When I first began teaching, a veteran educator said to me, “Every student in your room is the most precious person in the world to someone.” As a young teacher, I took a deep breath and returned to whatever task had caused my frustration and elicited this response from my mentor. I needed a reminder of why educators do what we do. It’s all about the students. At the time, I understood what this teacher meant. Now, as I look at my precious one-year-old, I more fully comprehend her statement. I don’t know how I could ever love another human as much as I love my son. Since only a few weeks old, he’s had a personality that is unique to him alone and he’s the perfect addition to our family.
The same is true for the young ladies and gentlemen who fill my classroom. Someone loves every student in my room as much as I love my son. I love them all, too. It’s quite a responsibility, to be placed in charge of such loved people each day. My students are unique individuals that come in every morning filled with ideas and spirit. Their personalities meld together to make each year of teaching special and different from all the others.
Many necessary duties fill every day of teaching. I plan, answer questions, send in my copies, update my gradebook, and grade piles upon piles of papers. But most importantly, I teach. Teaching is more than simply sharing my knowledge and love of Literature and English. I am able to spend each day building a relationship with my students—precious people with whom my colleagues and I have been entrusted.
Teaching at a Lutheran school is about more than building the relationships that I have with my students. I also spend each day showing and telling my students that they are the most precious person in the world to God, their Heavenly Father. God loves my students more than I or even their parents ever could. As much as I love my son, God loves him more. As much as my students are loved by their parents and guardians, God loves them even more. As much as our faculty loves the students in our school, God loves them more. God’s love is an infinite, all-encompassing, overwhelming love, because God is love. What a joy it is to have been entrusted with that great responsibility!
When I come into our building, each day I hear the truth about God and His love for us. My students hear it, too. “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 John 4:16 ESV). My Lutheran school is a place for growing in the faith and in our relationships with God and one another. I love being a part of teaching students that we abide in God’s love. I love being a Lutheran school teacher!
Photo (c) Prixel Creative/Lightstock
