Teaching and Learning

This week has been crazy, on multiple levels.  It's been the kind of week that does not lend itself to kitchen experimentation.  So far for dinner this week we have had 1) nothing, 2) frozen pizza, 3) tuna helper, and 4) kielbasa.  Don't you WISH you were eating with us this week?!  You don't?  Well, I'm offended.

Today, however, is my fourth anniversary and dinner promises to be MUCH more exciting (and hopefully blog-worthy), so stay tuned.

One of the crazy things that happened this week is SURPRISE! there's a chance grad school might still work out.  Never mind that we've been back and forth on this 7 or 8 times, never mind that we've mentally changed gears so many times that I have a headache, and never mind that classes start MONDAY, ugh, there is a chance.  I should have an answer today.  I must have an answer tomorrow.

Part of that new chance involved my writing a 250 word essay entitled My Students Taught Me This.  And it was really last minute, like, don't-even-get-dressed-yet-cancel-your-plans-sit-down-and-write-this-NOW last-minute.  I wrote a very rough draft and it was over twice as long as necessary, so I had to pare it down quite a bit (which broke my  heart).  Obviously, my students have taught me a lot. 

My Students Taught Me This

By Allie Dillinger, English as a Second Language Teacher

My first day teaching I had six students and my legs shook as I introduced myself.  They smiled at me expectantly and completed every activity.  They gradually became more comfortable with me, and I became more comfortable in front of them.  I didn’t stay in front of them for long. 

                Soon I was sitting at their sides, trying to answer every question.  Often I had no idea and told them.  Every day they came eager to tell me how they had used English.  They showed me pictures from home.  They sat next to me on field trips.  They became my friends.

                Two years later I am not the same person I was on my first day.  Through encouragement and gratitude my students taught me to be confident.  Through simply being themselves they taught me to laugh, cry, advocate, and pray.  They taught me bits and pieces of many languages.  They taught me to look at my culture through different eyes – to question it, challenge it, and embrace the change they bring to it.  They taught me that mistakes are okay because admitting mine gives them freedom to make their own.  My students taught me to love teaching as much as I love learning, and that teaching and learning are often the same.

Sometimes I believe my students have given me far more than I have given them.  When I was scared and shaking, they gave me grace.  When I offered them a bridge to other parts of the world, they opened my eyes to it.  When I gave them answers, they gave me questions.  My students taught me that I have much more to learn and there is no better teacher than them.

(Un)Certainty

Sometimes I just don't know.  Sometimes I don't know what the right thing is.  I know what the Bible says, I know what Christ says, and I trust it.  But I wonder how we're really supposed to go about it and if our methods are hurting more than they are helping.  Hurting people, hurting our cause, hurting Christ.  Sometimes, it's really hard to draw lines.  Maybe drawing a line will hurt me and the people around me.  Maybe not drawing a line means I don't trust what God says. Maybe there are some situations in life where God isn't asking us to draw a line, or even stand on either side of one.  

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”  

Sometimes it seems impossible to do both of those things at the same time.  Sometimes loving God, holding to what He says is true, and obeying Him can really, really hurt other people.  Not just offend them, or make them angry, or make them think you are stupid.  Actually hurt them.

But... But...Does that mean you aren't loving them?  Does hurting someone mean you don't care about them?  Does offending them mean you don't want what is best for them?  In complete honesty, doesn't doing the right thing almost always hurt someone, somewhere?

Love God.  Love people.  Speak truth.

Sometimes, I don't like the truth.  In fact, there are a lot of things God says and does that, if I were God, I wouldn't say and do.  But you know what?  I'm not God.  I don't get to tell Him who He is or who He should be.  I accept Him completely, even the things that make me uncomfortable.  And I think that God, in His great sovereignty, understands right and wrong, up and down, hot and cold, back and forth, justice and mercy, judgment and discernment, and even left and right a whole lot better than I do.  I can trust this - even when I don't like it, even when I don't feel it - and believe that His ways and thoughts are higher than my ways and thoughts.  Or, I can discard everything that makes me uncomfortable and end up with a "faith" based on my own god-concept, with no roots, no foundation, no certainty, and no backbone.

I don't understand God, or claim to.  I don't have all the answers, or claim to.  Sometimes I change my mind.  Sometimes I screw up.  Sometimes I say too much and sometimes I say absolutely nothing and in both situations, I usually err.  Sometimes I might even get it right.  But all of the time, God has the answers.  God never changes.  God never screws up.  God always says enough of the right thing.  God always gets it right.  If He didn't, He wouldn't be God. 

He is sovereign.  He is holy.  He is loving.  He is just.  He is right.  He is.  And when I can't trust the world, when I can't trust people, when I can't trust the lines, when I can't trust myself, I can trust Him.  So can you.

No recipe tonight.