With the start of school just around the corner, teachers are gearing up for another year. As usual, summer break has gone by too fast. And yet, at the same time, the attraction of new beginnings lures them back to the classroom. There is something about a fresh start that energizes, awakens, and inspires.
How can teachers approach this year in a way that is different from the past? Experienced teachers may have a good idea at this point what their growth goals are for the year. To be sure, taking inventory of one’s skill in the craft of teaching is important. However, sometimes as people we need more than a new goal to pursue. We need a spiritual and mental reset.
In this blog, I want to encourage teachers to consider ways they might approach this year with more self-awareness and an increasing sense of peace. So often the frantic nature of our modern world throws us off kilter. But classical educators, with our eyes fixed on the good, true, and beautiful, ought to be different. Let us explore, then, some practical ways we might begin to cultivate peacefulness within ourselves, ultimately looking to the Lord to fill us with the peace that can only come from Him.
The Value of Self-Reflection
Self-reflection is a helpful exercise to both begin and end your day. If you already have a morning devotional routine, then you can probably just add this to the mix. During self-reflection, you want to think through the elements of your day that you expect to be the most rewarding and challenging. What are you most looking forward to? What are you dreading? How do you hope to act and react throughout the hard parts? These sorts of questions can begin to prepare you emotionally for what could happen and equip you to respond how you would like to in real time.
A question I have started asking myself in the morning is, “At the end of the day, what do I hope to be most proud of?” Almost always, my answer has been that “I would love and serve people well.” Admittedly, I am somewhat surprised by my answer. With a full day of work before me, coupled with my goal-oriented personality, you might think it would be some accomplishment that would bring me the most satisfaction. But when I answer the question, assuming I am being honest with myself, the answer has to do with how I relate to those around me.
Self-reflection is also a helpful practice for the end of the day. Questions like “What did I do well today? What am I most proud of? How did I respond in the scenario I knew would be challenging?” can help bring closure to what perhaps has been an otherwise challenging day. The reality we must come to embrace is that life is not perfect. There will always be situations we wish had gone differently. But by asking these sorts of questions and processing what did happen, we can grow in embracing reality and see that God’s gracious plan is sufficient for our needs.
Additionally, through self-reflection, we grow in awareness of ourselves, both our words and our deeds. To this point, leadership professor Harry Kramer writes,
Being self-reflective means that when you’re at the top of that sine curve, you already know what you’ll do when things do go so well. You will be alert, and prepared for those initial signs of disappointment or upset, and you’ll act on them quickly, without getting sidetracked, being surprised or losing precious energy to worry, fear, anxiety, pressure or stress. Without self-reflection, you have chosen to wait until a crisis hits to figure out what you’re going to do, and by then it’s too late.
Harry Kraemer., Becoming the Best: Build a World-Class Organization Through Values-Based Leadership (Wiley, 2015), p. 22
When teachers practice self-reflection, they grow prepared mentally and spiritually for what surprises might come that day. Whether it is a misbehaving student, an upset parent, or overbearing administrator, teachers can approach the day with an inner-sense of peace grounded in God’s grace for them.
Leaning into Leisure
As Josef Pieper observed many years ago in Leisure: The Basis of Culture, we live in a world that has largely reduced humans to workers. Education, family, and society have all become servants of economic output. To his point, more and more Americans are putting in 50 or 60 hour work weeks, as the research shows, leaving little desire for meaningful rest when the work week ends, if it does at all.
The solution, according to Pieper, is leisure. He writes, “Leisure, it must be clearly understood, is a mental and spiritual attitude–it is not simply the result of external factors, it is not the inevitable result of spare time, a holiday, a weekend, or a vacation. It is in the first place an attitude of the mind, a condition of the soul, and as such utterly contrary to the ideal of ‘worker’…” (46).
What Pieper is getting at here is that leisure is not merely equivalent to non-work. It is not the default state of mind we find ourselves in when we are not on the clock. Rather, leisure is a contemplative state of being in which we grow as integrated selves and experience wholeness. It means not being busy, but letting things happen.
As Christians, we can introduce a spiritual layer to the conversation: leisure is the experience of connecting with God and growing in our reliance upon Him. To do this, we need time and space from activity. As we sit in silence, pondering the state of our being, our minds can further contemplate the nature of God and His eternal attributes: His holiness, eternality, and omniscience, for example. As we do so, we grow in acuity of our own finitude and the need to rest within the hands of God.
Reading to See
Finally, teachers can prepare for the upcoming school year by making time to read. In this way, they feed and nurture their own intellects even as they plan to nurture the intellects of their students. Admittedly, this way of thinking is quite counter-cultural. We have come to view education as a transaction of information that requires little intellectual depth for oneself. So long as the PowerPoints are made and lesson plans are full, preparation for the year is complete.
But what if real teaching is a meeting of the minds? If this is the case, then the teacher’s intellect is just as important for the learning that will take place as the students. Teachers can come to each lesson prepared to learn themselves, to change and be changed, by the knowledge they encounter.
In his latest book, Henry Kissinger, former secretary of state and Nobel Peace Prize winner, examines the lives of six great political leaders from the 20th century.
Adrian Woolrdridge, writing at Bloomberg on Kissinger’s work, observes,
All six of Kissinger’s heroes were serious readers and writers. Sadat spent almost six years in solitary confinement with only books for comfort. In 1933, Adenauer retreated to a monastery to escape from the Nazis and spent his time studying two papal encyclicals, promulgated by Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI, which applied Catholic teachings to socioeconomic conditions. Thatcher read her official briefs until early in the morning and drew attention to grammatical errors and stylistic blunders. De Gaulle wrote some immortal French. Deep literacy provided them with what Max Weber called “proportion” — “the ability to allow realities to impinge on you while maintaining an inner calm and composure.” It also provided them with a sense of perspective as they put daily events into the wider scheme of history or even God’s will.
When teachers read, especially when they read deep literature, their minds enter a state of deep contemplation and peace. After a busy school day, with the bustling of student activity, reading can be a strategic way to unwind. Of course, there are lots of other great ways to rest, but I would suggest that specifically for teachers, reading can be an exceptionally enriching activity. It feeds the intellect, plants new ideas in our minds, and, as Wooldridge mentions above, allows us to view daily events within a wider frame of history and, ultimately, God’s sovereign hand within it.
Conclusion
As teachers prepare for the start of the 2022-2023 school year, there is a lot they could and should do. But amidst their teacher checklists and marching orders from administration, my encouragement is to take some time to develop new habits. Self-reflection, intentional leisure, and reading to see are just three examples to help you begin.
Let me close with some encouragement from scripture. Towards the end of Colossians, Paul writes, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word and deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col. 3:15-17). More than anything else, may teachers at our schools this year be filled with the Word and Spirit of Christ, remembering that they are His hands and feet, equipped for every good work.
What ideas come to mind for you as you seek to start off the school year on a strong note? Comment below to share your thoughts with fellow teachers.
