lesson plans

I think I was born wanting to be a teacher.  I once (or twice, maybe more) set up a classroom with my stuffed animals and dolls, then read Little House on the Prairie out loud to them.  In high school I created pretend lesson plans for The House on Mango Street, not as a class assignment but just because I was on a long airplane ride home and could not sleep.  I declared my major as English Education no more than three weeks in to my college career, and I never looked back, never changed my mind, never stopped dreaming of the classroom I would call my own.  True story: I shopped for posters for my future classroom at 17 years old.  My mom still has them.

I loved college partly because I absolutely loved what I was learning.  If I was not taking classes on how to be a teacher, I was reading and writing about the very things I might someday teach: Twain and Stein and Shakespeare and Chaucer, prepositions and adverbs and gerunds and antonyms.  I learned as much from Huck Finn and Scout Finch as I did from Dr. Blassingame and Dr. Kelleher—and I could not wait to introduce my own students to characters who they would relate to more than me.  I was so set on being a teacher, so taken by the idea of impacting lives and imparting knowledge.  In a lot of ways, I still am.

But somewhere along the way, I began only wanting to be the teacher and neglected the learner, as it became more important to me to know the answer—and get credit for it— than to really listen to the question.  My husband gently pointed this out to me yesterday.  As we discussed a really great sermon we had just heard at church, I stepped right in and interrupted his thoughts on what he was learning with my interpretation of them.  He was not asking me for my analysis, he really was not even asking for my opinion.  But for some reason I cannot justify or explain, I felt compelled to give him both of those things.  And I do this much.too.often.  (side note: marry someone who will do this for you- let you know when you are not as right as you think you are, but still love you more than life)

I really don’t love being around people who don’t know what they don’t know.  But I can be that person.  I have always admired people who can answer my questions with a deeper question.  But I seem to answer others with my version of the right answer.  I respect the characteristic of humility more than any other in people.  But I have a tendency to be over-impressed with how hard I am trying to be humble myself. 

As much as I have always wanted to be a teacher, and still want to be, my deepest, strongest desire right now is to be a learner…

I want to learn how to sit across the table from you and hear how hard your relationship is without saying, “Have you read this, or done that, or been to this…”

I want to learn what you are most passionate about, what the dream of your life is, and I want to marvel at it and get excited about it with you, not comment on it and certainly not criticize it behind your back.

I want to learn what you are most afraid of, what makes you anxious or wakes you up at night, and I want to pray with you, not tell you that story of how one time I was afraid of the same thing and it all turned out ok so you will be just fine, too. 

I want to learn more about my real-self, about the things that I am ok at and the (many) areas I need refining.  And I want to learn how to embrace those things so that I am always aware of how little I can do on my own.

I want to learn more about God, His story, and my place in it.  I want to remember to use pencil as I write down the theories of my life, knowing that I will inevitably have to erase many things I thought I knew and tried to tell you were correct.  

If God has a lesson plan for us every day, it might be to teach us something like this:  “You are more sinful and flawed than you ever dared believe.  You are more accepted and loved than you ever dared hope.”  (thanks, Tim Keller).  What a beautiful, humbling and yet hopeful paradox.  Let’s learn to live in that today.