Skip to main content

Where are they coming from and where are they going?


The new school year has begun(a new season), and like many other teachers, I have come out of a summer planning period of imagining where I would like to see my students in several months, if not in two to three years.  As I planned, I saw specific students in my mind.  I wondered how they were experiencing life the past months and where they will be emotionally and academically.  Looking to the end, or at some projected point out in the future, I worked through the content of my teaching to try and prepare the groundwork for the next year.  It required reflection on the previous year, understanding of the students who would be coming to my class and creativity.  

None of this comes as a surprise.  In fact, teaching is only one of many professions that calls for this type of activity.  Business, medicine, law, psychology, etcetera call the professional to look back and look forward to preparing.  

While preparing, though, a theme from Genesis 16:8 (ESV) came to mind.  When Hagar had run from Abram and Sarai, God spoke to her and asked: “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?”.  When I hear these questions coming from God to Hagar, I hear him asking me, "Brian, servant of learners, where have you come from and where are you going?"   I hear Him asking me to search my heart and His wisdom in preparation for my students.  I hear him asking me to be reflective and learn about my students' lives and perspectives.  Where are they coming from and where are they going?  How can I prepare to receive them, care for them, challenge them, help them grow?

Where are we coming from and where are we going?  Do we know? Have we thought about it enough?

Where are our students(or if you are not a teacher… your employees, or patients or clients) coming from and where are they going?  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Caring for our Students through the Work we Assign

November 20, 2015 Caring for our Students through the Work we Assign When I was young, I worked on my grandfather’s farm from February until the harvest in the fall. One day during our lunch break, my grandfather began reminiscing about the “good old days”. Whenever grandpa told a story, we listened, partially because he didn’t tell very many stories. It also owed to the fact that his dry sense of humor usually left you laughing, if you listened well. Grandpa related a story from growing up during the Great Depression and how, to help get people back to work, certain jobs were created. One particular job that Grandpa could remember was the moving of dirt. Each morning, when Grandpa and the other men arrived on the job site, they were handed their shovels and work gloves and sent to the task of moving a pile of dirt and gravel from one side of a work site to the other. By the end of the day, if the men worked hard, the job would be complete. Then they would sign out and...
Post a Comment
Read more

We each process differently. Speaking and listening in Teaching(or training, or training, or…)

We each process differently.  Speaking and listening in Teaching(or training, or training, or…) Over the years and decades of learning and teaching (and coaching and training…), I have been placed in so many different sets of circumstances in which I needed to stop, look, listen, and reflect about what I was doing. It always came at a time when what I was doing was either not working or not as well as I had hoped. Several weeks ago it happened again. During an evening class, I was pulling out all of the stops to teach a concept to a group of students. They too were putting themselves into the learning.  Yet, despite everyone’s effort, the connection I had hoped my class would make with the material fell short.   At the end of the evening, I asked the group to review and share with me what they had learned, and they did so quite well. Nonetheless, I sensed that their words masked the lack of depth of understanding. Their eyes, on the other hand, revea...
Post a Comment
Read more

Maintaining the Road of Learning

I have spent my entire life living in Michigan, the Great Lakes State, the state of ever-changing   weather,  the state with two seasons (despite claims to the contrary); Winter and Road Repair... a state   loaded with metaphor potential. And in as far as this is all true, I would like to link a Michigan-related  metaphor to learning and an encouraging recent experience. One month ago, I welcomed a brand new group of foreign language students into my classroom. This group had been blessed by the energy of a very gifted and caring colleague of mine for the first three trimesters of their learning, and because of this, I knew that they had come to me well- prepared. So immediately, on the first day of class, we launched into learning...learning about each other, learning about our interests, our fears, our hopes, all of those first day activities. In a very short time; however, it became clear that this class was different from others that I had ...
Post a Comment
Read more