Thanksgiving Post 3 - Mr. Sandberg

While I wrote these posts in order of the year I had each teacher, I am very happy that this particular teacher landed on the week of Thanksgiving.  When I think of the teachers for which I am most thankful, Mr. Don Sandberg is number one on the list.  This should be the easiest post to write, but it is actually difficult because it is hard to sum up what Mr. Sandberg has meant to me in just one post.

Mr. Sandberg taught me physical science in the 9th grade, and this is the subject I have taught every year for the last twenty years.  In the first two years of my teaching, I never sat down to do a lesson plan without thinking of how Mr. Sandberg taught me.  If there was an analogy or example or technique he used to make something clear to us, I wrote it into my own plans.  Although I have developed my own style and techniques in the classroom, some of those early things remain in my teaching to this day.  Any student who has had me for physical science has gotten at least a little instruction from Mr. Sandberg.

Perhaps the most important thing Mr. Sandberg did for me as a student was to encourage my curiosity.  He didn't make me curious because I came into the world that way, but he did keep me curious.  And at a time in my life when it would have been easy to throw me off track as I was a loud, strange, 14-year-old girl when I was in his class.  I was a pretty demanding learner.  In the 10 months that I was in his class, I estimate that I asked him 144,000 questions.  I asked him how keys open locks, how gas pumps know to cut off when the tank is full, and thousands of other things.  One day, he pulled out a scrap of paper and said, "I think you would find this book helpful."  It was The Way Things Work by David Macauley.  I ran right out and bought it; and before there was Google, this book was a valuable source of information for me.  I still have it today.  While his recommendation of this book might have been as much for his benefit as mine, it just led to me asking him even more questions.  The important thing is that he never seemed exasperated by my constant stream of questions.  He didn't turn me away, even if he couldn't answer.  It is scary to know that a frustrated teacher on a bad day could say something to squelch a student's curiosity, and it is amazing to me that he never did.  I keep this in mind when I am teaching students like myself.  I look at the picture on my classroom wall and say, "Mr. Sandberg was patient with you.  You must be patient with them."

If you have never taught in a Christian school, you may not know the responsibility that a Christian educator feels in fostering the spiritual development of students, modeling faith, and integrating Biblical worldview into the curriculum.  It is frightening because the last thing you want to do is innoculate students to the Lord, giving them just enough of a weakened version of Jesus that they miss the real thing.  You may not know that teachers receive zero training in how to do this, even when getting an education degree from a Christian university.  When I started at GRACE, I was at a bit of a loss for how to lesson plan with this in mind.  Once again, I thought back to my times with Mr. Sandberg.  He revealed the gospel in everything he did and every conversation he had with students; it was just implicit in who he was.  While I don't know that I will ever think I'm doing enough of this in my classroom, his model was inspirational and still is.

For all that Mr. Sandberg was to me my freshman year and what he continues to be for me now, I am thankful.