Monica is a volunteer who has returned this semester to the FBS campus to intervene in the English classes.
Within the first few minutes of our acquaintance, she asked which classes I teach and how they're going. I explained my enthusiasm for the 11th grade, and my touch-and-go relationship with the tenth grade. Before three minutes were up we had established that she would volunteer in my tenth grade classroom this semester.
I have a daily devotional reader that I keep in my desk drawer at school, and on Tuesday the message read:
"Today I speak less and notice more. The Divine is continually seeking to communicate through us and as us."
My Friends, the Divine is communicating with me through and as Monica. I have never had such a clear instance of God walking into my life (classroom). And as Quakers believe that our understanding of God is based on our lived experience, my experiences in the classroom with Monica will play a large role in my understanding of God's will for me.
Perhaps God is nudging me towards teaching. If this were a random job from which he wanted me to bounce to something completely different, why would he have placed a woman with 30+ years of teaching in Central London public schools at my side? For free?
Three days with Monica have been revolutionary. Monica offers parables and maxims about teaching with the clarity of another great teacher who walked this land bringing Good News...
This week during one of our talks I was fretting about how to mete out discipline. In her response Monica said, "Be the teacher you want to be."
Today the teacher I want to be is one who
-returns reading quizzes within one or two days
-sends people out in the hall for five minutes, and when they come back, treats them like everyone else
-laughs along with students when something funny happens in the classroom
-avoids using the overhead projector for notes whenever possible, and lets the content come from the book and the students.
Tomorrow, as I start The Unbearable Lightness of Being with the 11th grade, I want to "speak less and notice more." Monica shows me how to boldly solicit the students' raw reactions. Blow-the-barn-doors-open questions like "What do you think?" have seemed a Pandora's box to me, but in the past three days more students have responded to that question than to whole series of detail-oriented reading questions.
It seems fitting that a Quaker teacher let God communicate "through and as" the students. After all, we are all ministers.
"What canst thou say?"
Within the first few minutes of our acquaintance, she asked which classes I teach and how they're going. I explained my enthusiasm for the 11th grade, and my touch-and-go relationship with the tenth grade. Before three minutes were up we had established that she would volunteer in my tenth grade classroom this semester.
I have a daily devotional reader that I keep in my desk drawer at school, and on Tuesday the message read:
"Today I speak less and notice more. The Divine is continually seeking to communicate through us and as us."
My Friends, the Divine is communicating with me through and as Monica. I have never had such a clear instance of God walking into my life (classroom). And as Quakers believe that our understanding of God is based on our lived experience, my experiences in the classroom with Monica will play a large role in my understanding of God's will for me.
Perhaps God is nudging me towards teaching. If this were a random job from which he wanted me to bounce to something completely different, why would he have placed a woman with 30+ years of teaching in Central London public schools at my side? For free?
Three days with Monica have been revolutionary. Monica offers parables and maxims about teaching with the clarity of another great teacher who walked this land bringing Good News...
This week during one of our talks I was fretting about how to mete out discipline. In her response Monica said, "Be the teacher you want to be."
Today the teacher I want to be is one who
-returns reading quizzes within one or two days
-sends people out in the hall for five minutes, and when they come back, treats them like everyone else
-laughs along with students when something funny happens in the classroom
-avoids using the overhead projector for notes whenever possible, and lets the content come from the book and the students.
Tomorrow, as I start The Unbearable Lightness of Being with the 11th grade, I want to "speak less and notice more." Monica shows me how to boldly solicit the students' raw reactions. Blow-the-barn-doors-open questions like "What do you think?" have seemed a Pandora's box to me, but in the past three days more students have responded to that question than to whole series of detail-oriented reading questions.
It seems fitting that a Quaker teacher let God communicate "through and as" the students. After all, we are all ministers.
"What canst thou say?"
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