Identity change? Maybe not.
“What do you do?”
This is often the question we ask people when we meet them. We think identifying their profession helps us know them.
Door which leads to where my learning continues…
My identity has always been associated with being a student…until this year. Now, I am an intervention specialist…sounds fancy but just terminology for a teacher who helps students who learn in different ways. But when I say this, it is hard for me to believe. I still feel like a student. I still have projects I have to do, things I have to study, research I must accomplish, editing, letters, meetings, and so on. And even though I no longer sit under a classroom teacher, I feel like my students are my teachers. I am constantly learning from them interesting things such as:
what the coolest trend is, or what the new slang words are (did you know what cuffing means? Let me give you a hint, I am going to cuff her…date her). Or some things more meaningful and life changing…
how each students responds to the same thing so differently
how to comfort in a way they feel loved
how to teach in a way they understand
how to motivate in a way they are interested
how to discern a lie from a truth (I am still failing at this one)
how to encourage
how to challenge
how to love when despised back
You know, I am discovering I will always be a student. I will always be learning how to do things, and most importantly I will always be learning how to love well; how to learn about and study a person. Everyone receives love differently. Loving is not easy when I am continually disrespected, but that is love…being a constant, being gracious with truth no matter what. Sure, I can’t do this, but I know who can!
Where I learn everyday!
So if someone asks me what I do, I think I will start by saying I am a student. I am learning how to love my students and help them prepare for their futures.
As teachers we are required to have at least one plan for our students..to learn the material and go to the next grade (most of us have many more as well). And God has a plan for us: to be like Him, to be continually transformed into His image. Now, that is for everyone! Same plan, like for our students! But to get there…it will be different for everyone! Ultimately we are students of our Lord, the perfect teacher, who has designed an individual unique plan for each and every one of us to be restored to who He originally created us to be. He will do it with us side by side. Now that is an IEP (individual Education (enduring) Plan)
SO I remain a student….but most importantly I am a child of God. 🙂
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. 1 John 3:1-3
