Excerpt

Presently, I am writing my final paper for my urban classroom management course, in which we are to detail our own philosophy and practical guide to how we want to treat our future students. I won't copy the entirety of the thing here, 1) because it is nearly ten pages long, 2) would put you to sleep faster than my mother faced with pages from an 18th century novel, and 3) isn't even really finished yet. But I want to copy a bit of the last two paragraphs, which evolved into a philosophy of my teaching as a Christian. I won't be turning in this assignment as I am pasting it here, but I am including these last words because I want to take my teacher's advice and come back to this in future months and years to remind myself of what I believe in and the kind of teacher--kind of Christian--I want to strive to be.

"I have been trying to think of one single, specific guiding principle I want to live by as a teacher, and after a long time mulling it over in my head, I’ve decided it to be thus: I want always, in every moment, every situation, every encounter, to love and value my students, whether or not I love their work, words, or actions. All decisions and actions I take as a future teacher will flow from the basic principle of whether or not I believe every student to have worth and value and to be worthy of love and respect. For I cannot reprimand them for the right reasons and in the right way if I do not love them; I cannot push their minds if I do not think their thoughts and feelings to have worth and potential; I cannot advocate for them if I do not care about them and if I do not want them to have their best chance in the world. And if I really want to love and respect them and value them as people to do all these things, then I will also have to seek to truly know them, and to want to truly know them. I will have to build relationship with them, however that happens. And by extension I will have to seek also to know their families and their community. Because such a significant part of them exists in the relationships they have with the people around them, I cannot truly know my students if I have not tried to know the people and things on their hearts, too.

           

Finally, there is one other thing I will have to endeavor to remind myself as I learn and grow as a teacher, something that I know I am bound to struggle with: that my worth cannot rest alone on the success of my students’ work; it cannot rest on their grades, or their accomplishments. It cannot rest on their talent, or their failure, on their hopes, or on their dreams. Because eventually, somewhere, somehow, they will fail, because they are human like me. Failure is inevitable; we are all broken, flawed people living in a broken, flawed world. But so, too, is love also inevitable. Failure is one singular mark of being human; Love is the other. Love and brokenness, they are the two sides of the same coin that is humanity. We love, but we continually break that which we love. But love and wholeness—love and infallible perfection, love and unfailing justice—they come together perfectly only in God. God loves, so much that he does the opposite of breaking. He actually heals."