no.216 131202 Thank you for the day off

Teaching to Change Lives - Howard Hendricks

It was my day off, and I spend the majority of my day at a Starbucks in the neighbourhood with a friend of mine. I took my laptop to do some job search, and a book called "Teaching to Change Lives" by Howard Hendricks. I have to finish this book by Saturday for my last discipleship class. I started reading this book last Sunday, when I took my mom to the hospital. That time, I couldn't really concentrate, so I only read foreword. At Starbucks, I read the first chapter about "The law of the teacher."

To summarize the chapter, let me share what Hendricks wrote: "if you stop growing today, you stop teaching tomorrow." You can't teach what you don't know. You must truly know it in order to give to your students. As I was reading the chapter, I constantly reflected on myself as a preschool teacher at the Sunday school. How am I doing as a teacher? What am I doing well? What areas am I lacking in? Am I doing anything to improve? These are some important questions I need to constantly ask myself as a teacher, yet I am not doing a great job at it.

Hendricks pin pointed out many good ideas, but there was one thing that I wanted to challenge myself right away. I wanted to see how well I know my students. When I finished the chapter, I opened up my prayer journal and wrote down the names of my students. In alphabetical order, I wrote their names down, and I thought about five things about each child. About their family, what they're good at, how they behave in the class, and even what they don't like to eat during the snack time. I thought it would be easy to come up with five things about each student. You know what? It was easy with some students, but for some, I couldn't think about anything more than a couple of things. It made me feel horrible. One area that I started applying to my life and myself as a teacher at the preschool ministry is this - knowing my students.

One thing I'm still thankful about is that although I lack this much, God still uses me. I'm thankful that He is revealing my areas of improvement through this book. I'm grateful for this opportunity to challenge myself and hopefully there is still a room for me to grow and level up as a better teacher for my students.

To all the teachers out there - even Jesus grew in wisdom, in stature, in favour with God and in favour with men. Therefore, as disciples of Christ, we also ought to grow in every aspect of life. Being a teacher doesn't mean you know everything and don't need to grow.