The Truth Behind A Verse- Part Two

Story Two
I am a pretty good assessor of student’s ability and have a natural talent for finding a way to motivate them. I am not perfect and I often make mistakes but I generally help my students to make progress in their language, confidence and thinking, as well as other areas.

For a whole year I had been teaching a boy and he was extremely passive and lacked confidence. He was an extremely nice boy and was accepted by his friends. ( in a western country, he would have been ridiculed fro being so introverted)

For the whole year I had been gently pushing and guiding him and he had made minor progress. To be honest, I had made the decision that a little bit of progress was good progress and lowered my expectations for him.

Three quarters of the way through the year, we had a parent/teacher meeting and the boys mother meets with me to discuss the boys English ability. Within minutes she is crying and asking me to please, please try to be a friend for her son. She explains that since his father abandon her, the boy and his younger brother, her eldest son had just sank into himself. She explained that she had tried so hard to get him to talk about how he felt but he had just withdrawn from the world.

What God has shown me recently is that NOBOBY knows what is going on in the life of another person. You can assume, you can think you know 20%, 40% or even 90% of the story. You can gather gossip, you may have lived with the person for 40 years. But the fact is that God is dealing with every person in the exact way He needs to deal with them. Their perspective of whatever is happening is different to yours.

No matter how much anyone ‘knows’ you, their interpretation of what you say and how you feel and how you act will be structured by how they think, how they listen and a whole other range of factors. No one will ever understand you completely and you will never understand anyone else completely.

I often find that the things I dislike about others are often what God is using to show me that the same trait is prevalent in me. None of us are qualified to judge another, that is God’s role.

Be sure to reconstruct your preconceptions as frequently as possible. Pray for it each and every day because if you don’t change, you will stagnate. Others might not see the new you but God wants to work on your character and thought process EVERY SINGLE DAY.

Lord, may I constantly decrease so that you may increase in me. Amen

God Bless You

The Truth Behind A Verse- Part One

Luke 6:41
Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye but do not notice or consider the beam [of timber] that is in your own eye?

It is easy as a teacher to form preconceptions. In fact, that is what we are required to do. We are asked to write reports about students and tell their parents about the student’s abilities. No matter how good the intention or how well you do assessment, once we judge the student, we have formed a preconception in our own minds, in the parents mind and in the student’s mind.

The class, and student body as a whole, notice the way we treat every student and gather information about test scores, discipline and gossip on an almost sinister level. They are then cross evaluating each other and using the information to reposition themselves, and others, as smart, stupid, naughty, athletic, teacher’s pet etc. Preconceptions are dangerous ! Let me see if I can illustrate why and tie my point into the verse above.

I have been teaching in the same grade, at the same school for 6 years now. I know the students and how they behave. I would like to share a couple of stories that God has pulled together to teach me an extremely valuable lesson.

Story One
I had a student for the whole year, a girl. She nearly always forgets her books and rarely does her homework. I would see her around the school and often noticed that her father and mother delivered her to school, carried her bag to the front door for her and often hung around, paying too much interest to her welfare.

Being an astute guy who notices most things, I tied all this together. I had tried a whole range of ways to get the girl to be more responsible but I had narrowed it down to the fact that the parents doted on her too much. They were smothering her and she couldn’t develop a sense of responsibility and independence.

Just 2 weeks ago I was starting my class by asking everyone what they did for their weekend. I get students to raise their hand if their weekend was excellent and then ask them to share why. Next if their weekend was good and finally if their weekend was bad. The girl raised her hand for ‘bad’ and I asked her what she did that made it bad, here is the conversation that followed:

She replied “We went to my bother’s grave”
“Oh, I’m sorry, when did he die” I asked, trying to stop myself from saying something like ‘you poor thing are you ok ?’
“ Two years ago” My brain is going at a million miles an hour and I am a big believer that talking about things helps to make you feel better so I continued.
“And how old was he?”
“ Two years old” she replied in a very monotone voice
“ Do you miss him ?”
“ Yes”

And that was the end of the conversation.

…..see part two