that I had talked on Tuesday about listening and responding…

I was short and curt with my students in my haste to get out the door.

In reality, I wanted to sit and talk with my colleague for as long as I could about what worked and didn’t work in the class. The questions my students asked demanded more from me and asked for answers I couldn’t provide in 30 seconds. So

I had the chance to apologize later, which I’m grateful for. I want students to want to talk with me after class, especially after a class like that one.

Maybe that means coming to my office and discussing the question there. Maybe it means admitting I don’t have answers to the questions they have.

I know that it definitely means I need to listen, to wait, to be patient.

Posted on

Listen and Respond

[S]uit the action to the word, the word to the action… – Hamlet

I once had a whole batch of School Certificate answers on the Nun’s Priest’s Tale by boys whose form-master was apparently a breeder of poultry. Everything that Chaucer had said in describing Chauntecleer and Pertelote was treated by them simply and solely as evidence about the precise breed of these two birds. And, I must admit, the result was very interesting. They proved beyond doubt that Chauntecleer was very different from our modern specialised strains and much closer to the Old English ‘barn-door fowl’. But I couldn’t help feeling that they had missed something. – CS Lewis

Paul admonishes the Roman church to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. There’s an aptness there, a symmetry, a decorum. Hamlet wants his actors to adopt a similar method. Match what you say with what you do. Respond accordingly. Reciprocate. Continue reading “Listen and Respond”