HS #32 2018.3.6
Inspired by Students
Last month I did it again. The first time I forgot to teach a
class was twenty-five years ago. Busy in my office, I looked at my watch and realized
that I was fifteen minutes late. I sprinted across the hall and found the classroom
empty. Granted, the students could have
come gotten me, but taking the day off seemed a better deal. That’s par.
Last month I was similarly caught up while I was supposed to be
teaching a 3:00-5:00 class at Davenport University. At 4:00 I got an email from
one of the students saying he had left and would study on his own. I raced upstairs – an hour late – expecting
to find another empty classroom. Instead, everyone else was still there. One of
the students had the board filled with his own impromptu math lecture – pretty close to what I would have done. The
others were dutifully taking notes.
I love surprises like that - teaching is full of them. I turn 60
this month and realize that I have spent exactly half of that time as a teacher.
In one of my favorite movies, A Man for All Seasons, Sir Thomas Moore advises
Richard Rich, “be a teacher.” A teacher is something one IS, not does.
Indeed, after mastering the material and learning techniques of
pedagogy, one becomes a better teacher mostly by becoming a better person. Want
proof? Who were your favorite couple of teachers? Agree?
A teacher can learn valuable teaching lessons anywhere. I am
more empathetic with my students because of a summer construction job I had
while in college. The gruff foreman sent me to the shed to get “6-penny nails.”
Not wanting to incur his scorn by admitting ignorance, I choose a nail that
looked right and brought them back. I still remember his disdain as he held
them up for all to see, “Look what college boy thinks is a 6-penny nail!” I
laughed (inwardly) at his derision. Just because he had been around 6-penny
nails for 40 years, why did he expect me to know what they were? I keep that in
mind now – sometimes telling students in mock exasperation, “Why don’t you know
this algebra – I’ve been doing it for 50 years!” The magician David Copperfield made the same
point, “Any eight year old could do these tricks with twenty years of
experience.”
Primarily, I have (hopefully) become a better person through
interactions with students. Just this past week I had life-challenging
conversations with several. One of them has two jobs, but is still finding time
to read “The Stranger” by Camus and Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” – just for
the enjoyment and enrichment. That inspires me.
Another gave up his sights on Stanford because he figured that
he could learn just as much far less expensively close to home if he was
intentional about pushing himself. Part of his plan is to seek out new
experiences. I asked him what he had recently done. The previous Sunday he had
visited a Catholic church for the first time. How interesting. How many conversations
have I had with western Michigan folk who spend thousands of dollars to travel
to foreign countries to be immersed in other cultures for a week. He is getting
rich experiences in cultural immersion within his own neighborhood.
Yet another explained that their Intervarsity Christian
Fellowship chapter of 60-70 students had spent the previous week’s meeting
discussing, “What I like most about my race/ethnic group” as part of a series
on whether it’s good to be “color blind.” How dangerous is that! We
professional educators tend to keep things safe and can be threatened when not
in control. Yet these students, bound together by their common faith, were
willing to take the risk.
I have also been heartened by the protesting MSU students, and I
got goose bumps when I heard that Hope College students seeking change from the
college dropped flyers from the balcony at Vespers this past Christmas. They
didn’t know it, but they were carrying the torch of some of their professors
who, as Hope students in the 60’s, protested the Vietnam War by “crashing” the
Tulip Time parade.
All of these students inspire and challenge us all to become
better people by seizing the day. They are living out the ideals of the Mary
Oliver poem that I recently discovered:
Tell me
what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
