Note from MMM: This guest post was written by one of my favorite people in this entire world: My daughter. Yes, FOML1. She is brilliant, amazing, beautiful and wise. (No, she was not adopted. Why do you ask?) Please enjoy, and be nice with the comments…or else.
I just finished my second year as a junior-high English teacher. I am extra enjoying my summer vacation because of how much I worked last year.
What kept me at my job hours before school started and hours after? Planning planning planning! I have a set of standards that I want my students to reach. I want them to be able to write a claim and support it with logical reasons and evidence. I want them to be able to identify metaphors and explain how they contribute to the meaning of the text. Etc etc etc. The end goal is to help them become better communicators and critical thinkers, but the standards make that more doable.
The way I help my students meet those standards is by breaking up learning into activities that will hopefully spark their attention, but still help them progress. It’s my job to figure out where my students currently are and find that sweet spot (the “ZPD” in teacher lingo); if something’s too easy they won’t learn anything, but if something’s too hard they will get frustrated or give up. After an activity, I then assess my students’ understanding and either move on or re-teach later. On top of that, I try my hardest to make my lessons engaging and “fun.”
So after hours and hours of planning, of course my students give me a standing ovation at the end of each period for superior teaching, right? Right? 🙂
What I usually get from those dear 13 year olds is a whole lot of whining.
I get it, though! I recognize that adolescents’ brains are still developing and it’s hard for them to see long term. And let’s be real—do you remember what was important to you in junior high? I’m pretty sure I didn’t care about symbolism or summarizing. I cared about my friends, about the cute boy in choir, about my extracurriculars, and, while I was a 4.0 student and I did care about my grades, I didn’t actually care much about what I was learning in class.
I think I inherently trusted that my teachers could get me where I needed to go, but I didn’t really think about it. I did think about how much I hated homework, and how I wished they would just give us more time to talk and not make us work so hard.
I think we can all agree that I have a better idea of how to help my students learn than they do themselves.
(Side-note: Luckily my students’ whining is usually phrased as a question that I’m sure parents hear quite often—WHYYYYY DO WE HAVE TO DO THIS?! What has seemed to stop the whining in my classroom is to give them a detailed explanation of exactly what the activity will teach them and why it matters. This has resulted in other kids stopping the whining themselves with a “Ms. (Secret Identity) ALWAYS HAS A REASON!”)
I do really love my kids. I want them to have fun, but secondary to wanting them to learn and grow and succeed. (I also want them to feel love and warmth and kindness, especially knowing that many of them don’t feel it at home.) The best part of being the teacher is that I get to actually watch my students’ growth throughout the year, growth that they aren’t noticing themselves.
*Cue spiritual application*
Sometimes I look at my life or the lives of the people around me and just want to ask WHYYYYY DO WE HAVE TO DO THIS?! I think that’s probably a natural feeling most of us have felt. At least Laman and Lemuel did: “And they did murmur because they knew not the dealings of that God who had created them” (1 Nephi 2:12).
If you were to ask me what I’ve learned over the past two years as a teacher, I could probably talk your ear off until you wished you hadn’t asked. But the most significant growth in my life has been a better understanding of my relationship with Heavenly Father, an understanding that I’m sure will only deepen when I become a parent someday.
Sometimes (or most of the time) things happen in life that don’t make sense. Whether it be pain or loneliness or heartache or temptation or sickness—sometimes life kind of sucks, and it’s hard to step back and get perspective when we are so limited in our perspective in the first place. When I am going through something hard, I try to think about how God is the teacher and how I am the student, and I just have to trust that He is paying attention and focus on learning what I can.
There are so many beautiful metaphors of trust in the scriptures.
- “But now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter, and we all are the work of thy hand” (Isaiah 64:8)
- “And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them” (Isaiah 42:16)
- “The words of Christ, if we follow their course, [shall] carry us beyond this vale of sorrow into a far better land of promise” (Alma 37:45)
- “But he knoweth the way that I take when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold” (Job 23:10)
I think Neal Maxwell ties my thoughts together beautifully:
“I believe with all my heart that because God loves us there are some particularized challenges that he will deliver to each of us. He will customize the curriculum for each of us in order to teach us the things we most need to know. He will set before us in life what we need, not always what we like. And this will require us to accept with all our hearts—particularly your generation—the truth that there is divine design in each of our lives and that you have rendezvous to keep, individually and collectively. …
“What, therefore, may seem now to be mere unconnected pieces of tile will someday, when we look back, take form and pattern, and we will realize that God was making a mosaic. For there is in each of our lives this kind of divine design, this pattern, this purpose that is in the process of becoming, which is continually before the Lord but which for us, looking forward, is sometimes perplexing” (from BYU talk found here).
I know God loves me.
I know that we are here to learn and progress and to become more like Him. Sometimes life is hard or doesn’t make sense, but relying on the Savior makes it easier and more worthwhile.
God knows more than I do.
So well done. Thank you for sharing the work and caring of a dedicated teacher. It took me 40 years, but now I know that holding the Lord’s hand in the darkness,is so much wiser than walking down the sunlit path all by myself.
This is way cool. And I understand. It wasn’t until I became a mom that I could start to understand just how our Father loves and teaches.
Thanks for sharing 🙂
Nice!
Lovely to still be uplifted through MMM while he’s slacking off…I mean taking a sabbatical. 😉
(Hope that’s going well btw and that your fingers aren’t itching to get back on here)
Love this – beautifully stated!
As a former English teacher (who’s now out of the trenches of formal education and in the trenches of raising my own FOMLs), I say good work! Those students are lucky to have you, and I hope my kids get teachers with as much insight and dedication as you. Thanks for the guest post! This was a great reminder today.
Huzzah! One apple fallen close to the parental tree. I had a handful of teachers like you when I was a kid. I still remember them with fondness and deep respect.
You are definitely MMM’s FOML! That’s a compliment, by the way, but don’t tell him I said that. 😉
I appreciate so much your words here. I have been through the spiritual refiner’s fire more times than I can count this last year and for as much as I’ve learned, I can still see where the Lord had to push me along as I whined, “Why do I have to go through this? Isn’t there some other way?” Inevitably the answer is always no. There is no other way. This is it. I was telling my husband yesterday that this life is our college of the Gods. We all are here going to school, learning different things for different reasons (maybe based on an entrance exam from the preexistence or because of our specific interests and talents), and we’re all ultimately trying to “graduate” and make it to Godliness.
Your words have echoed within those thoughts so perfectly for me this morning, so thank you for that. I have much more to ponder on today.
This was such a beautiful post. Thank you FOMMML1.
FOML #1, Thank you so much for sharing two years of your teaching experience and a look at who you are inside, Beautiful.
“But he knoweth the way that I take when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold” (Job 23:10)
i am but a “student” on the footstool of my Heavenly Father… Thank You Cheers
Dear FOML1 (well actually MMM’s FOML1),
LOVE THIS! Well done sister! Love the Maxwell quote. You should post more often for your dad.
xoxox
mCat
Beautiful writing and insight Daughter #1. Thanks so much. My constant prayer is that I might learn what Heavenly Father wants me to learn in these hard times as quickly as possible so we can keep on movin’ through them!
I love posts from teachers. A couple of years ago when FOML2 was at her in-laws reunion, she mentioned that I was a pilot who aspired to be a history teacher. The response was “do you know how many teachers aspire to be pilots?” Now that I am on my second career, I have discovered that it is possible to have too much education to get a job, so….I work my regular job for a week at a time and substitute teach the second week. I always thought that high school and college kids would be the best to teach….which is true for seminary or institute. 6th & 7th graders are actually the most fun to teach. They still want to please the teacher and have not yet discovered that if they don’t do their work, there is nothing the teacher can really do about it except inform the parents.
Part 2: As an aspiring historian, thank you for teaching your students how to write. The church historian clique is fairly small. It is very frustrating and dry to read a lot of church history. The use of language makes all of the difference. In fact, the best writers usually have a little bit of journalism in their background. They make it interesting by using different forms of language. I often wish we could go back to the flowery language of the 19th century because so much can be conveyed with metaphors and it is just so much more interesting to read..
Part 3: Many years ago, while living in “the mission field” I had 3 callings, 1 ward and 2 stake. This kept me on the road and away from home for about 12 hours on Sundays and 6-8 hours during the week. Add that to a job that was 60-80 hours per week and life was getting a little draining. More poor EC had 5 kids under age 9 at home as well as her own callings to deal with. With all of my driving, I had ample time to whine to the Lord with my “Why” questions. One evening I was feeling especially frustrated and whining, a very strong calm came over me and I heard a very stern but compassionate voice say “Peace, be still. I know what I am doing” The whole idea of using the same words that He used to rebuke the storm kind of got my attention. A few weeks later our Stake was reorganized, I was reduced to one calling (which still took about 8 hours on Sunday). I was amazed at how all of the work that we had been doing for months resulted in the changes that noone had seen coming because no one knew they would be needed. What was the change? Of the two wards in the area (about 80 x 80 miles) one lost all of its Melchezidek priesthood over the course of about 2 months due to military moves.
Why? because the Lord knew what was coming and was preparing for it. He always has a reason.
MMM you should be so proud of your FOML1. She is awesome and obviously a fantastic teacher! She should guest write more often! Look out MMM you might be replaced. I especially like the scripture references used about trusting in Heavenly Father’s plan for us. We don’t see the big picture but it is nice to know that He knows and we can find out as we go to Him in prayer looking for guidance.