Category: teaching

Veni, Sancte Spiritus

There are times when I am teaching and I realize that the different experiences I have had in my life have greatly shaped what and how I teach.  The other day we were talking about the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River and the descent of the Holy Spirit.  This naturally led to thinking about different places in the Bible where the Spirit has descended.  Pentecost was one of the first answers–probably because it is the most used example and because most of my sophomores are going through Confirmation right now.

Whenever I speak about the Holy Spirit I think of one of my friends from college and how they would laugh at me now.  My time in college greatly changed my relationship with the Holy Spirit.  There is still much work to be done but I would never have had the conversation I had with my students if not for different people in my life.  I told one of my classes that what happened at Pentecost still happens today.  That people actually do speak in different languages and that people are still being healed.  My example of people speaking in different languages didn’t seem to impact them but when I told a story of someone I knew who was healed, that was an altogether different story.

“You know her?”
“Yes.”  I went on to tell them that I was pretty good friends with this person.
“Whoa!  Like you really know her?”
“Yes!”

There was more that I wanted to share with them but I didn’t want them to begin to disbelieve.  Even as I was telling them about the power of the Holy Spirit I could feel their disbelief reconfirm my belief.  So often we are willing to chalk up the incredible and miraculous to untrue or mere exaggerations.  It was as I was telling my students that miracles do happen that I began to ponder if I still believed it.  Not that I doubt miracles but I think too often I have the tendency of not giving the chance for the miraculous the credibility it deserves.

I desire to invite the Holy Spirit back into the classroom.  As a Catholic school we have little problem talking about Jesus.  But what if we allowed the Holy Spirit to become more than a little dove that descends upon Old and New Testament figures but rather is living and active in our daily lives?  What if the students could know that the Holy Spirit can radically transform their lives if they are open?  Perhaps for this to happen their teacher needs to reach for an even deeper relationship with the Holy Spirit and allow Him to revolutionize her teaching.

What if we taught in such a way that conversion was the primary goal and that the necessary consequence of that would be learning the material.  I don’t understand how this can happen exactly or what would be necessary for this to take place, but I desire for it to happen.  If I taught English I would still pray for my students, but as a Theology teacher my main prayer is for their conversion and then secondarily for them to learn the material.  The battle is breaking into their world and showing them the importance of their faith now.  That must be a task that only the Holy Spirit can accomplish.

Veni, Sancte Spiritus.

Semester 1–done!

My first semester is officially complete–grades posted and all!  In less than one week I will again be in a classroom, surrounded by some different seniors and the same sophomores.  I dream of doing things perfectly, of using this new start to be better than I was before, to truly excel.  I hope this zeal to improve will continue through the entire semester and not simply fade away when I get tired.  Prayers would be appreciated. 🙂

The Battle of the Droid

“Droid.”

The sound came from the midst of my students as I was in the middle of a discussion/lecture about abortion.  I was already giving far too little time to such an important topic, but I had miscalculated with the semester.  As I heard the sound I briefly thought of my nephew and how I had heard that sound come from his phone many times while he was at our house.  Now, though, it was in the middle of my class and school policy was that the phone was now confiscated for a week.  The first time this had happened in my class was on day two of teaching.  My students were looking at me and while part of me questioned if I had heard correctly, the looks on their faces reconfirmed my hearing.

“Alright.  Give me the phone.”

Then it happened.  I watched the students, one in particular, lean back in their seats, cross their arms, and give me that smile that aroused every stubborn fiber in my body.  Suddenly it was them against me.  They were unwilling to give up the phone and they wondered how I would get it from them.  It was an implicit challenge.  I’m not entirely certain what their perception of me is, but they didn’t think that I was as stubborn as I turned out to be.

“Come on.  Just give me the phone.”  I waited, letting the silence extend, showing them that I wasn’t just going to brush off this incident.  The students began to look at each other.

“OK.  If you don’t give me the phone, I’m just going to have to check your bags to see who else has their phones.”  They didn’t look very perturbed, but after a while longer they began to tell me that it wasn’t their phone, that they didn’t have a Droid, that their phone was off/in their locker.  As time continued, though, the individual with the offensive phone didn’t come forward.  I was remembering what I had overheard other students say about phones going off in other classes and how when they simply sat there and didn’t give it up, they left the classroom at the end of the period with the teacher simply saying that what they did was very rude.  Rude, perhaps, but that didn’t bother them too much when they all still had their phones at the end of the class.  I decided that I wouldn’t be one of them.

“You’re right–I’m not going to check your bags.  But if I don’t get the phone that went off, then you all have detentions.”  Their faces changed a little bit with that.  It wasn’t that I wanted to give them all detentions (they would be my first of my career) but I figured that would be enough of an incentive for the person to come forward.  Who would be willing to give the entire class a detention simply so they could keep their phone?  In my mind, it would be a few moments before I would have the phone in my hand and class could carry on as it should.  A couple of the girls were uncomfortable with the situation, as displayed by their red faces.  When a couple of the boys found out that these girls had never had detentions, they riled the class to take the detention.

“Guys, let’s take it!”  “Yeah, its just a study hall in the morning!”  “We can talk with Mr.— about bringing donuts tomorrow!”  Their excitement wasn’t what I expected or wanted.  I didn’t desire them to be miserable, but I was hoping the peer pressure would make the person step forward and surrender the phone.

That didn’t happen.  Instead, I waited for them to give me the phone.  When I pressed them more for the phone, one student got up and handed me his phone, telling me to just take it.  I knew it wasn’t his and although it was an act of valor, I was unwilling to allow that one person to avoid punishment simply because a classmate of his was sacrificial.  With the one phone stowed in my podium, I told them that I wasn’t going to waste any more class time over this but that if I didn’t have the phone by the end of class then they would all have detentions.  And then I continued with class.  I ended five minutes early, on accident, but I thought it would be a good time for them to think about it and then give me the phone.  Perhaps they thought I had issued a simple harmless threat, but I fully intended to give them what I said I would.  No, I didn’t want to give them a detention, but I wanted to be true to my word and I wanted them to know that I meant what I said and should be taken seriously.  When the bell rang, they all walked out and I never got the phone.  I was amazed that the person never came forward and that the class didn’t pressure them to do so.  While I didn’t want them to rat the person out, I was hoping that the disgruntled class would impel the person to honesty.

I didn’t think I was over-reacting.    After e-mailing the principal the list of people in the class, I waited for him to come and talk to me.  Somehow, I knew he wouldn’t like that I had given all twenty-four people a detention, but I thought I had sufficient reasons.  He came just before my third period class and asked if I could locate the area of the room the sound came from.  Over the next couple periods he called discreetly into his office a couple trustworthy people in the class to ascertain who let their phone go off.  By fifth period he came and told me who it was and their punishment.  What I didn’t altogether expect was that the rest of the class would no longer have detentions.  A student came and asked me at the end of the day if the detentions still stood and I told him that as far as I was concerned, they did.  I had said I needed the phone by the end of the class and since that hadn’t happened, I intended for the consequences to stand.  The next morning a had a couple visits from the administration explaining to me why they did what they did and how to handle a situation like this in the future.  I understood where they were coming from, but I still think my method was better.  I heard from several people that my students were complaining about the detention for the rest of the day.  By the time 8th period walked in on that same day, they were smirking and saying, “Droid” and laughing about the incident.  I wasn’t offended.  Now they knew I was serious and that I meant what I said.  Too many high school teachers of mine made empty threats that nobody listened to because they knew they would never follow through.  I was determined to not be one of them.

In an e-mail to a parent, I told them that one thing I desired the students to learn from this was that they are an individual belonging to a community and what they do as individuals does affect the rest of the community.  So perhaps it was one person’s phone that went off.  The rest of them were complicit in the act by not speaking up or encouraging the person to be honest.  Whether or not that explanation was sufficient, I don’t know.  But it makes sense to me.

And that, dear readers, is the story of how this young teacher gave twenty-four detentions in one class period and had them all overturned within twenty-four hours.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh.  Blessed be the name of the Lord!

Just that kind of week…

Last week was just one of those weeks.  The kind where I gave a detention to the entire class that doesn’t really care for me, only to have it revoked by the administration.  The kind where I walked around feeling dumb for doing what I did, yet not regretting it in the slightest.  The kind where I felt like a first year teacher with no experience and little knowledge.  Where I felt like I was doing absolutely everything wrong and I wondered why God placed me in this job.

This week was just one of those weeks.  The kind where I successfully complete my first semester of high school teaching (minus grading the final exams).  The kind where a veteran teacher said, “Good for you” for giving the entire class a detention when they wouldn’t hand over the phone that had gone off in class.  The kind where a senior thanked me for teaching them and told me that he had learned more in my class than in any other theology class thus far.  The kind where I made bon-bons for my classes.  The kind where I felt that I wasn’t doing absolutely everything wrong.

Praise the Lord.

Sacrificial Love

The headlines and news broadcasts are filled with images of the families and friends of those affected in Newtown, CT.  This is one of those instances when the media and technology is both a grace and a curse.  How wonderful to know that people around the nation and world are joining together in prayer for a community most people have never been to or even heard about prior to this past Friday.  Yet the images and constant replaying of the stories leads one to wonder if this is all done truly out of compassion or perhaps out of a desire to have a big news story and our insatiable desire for excitement.  When is a breaking news story shared because of a desire to enlighten others and when is it the desire to be the first to hit the airwaves with the shocking news?  I wonder at times if we aren’t simply living from one drama to the next.

I saw this not to downplay or dismiss the losses felt by those in Newtown, but simply to re-evaluate our constant desire to know more about it.  I, too, have watched news fragments on the Internet and desired to weep over what was being shown.  There is something about the death of the innocent that evokes strong feelings within each person.  It is a greater sense of injustice, a greater wrong has been perpetrated.  The grief we feel would be of a different caliber had the victims all been adults.  But when we see the ages of 6 and 7, we rightly feel that justice was not done.  Every time something like this happens, I internally link it back to abortion.  Not because I want to diminish the tragedy and say, “Something bad happens every day, get over it.”  Far from it.  I desire to simply say, “Yes, this is a tragedy.  But there is another tragedy that doesn’t get the news coverage, that doesn’t get the recognition it deserves because it is considered to be a ‘hot button’ issue and that people have conflicting feelings about it.  Or because it is a choice.  That is a tragedy that we should all be weeping over.”  The death of the innocent does evoke a heartache in us that speaks to our very desire to defend that which is weak and vulnerable.  Rightfully so.  But let us not forget the accepted deaths that occur daily.  Let not familiarity breed apathy.  We hear about abortion and so we are accustomed to the horrors of it.  Yes, it is bad, but could it truly ever be stopped?  I don’t think that is the important issue, really.  Each parent would greatly desire one more of those children to be spared, even if the child was not their own.  As such, I desire for each child that is being carried into the abortion clinic to be spared, to be carried out once again, living in the womb of his mother.

As a teacher, I find it especially touching to hear the stories of the teachers who sacrificed their lives or put themselves in harms way for the sake of their students.  It makes me wonder if I would have the same resolve.  My students had asked me about the morality of a very hypothetical situation over a month ago.  I had been telling them that it was wrong for the biblical Saul to commit suicide and that while we can never judge the fate of one who committed suicide, that the act is always intrinsically wrong.  Being sophomores, they wanted to find a circumstance in which it would be acceptable.  Who better to put on the stake then their teacher?  So the situation went as follows: say a person came in with a gun and said that either I killed myself or he would kill all of my students.  They looked at me, thinking that they had stumped me.

“Which one would you pick?  Would you sacrifice yourself for us or would you just watch us all be killed?”

They thought I had to choose one of their options.  I was firmly convinced that there were other ways that they had not thought of.  So I presented my “game plan” to them, should this event ever actually take place in real life.  I said that I would throw myself at the man–knowing that I would die–but that when I did that, all of the men in the classroom were to jump up and charge him also.  They seemed a little surprised by my response, and while I wasn’t, I was left wondering if this was really a matter to be discussed with my students.  A while after I heard about the Newtown murders, I re-thought what I had told them and decided that I wouldn’t really alter anything I had said.  The vastly hypothetical situation seemed a little less out there and closer to home.  I thought about how I would be shaking and terrified, but I prayed that God would give me the necessary strength, should something like this actually happen.

Perhaps this is inappropriate to put in a post that also speaks about Newtown, but I don’t think it is.  I often refer to my students as “my kids” even though I know they aren’t really kids, but they do feel in a way like they are mine.  They may never know the affection I harbor for them, even the ones that also drive me up the wall.  For the most part, I can never tell them I love them, because they would never take it as seriously or as deeply as I mean it.  They are each too deep to know in such a short amount of time, yet I feel like I know quite a bit about them, simply from their behavior and class work.

From the fragments of this blog, perhaps what can be redeemed is this fact: that the ultimate sacrifice is never made without smaller, seemingly insignificant sacrifices made prior to it.  The sacrifices would largely be chalked up to “my job” by most of my students and those around me.  But I think there is something deeper involved.  I do not claim to be the best teacher or the most sacrificial.  Yet I think that despite the incongruent images, spending two hours to make bon-bons for my seniors, staying in my classroom until the sun has gone down again, listening to their stories and ramblings, grading their countless assignments, and taking them in prayer to nearly every Mass I’ve been to since I got the job–all of these will be the tiny sacrifices that make it possible for me to make the “ultimate sacrifice” should it be required of me.  Sacrifices like these and the ones many other teachers make will generally not gain the headline on the newspaper, but they are what makes it possible for one to lay down one’s life for a friend.

May God grant peace to those who have died, peace to those who survive, and peace in our hearts and the entire world.  May He also grant us the grace to sacrifice, regardless of the personal cost.

Entering the Mission Field

I never realized how controversial the simple truth could be until I stepped foot into my classroom.  Prior to this I knew in theory that some truths people didn’t like but I was awakened to a whole new realm of this in one of my classes.  The truth is offensive.  I told my students that the Catholic Church had the fullness of the Truth and I didn’t expect the firestorm that would follow.  It wasn’t always a verbal defense that they provided but I could tell that they were mad at me or mad at the Church.  And I’m not certain if I ever really solved the problem.  Because I am realizing more fully that I cannot make anyone believe.  If only I could pray them into accepting the truth.  Yet all I can do is pray for them and strive to present the Truth in the best possible way.  I find myself desiring to protect the Church against any assaults they might hurl at Her.  In the midst of the moment I forget that the Church can defend Herself adequately and I need have no concerns about Her being found lacking.  I look at their lack of love for the Church and I am bewildered.  It takes a while for me to remind myself that I did not always harbor this love for the Church that I do now.

I desired a mission and the Lord has placed me in the missionary field of a classroom in a Catholic high school.  My idealistic view of teaching is not completely gone, although the past couple months has tempered it.  How do I give the love I have to them?  How do I take their skepticism and help it become belief?  It is not because of me that any of their hearts will be converted.  I am convinced of this.  My beautiful lessons seem to be less than impressive to them.  The very things that fill me with joy can put them to sleep.  Despite the resistance that some of them put up to the Church, to the Truth, to me, I know that these hours that they spend in my classroom will impact them in some way unforseen to anyone.  Initially, I was glad to see them write the correct answers on the paper, knowing that even if they didn’t believe the answer they had to memorize it for the test.  Now, I want much more from them.  I find myself desiring rebuttal rather than the perfectly formulated answer that they could care less about.  I want them to care deeply one way or the other.  In some ways it is hard to rouse this generation to action or to convince them to be totally committed to something even though in their core that is what they desire.  But then again my own heart is so slow to be awakened and called to action.

How the heart of Our Lord must ache for us, His beloved ones!  My desire for them to accept the truth is not as firmly rooted as is the Lord’s desire for them to become what they are called to be.  My love for them wavers and changes based on the day.  But the Lord’s love remains firm and unyielding.  I pray to have His heart for them so that I may love them as I ought.  How far I have to go.  Where I see battle lines to be drawn, Our Lord sees lost sheep to find and craddle in His arms.  Where I see rebellion, Our Lord sees the pain and hurt that they have experienced.  Teaching one of my classes about David I was struck again by the call to be a woman after God’s own heart.  I am called to become more and more like God and by doing so to become the saint that He desires me to be, that He needs me to be.  Because only a saint can fulfill the call that the Lord has placed upon my heart, upon the heart of each person.

While my title may be “teacher” I am striving to embrace more fully the title of “missionary” so that I may remember that every place needs to be evangelized and that this is not my home.  For now, my mission field is the classroom and my students are the ones who need to hear the Gospel proclaimed to them.  Regardless of how small or large the task appears to me, I must remember that because the Lord wills this of me in this present moment, this task is the most important thing for me.  This is my mission, this is my street, this is my life.

“Do not be afraid to go out onto the streets and into public places like the first apostles who preached Christ and the Good News of salvation in the squares of cities, towns, and villages.”   Bl. Pope John Paul II (WYD 1993)