Being a Christian Teacher

When I was a kid, I had a picture of Christian teachers. They were supposed to wear crosses around their necks and leave Bibles on their desks and say thinly veiled words about faith when they offered encouragement. They were supposed to go to Meet You At the Pole (a term that, to my teenage mind, conjured up something far different) and sponsor FCA and quietly pass out yellow tracts promising four steps to God. I don't do any of those things, partly because I don't want to violate the Establishment Clause and partly because it isn't who I am. However, my faith is a deep part of what drives what I do. When I think of the core beliefs I have about teaching, they are rooted in what I believe about the Jesus story: the idea that teaching is transformative, the concept of every student as beautiful and broken, the notion of redemption, the belief that there is no educational utopia, the notion of power in humility, the concept of grace (and the idea that teaching is, itself, a gift). It's more than a series of ideas, though. People say we "kicked God out of school," but I don't see that at all. Not a week goes by when I don't see God in the midst of my students. They're often subtle things. An angry kid learns to listen. A struggling reader pushes through. A bullied boy finds solace from the most unexpected "trouble-maker." And I guess, in the midst of the craziness of testing and the pressure of high-stakes "achievement," I am drawn to teaching because of the joy and the challenge and the sense that it matters. And chances are, where I find those things, I'm likely to find God. It is in school, of all places, that the incarnation feels the most real to me. Someone once asked me to sum up what it means to be a "Christian teacher." I scoffed at the idea. I wanted to say, "I don't know. Tell me about being a Christian accountant." But that's not it. To me, it's about acting justly, loving mercy and walking humbly with God (I totally jacked that from Micah 6:8). If I can be a just, merciful, humble teacher, my chances of being effective are that much higher. *I promise our Easter egg hunt was only catch and release.