The Sayings: Teach Yourself
Practical Wisdom (Part II)
My first year of teaching was a blur. This is is the case for most first year teachers. It’s just overwhelming, like trying to drink from a firehose. I don’t remember many of the details from that year, but I do know, taken as a whole, it was an intensely formative one. And while I don’t remember many specifics, one memory has stuck with me and still radically impacts everything I do in ministry. Here’s the story.
My seventh bell, the last class each day, was my biggest class. It consisted of thirty sophomores who wanted nothing more to get out of the school building by that time in the day. Quite honestly, I did too. These were not the kids you’d find at the top of the class rankings. So, by the they got to me, they were mentally checked out. This was all compounded by the fact that I knew nothing about classroom management. I had no idea how to control a bunch of rowdy and spent sophomores. I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out the right lesson plan, the right approach to get something across to them. But the execution was lacking. As the weeks wore on, I was feeling a shell of myself. Beaten down, I dreaded the 7th bell every day.
Luckily, Marc smoked at the time. Marc was my mentor teacher. Sometimes we would take rides during our overlapping free bell—the sixth of the day. He would smoke. I would secondhand. His Subaru Forester created the perfect mobile smoking lounge. It calmed me down.[1]
One day, as we were driving, I shared about this dreaded seventh bell and all of my failed attempts to teach them something. He must have sensed I was at my wit’s end.
He looked at me and said (I can still see him inhaling and then exhaling the smoke through his teeth as he talked), “You know, these kids aren’t going to remember most of what you tell them.”
“Well then why am I wasting my time doing this,” I retorted.
He repeated himself, “These kids aren’t going to remember most of what you tell them. But, they will remember you. So, teach yourself.”
This was Marc’s way of saying: be yourself in the classroom.
He went on, “It’s not about being egotistical. It’s about letting them come to know who God is through you and how God is moving in your life. They need to see how God has shaped your personality. They’re not going to remember most of the stuff you try to teach them, but if you teach yourself, they won’t forget you.”
Be yourself. Teach yourself. I took this as my marching order for 7th bell (and all the other bells). It worked. So, I carried it right into parish ministry and everything else. Be yourself. Teach yourself. And let them see through you to the One you’re teaching, the One who shaped your being. Let them see through you to Jesus himself.
Note: This is a slightly edited excerpt from my forthcoming book entitled Surviving Catholic Ministry: A Contemporary Soul of the Apostolate (Cascade).
[1] Please note that I am not recommending smoking as a solution for poor classroom management skills. I’m just setting the scene.