Imagine this; You lesson plan all day. You read the textbook over and over again to get every piece of information you can. You get excited to teach even though you don’t love teaching.
Then you get into a class room where all the students from grades 8-12 are waiting for you. At first they seem excited to see you, but 5 minutes later at least 10 of them are trying to fall asleep, others are talking and laughing for no particular reason, and others are holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes like they’re on some kinda date or something. Then, you hear someone say “madam” you turn to see what the problem is. Then, one student tells you another student is trying to stub him with a knife. So, as any reasonable person would do, you ask to have the knife and put it on the front table ( Don’t worry Mimi, all is good). To them all this is just a funny joke. For every minute you spend teaching, you spend another minute telling them to be quite. I felt very defeated. I spent all that time lesson planning and trying to get every piece of information so that I could be a better teacher. It seemed like I was just wasting my time. Two days before, they were perfect students, but today they just didn’t seem to care. As frustrated as I was I kept my cool.
When all I wanted to do was give up, I noticed one student who stood out. He seemed to be paying close attention to every word I was saying, even though his friends were trying to talk to him and keep him distracted, he kept his focus on me. He asked questions, he took notes, he asked me to repeat something if he didn’t understand what I said. Then it hit me, even if most of these students are distracted and couldn’t pay the smallest attention to me today, he was. He wanted to learn everything he could. These kids come from very rough backgrounds. As we were spending time with the school owner and asked her some questions about the school, she told us most of these kids are rejected by society. Some of these kids come to school on empty stomachs. They don’t have textbooks to study from. These kids have been told they are no good. Then, I realized, I have no place to judge them or even be frustrated at them. They don’t need me to judge them for their behaviors, they need me to love them.
I think sometimes we get too focused on a job that we forget to focus on the most important thing, which is loving others. We forget to meet people where they are. I want nothing more than for these students to know they are way more than what society thinks they are. Yes, they have a different life than most teenagers their age, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less than anybody else.
If 1 out of 50 students pays attention to what I say and gets something out of it, that’s good enough for me. I wonder how often we get discouraged by a crowd and forget to look at that one person in the background?
Is one person enough for you to be able to do whatever it is the Lord has for you in this season of life? Or are you waiting for a crowd to show up?
As for me, I am going to choose to celebrate every little victory from this point on. For now, that little victory is seeing the one student work so hard in class and do the best he could do. Even if none of the other students pay attention to what I say, I will try to be the best teacher I can be for the one.
