A Teacher's Faith

If you are not a religious person, please don't close this post yet.  While I am a person of deep Christian faith and would love to write about it all day long, that is not what this post is about.  The faith I am talking about here is the faith teachers have to possess in order to accomplish our jobs.  We set very long-term goals, and we sometimes don't see the payoff as quickly as we would like.  Sometimes, we don't ever see it because the student has moved out of our lives before the fruit grows from the tree we planted.

At the beginning of each year, it is always easy to think that this year's students are less mature and less skilled than last year's students, but it is rarely true.  The problem is that we are comparing students at the beginning of this year to the students at the end of last year, forgetting what it took to get them there.  We train them in procedures and then have to start over again the next year.  As an 8th-grade teacher, I turn 7th graders into high school students and then give them away, just to start all over again.  (Okay, I know why I am so tired now.)  But here is my point.  It takes faith to look at the kids in front of you and believe that they will become something different by the end of the year.

It has long been my contention that band teachers have the most faith of all people.  What comes out of instruments at the beginning of the school year is NOT music.  It is a cacophony that would make any other teacher crazy, but a band teacher hears potential because he's been here before and he has the skills to turn that discordant melee of noise into recognizable songs.  And they do - every year.  Other arts teachers have similar faith needs.  I've attended a number of play rehearsals over the years, and the most interesting one is the day they are required to be "off-book" for the first time.  Students affectionately and accurately refer to this as "crash and burn day."  As a brain enthusiast, I can explain why this is the most important rehearsal day of the year because it is the first time they are engaged in active retrieval practice. As a member of the future audience, I cringe every time I see it.  The theater teacher does not.  Just like the band teacher, she's been here before so she does not fear that the final production will be like this.  She has faith that continued practice will turn this stuttering, struggling mess into a play that will entertain ticket buyers.  

I could go on.  Early elementary teachers who listen while students sound words out know that someday they will read with great fluidity and acquire knowledge from what they read.  Math teachers whose students struggle with the concept of the number line know that, at some point, these students will internalize algebraic thinking enough to believe they aren't using it.  I would love for my PE teachers of the past to know what I am doing at the Y today because it doesn't seem possible that they would have imagined me attempting to lift heavier weights, but maybe they did have that kind of faith.

Teachers, it can be difficult for us not to see the results of our work right away, so here is my encouragement to you.  Build your faith by reflecting on the times you have seen results.  Build your faith by remembering the impact your own teachers had on you, and know that you are doing the same work.  Build your faith by keeping thank you emails or drawings from students in a box that you can return to when your faith is weak.  Even if you are not a Christian, you can take heart from this verse.  

 And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone . . ." - Galatians 6:9-10a

You Can't Save Up

For those of you who read my posts for insights about education, this one doesn't connect, at least not in any explicit way.  These are just the thoughts I'm having as I prepare for camp.

For the next several days, I will be preparing for Royal Family Kids Camp.  Let me just tell you that camp preparation is no joke.  Unlike other travel, where you might stay in a hotel with toiletries provided and the ability to quickly pick up something you forgot, when packing for camp, one must consider EVERYTHING they will need to live for a week.  In addition to your clothes, you have to pack your sheets and towels and a clock.  Depending on where you are staying, you might even have to pack your own shower curtain.  That's before you consider the packing you need to do your camp job.  For counselors, that means cabin decorations and camper gifts.  For activities and program directors, that may involve pulling a trailer of supplies.  The nurses need to think about how many bandaids, gloves, and bee sting kits they will need, not to mention an organizational system for all of the kids' meds.  And don't get me started on the food service people - their preplanning is unreal.  In that regard, I've got it easy with my camera and adjacent accessories, my computer (with charger, dongle, and bag), and a notebook for all of the reminders (which camper wants a shot of them riding a horse, what each twin is wearing today so speed later identification, reminders of what to pick up on the WalMart run).  As I said, packing for a camp is a little more intense than packing for a vacation.

There are things, however, that we can't prepare for in getting ready for camp.  The heat is intense.  After all, it is the 2nd week of July in Eastern NC.  We are outside for much of the day, and we are very active.  Whether fishing, horseback riding, swimming, running relays, riding bikes, or doing archery, we spend a lot of time in the hot sun.  When we go inside, air conditioning has been running for hours to keep down the humidity.  (Did you know, by the way, that Willis Carrier invented air conditioning for the purpose of humidity reduction in magazine printing, and the lowering of the temperature was just a side effect?  Sorry for the sidetrack.  It's compulsive.  I've been out of school for a month, so I haven't taught anything in a while.)  Anyway, you come in from the heat and immediately start evaporating sweat, resulting in feeling incredibly cold.  For years, I have said that someone could make a fortune if they could invent a lotion that would remove heat from you while you are outside and store it to be released back into your skin when you went inside.  Or, wouldn't it be great if God had just designed us that way in the first place?  He could have.  It was within his power to give us the ability to store excess heat for later use.  He chose not to, so we can't save up.

The other thing I can't prepare for in all of my planning and packing is sleep.  When I was a counselor, the job was emotionally and physically intense, but it was the only week of the year when I actually slept 8 hours every night because I slept when the kids slept, and "lights-out" was at 9 o'clock.  Now, that I am the photographer, my week is very different.  The daytime part of the job is easier.  It's mostly running around taking pictures and organizing what needs to be sent for printing then going to Walmart twice a day to drop off and pick up pictures.  The majority of my work, however, takes place at night.  Those prints need to be identified and sorted because each of our fifty campers receives a photo album at the end of the week with at least 24 pictures in it.  The pictures are placed in the books.  I make a list of the kids we are low on, so my photography partner and I can make sure to aim at them more the next day.  I have a checklist to make sure that I have at least one photo of each child in the pool, with grandma and grandpa, doing an activity, singing or reading the Bible, etc.  If they have a sibling, we make sure to get a shot of them together.  (Man, my 18 years as a yearbook advisor comes in handy for this job.)  Anyway, all of this leads to progressively less sleep each night of the week, and occasionally an all-nighter on Thursday because that's when the bulk of the video is made.  I wish I could prepare for this by spending this week saving up sleep.  If I could, I would sleep an extra hour or two each night of the two weeks leading up to camp and save up on the rest.  God could have made us work that way, but he chose not to.

Why did God make us this way?  Why wouldn't He allow us to save up on heat or sleep or any of the other things you might wish to stock up on.  I think it is to teach us two things:  wisdom and reliance on Him.  The book of Proverbs is filled with wise advice about how to live prudently, including the balance of work and rest.  It's not a big deal that I get very little sleep for a week, but it would be foolish to live that way on a regular basis.  If it were possible to store up sleep, we might be tempted to live in unwise ways when it comes to rest (even with the way it is, we tend to make foolish sleep decisions).  

The second purpose, I think, is to teach us dependence.  God wants us to resist our natural inclination to rely on ourselves and our own understanding.  When he provided manna for the nation of Israel during their forty years of wandering in the desert, they were commanded to only gather the amount they needed for the day except for the day before the Sabbath when they were allowed to collect a double amount.  If they even tried to save up, the manna would spoil and be worthless the next day (except that the double portion collected pre-Sabbath miraculously did not spoil).  God was training His people not to hoard His provision because they might come to believe that they were the source of provision rather than Him.  I would imagine in the first weeks of wandering, it must have been frightening to get up each morning and look outside the tent, wondering whether you would eat that day.  That first Sabbath, after having seen extra manna spoil for six nights in a row, they might have worried that they would wake up to rotten food.  Yet, every day, God was faithful.  I wonder if ten years in, they felt secure or still wondered if today would be the day the manna didn't come.  (I do know that at some point they become so accustomed to being miraculously fed that they complained about it and asked for something different.  God help us - humans are prone to rebel, aren't we?)  For forty years, God gave them what they needed and no more.  Because they wandered for four decades, they had to teach the next generations the rules and show them that the rules were there because of God's faithfulness to them.

Next week, when I finally fall into bed at 2:30AM on Wednesday night, I will pray for the few hours of sleep I will get to be deeply restful (and that it will come quickly as it is difficult to turn my brain off).  When I get up and make the morning run to Walmart, I will pray that He gives me the energy to do the work He has put before me that day.  I remember writing about this during the days of the pandemic when I was using every bit of energy I had, but camp serves as an annual reminder to rely on Him because, if he has given you a task, he will also enable you to complete that task.

Small Hops of Faith

Y'all know I love Learning and the Brain, right?  If not, welcome. This is clearly the first blog post of mine you have ever read.  One of the reasons I love following their blog is that they recognize the nuances of scientific research.  They pose a question like, "Does a student learn more when they take notes by hand than when they take them on a laptop?" The answer most often sounds like this.  "In some limited circumstances, sort of."

I love that because they do not draw absolute conclusions, knowing that the researchers tested a specific set of kids under a specific set of tightly controlled conditions.  When people ask questions of the presenters at their conferences, the answer is rarely short, and it always involves both the limitations of their research as well as their conclusions and often with a caveat to "apply it to your context in the way that works for you."  That is a scientist's answer.  If it surprises you, it may be that you have limited exposure to real science.

The TV version of science seen on The Big Bang Theory and Bones (both of which I like) and the like would have you believe that scientists are slaves to logic and, therefore, always certain of their conclusions.  It's why people were so frustrated with Dr. Fauci when they asked questions like, "When will we return to normal?" and "Will we be having traditional Christmases with our families this year?" They wanted answers of absolute certainty, and he was giving them answers that included "If . . . then" and "Assuming that there isn't a new variant at that time, then."  Those answers are perfectly normal to those of us who spend time around scientists.  If I pose a question to ten scientists in a room, I'll get at least eleven different answers.  It doesn't bother me at all because I have spent a lot of time reading and listening to scientists, but I think most people expect the fictional version in which logic is worshipped.

I have news for you.  Logic is a relatively recent invention. dating back to roughly the fifth century BC.  It's hard to imagine that there was a time when no one said, "Well that's just not logical," but there certainly was, and it was only about 3000 years ago.  It's an important tool, and many of the things in our lives certainly fall into its category, but it's important to note that not everything does.  Something can be logical and yet untrue.  I think most of us are okay with that.  What I have found really bothers people is that something can be illogical and yet still true.  

When I was a small child, I loved playing in the sandbox in my backyard.  One day, I skipped around scattering sand as though I were sowing seeds.  The following day, there were dandelions growing in those parts of the yard, and I drew the conclusion that sand was dandelion seeds. My kid logic was flawless.  There were no dandelions.  I did something.  Then, there were dandelions.  Therefore, what I did must have caused them to be there.  I don't remember how long I believed that or how I found out it wasn't true, but it obviously is not.  Conspiracy theorists take advantage of this kind of thinking to be persuasive by putting two unrelated thoughts (sand and dandelions) together and then saying something like, "It's obvious that no other conclusion can be drawn."  I have students who draw logical but incorrect conclusions pretty frequently, and they are shocked when I tell them that something can be logical and untrue at the same time.

There are also a number of things in modern science that are illogical and yet still true.  Do you want to have your mind blown?  Google the term "quantum weirdness."  There is nothing intuitive or logical about quantum mechanics.  When I tell my students that an electron can be at point A and then at point B without having been anywhere in between, I get either blank stares or complete astonishment.  I know. It doesn't make sense, right?  Even weirder, it behaves differently if we are measuring it than it does if we aren't.  There is a possibility (what's called a non-zero probability) that all the atoms in your trashcan could reside on the same part of the quantum wave function all at once and jump right off the ground or that all of the atoms in your body could align perfectly with all of the space between atoms in a wall, and you could just walk right through it.  (Don't spend a lot of time watching your trashcan or walking into walls over and over.  Non-zero probability means so close to zero that we can neglect it, but just not zero, something along the lines of a 1 in 100 billion chance.). My point here is that while none of this seems logical (string theory requires a minimum of 9 dimensions, and light behaves simultaneously as a wave and a series of particles), it is nonetheless true. Well, the jury is still out on string theory, but I want it to be true.  While we don't think of science as requiring faith, the farther we get into it, the more we recognize that there are some things we either don't yet understand or may not ever be able to understand.

Last week, I had lunch with a friend, and she was telling me about a conversation she had with a student.  The student was struggling with the problem of evil and had questions about sovereignty (with you sister, we've all struggled with those questions).  My friend had given her some Kierkegaard to read in which he addresses the point at which things must simply be accepted on the basis of faith (Can I just say at this point that I love that I have colleagues who read, enjoy, and recommend Kierkegaard and students who might actually read it?  I love my job.). My friend was wondering if it was okay to take this approach as there is so much of a push right now to counter objections to Christianity with logic and rationality.  Apologetics is important, and I do think there are people who may be persuaded toward Christianity through works like Mere Christianity and Reasonable Faith because it shows that our faith is not a leap of faith from A to Z.  

But, much like science, there are times when we must recognize that something can be true even if we do not yet understand it.  It is okay that we sometimes go from A to B and B to C and C to D with logic while recognizing that we may need faith to get from D to F.  If the smartest people in science are willing to accept that about the natural world which can mostly be observed and measured, why do we insist that all parts of the supernatural world (which cannot be) must be explainable without any reaching.  Our faith is not a blind one or one that requires huge leaps of faith all the way from beginning to end, but you aren't going to make sense of the Trinity through logic, and that is okay.  Not everything that is true is logical, and not everything that is logical is true; so you may need to make a few small hops of faith in theology just like we do with science.

The Resurgence of Christian Anti-Intellectualism

Note:  This blog is usually about education, but this post is only tangential to that.  This is just something I have been mulling in recent weeks.

In the 80s, the American church went through a period of anti-intellectual elitism.  I was blessed enough to not know this until the mid-90s because it was not happening in my church.  I was spoiled by a smart pastor who preached intelligent, well-written sermons, some of which I can still remember today.  It wasn't until I was in a Christian college that I found out that most 80s kids were raised without any knowledge of how to think about Scripture.  They had never been taught how to tell what a verse meant, only how they felt about it.  Their pastors routinely said something along the lines of "Well, you may have a Ph.D., but I believe in WWJD."  I don't know if this was a backlash to evolution in science education or something else, but it made me sad to think that God had gifted people with charisma and communication skills only to have them use those talents to denigrate the intellectual gifts God gave to others.  Instead of exhorting them to use those powerful gifts as Daniel did, to glorify God and influence culture, these ministers mocked the gifts that God meant for them to use.  This led to a generation of therapeutic moralists, people who believed God wanted them to be happy and that being good would make them happy.  They didn't think about theological doctrines or context or meaning because that might interfere with how a verse made them feel about themselves (which was clearly the only thing God cared about).

Then, it seemed there was a time of change.  At least in my circles, pastors used sermons to appeal to doctors, lawyers, and academics to meet their world where it was and use their minds and credentials to bring light into dark places.  Leaders like Tim Keller and Christian colleges like Kings College in New York trained educated people to go into a variety of fields because their voices were needed there.  As I wrote last week, the vision of my Christian school is to help our students achieve academic excellence and develop their gifts while being grounded in God's word so that they can carry out the plan God has for them and to "impact their world for Christ" as our mission statement says.  The shift was to mock celebrities (which I am also not okay with because, again, these are people who could be very influential in the use of their gifts), but I hadn't heard an outright mockery of scientists and other academics for a while.  

I hadn't heard it, that is, until the pandemic.

It seems there is nothing that we won't make political.  Taking precautions against getting a virus shouldn't be political, but there are people who thrive on chaos and, thus, foment division about things we should all be united about.  In order to make it an "us vs. them" situation, there were some who insisted on painting epidemiologists as stupid and/or self-serving.  Men and women who have learned and forgotten more science than I have ever learned are being called stupid by high school dropouts and self-serving by megachurch pastors.  Then, it stopped being directed at the one man who had the audacity to publically question a questionable statement and became directed at all scientists.  Nurses are being told to change out of their scrubs before leaving the hospital and are being escorted by security to their cars because of dangerous protesters.  Doctors who are destroying their own health for the sake of ours are being accused of diagnosing patients out of greed.  There is a church in California whose pastor has screamed at the top of his voice that anyone entering his church with a mask will be turned away.  (As Jesus would?  Wait, that doesn't sound right.)

As a science teacher and a Christian, this resurgence of anti-education among American church leaders is heartbreaking.  At a time when we most need these people and their work, influential leaders of the church should not be looking down on them.   I'm not saying everyone has to agree.  Even among scientists, there will be differences in interpretation.  I'm not saying science isn't sometimes flawed.  It is a field of study being carried out by fallen human beings, so of course, there are errors.  I'm not trying to place the highly educated above anyone else, but it is crazy that anyone would put them under others in the name of faith.  

Christian school teachers, it is our responsibility to fight this.  When a student believes their Google search is more credible than the words of an expert, it is our job to push back.  When we teach students to analyze literature for meaning, we must make sure they understand how to do the same thing with God's word.  When we teach math and science, we must not say faith and science are different things that don't influence each other because that's just hiding from the hard work of grappling with difficult issues.  We must teach them that it is both academically important and God-honoring to dig into those issues and that they may spend years working on them.  When a student answers a question with the lazy answer "because God made it that way," it is critically important that we push through that and say, "Sure, but how did He make it that way?"  All Christian teachers, it is important that our students see our example as Christians who live by faith, but it is equally important that we model thirst for the knowledge God has given humankind.  We should never teach them to ignore God's gifts.