Balance—that ever so elusive goal. I struggle with overwork and overcorrect into laziness. I accept criticism that I am too opinionated and overcorrect into having no opinions about anything. The pendulum swings from talking too much to not talking at all, from being independent to being overly dependent, from too open to too aloof. Exhausted, I glare at the gauntlet of teeter-totters and wonder why it’s so hard.
A friend suggested that the secret isn’t balance at all. It’s alignment. When working on a balance pose in yoga, I choose a mark in the room to focus on: a drishti. The fixed point doesn’t move as I bob around like a weeble-wobble. As I focus on the drishti, I become more balanced, steadier, even stable. When I aim for balance itself, I fall, but when I focus on something that never wavers, it creates alignment in me, and I become balanced. Instead of trying to hover between overwork and laziness, I could focus on the only One is permanent and unchanging. For a while, I was satisfied with my friend’s idea. Alignment sounds saner than balance. But it still leaves a remarkably heavy burden on my shoulders. And as I fail at aligning myself with Him just as much as I fail at balance, I find myself toying with another idea coalescing from many books I happened to be reading simultaneously. We all are made with different fundamental temperaments, grow up in different home cultures, and are the products of different larger cultures, so it is no wonder that parts of Scripture resonate with some of us more than others. Collin Hansen, the author of Blind Spots, says that is how we react to Christ as well. Some of us love the Christ who is compassionate; others are strengthened by His courage; others are consumed by His commission. At first, I cataloged this as another area in which I needed to seek balance, almost missing the author’s point. But then Jen Wilkin reminded me in None Like Him that I am not omniscient; my mind has limits. I cannot successfully always remember that my Messiah is both courageous and compassionate, let alone always remember also that He commissioned His followers to a great work. In Misreading the Scripture through Western Eyes, the authors remind us that for generations, reading the Scriptures was primarily a community or family activity, not the private, solitary activity it is today. That reminder nudged me to think about the community’s role in my balance or alignment. In both Blind Spots and Misreading the Scriptures, the authors encourage us to remember other ways of thinking through interacting with others. Instead of surrounding myself with only close friends who see the compassionate Western Christ, which reinforces that skew, I could engage with friends who see His courage, embrace His commission, and understand what the Scriptures look like in another culture. This idea especially reinforces Drs. Cloud and Townsend’s premise that having multiple strong relationships is key to being healthy and forming new relationships. One good friend cannot give me all the perspective missing from my view. One good friend is just as limited as I in maintaining balance and remembering the manifold wisdom of God. There’s an interesting study by Wenger on memories of couples in close relationships. Over time, in the relationship, the couple divide the labor of remembering in the same way they divide household chores, except this division is done tacitly. The result of the study demonstrated that this transactive memory “is greater than either of the individual memories.” With transactive memory, members of a group do not need to remember every detail. The husband and wife do not both need to save in their memory which cupboard the Windex is in, which road the doctor’s office is on, or the details of that funny story that eases awkward moments at dinner parties. Transactive memory is reminiscent of Paul’s analogy of the Body. As the Hands appeal to the group about a need, a way to show His love to others, the Mind considers the cost, the Mouth shares Truth, the Muscles give strength and courage. The Hands don’t carry the burden of all the great work; the Hands do what Hands do. We use that analogy when it comes to actual service at church: who should teach, who should greet, who should never help in the nursery. But what if transactive memory is how the Body is supposed to work with knowledge as well? As we come together, we each bring the part of the Scripture that resonates with us, that has become engrafted and in coming together, we remind each other of the parts we forget. We each have something to offer and something to receive. What if the answer isn’t a never-ending struggle for internal alignment or personal balance? Maybe the answer is honest, loving connection to a varied group, a Body. Alone, I will forget parts of Who He is and what He asks of me. Together, we can remember far more and do what He asks of us.
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The man was desperate and cried out to the Teacher, “Lord, I believe.” And in honesty, he added, “Help my unbelief.” I memorized those words over twenty years ago, and they resonate with me even more now than they did then.
So often my inner cynic doubts the value of what I do. As a teacher, I sometimes have only a semester with students. I feel like I teach so little course material in that time, let alone add anything positive about how to be human. Sometimes my heart hums with pride when I read a student’s essay and marvel at how far she has come. Then that cynic reminds me that before ever joining my class, that student already had an aptitude for writing and would have made progress with any teacher she had. At times, I find that thought comforting as the weight of my students’ success no longer bears down on my solitary shoulders. At other times, I’m left thinking, “Does it matter?” Even more disheartening is volunteer work. I’ve worked at camps many summers. I love summer camp. (One of my friends who recognizes my tendency to withdraw was surprised by my enthusiasm for summer camp, but yes, this withdrawal-prone introvert loves summer camp.) This last summer, I volunteered at a camp specifically for children who live in orphanages. The camp gives them a week of fun and love, urging the volunteers to advocate later for the children’s adoption. At the end of the week, it’s heart-breaking to put the kids back on a bus and send them back to a hopeless future (because in their country, they legitimately do not have a future). It’s easy to think, “Does it matter?” Does five days of camp really make a difference? I felt like Longfellow in his bleakest of Christmas lyrics, written from the brink despair. But then, he heard the bells ringing hope: “God is not dead; nor doth He sleep.” No bells pealing jolted me from my doubt, but sweet memories did. I had stable, loving parents, who also had stable, loving parents, who also had stable, loving parents. My teachers at both school and church were encouraging and invested in me. Growing up, I went to camp for only five days every summer. And twenty years later, I still remember people from camp, who, for a couple days or even a couple hours, took time to care for me. I remember guest lecturers in university, chapel speakers, regular customers at Donut World who brightened ten minutes of my Saturday morning shift. These precious memories are not of grand sacrificial acts. They are small, routine even. But do they matter? Yes. Most definitely yes. Man was made in God’s image. And God took man’s form to be God with Us. Perhaps an odd topic to meditate on in December, but I have been thinking this month on the nature of God. I realized how much I was believing a “Christian myth”—a lie that sounds Biblical but is still a lie. In response to that lie, I have been focusing on Truth: Who is God? And how have I been made in His image?
God, a distinct entity, states clearly His likes and dislikes, what He will accept and not accept, and how He will respond to things He will not accept. He does not force others to follow His way; He merely invites them to and states the consequences if they cross His boundaries. Complete in Himself, He still enjoys relationships. This isn’t astounding. All of Scripture communicates these ideas. But what I just realized was that since I am made in that image, those things (boundaries) are good for me, too. Somehow, I started believing the lie that taking care of my own needs was selfish. After all, love sacrifices, and love should care more about others than self. The model for sacrificial love is God: the Father loved us so much that He sacrificed His Son; the Son loved us so much that He sacrificed Himself. But, note the verb tense: not sacrifices. Sacrificed. Yes, Christ came, becoming man, but He was still fully God. His sense of Who He was never changed. He did not, nor does not, change for His loved ones. His likes and dislikes stay the same. His position changed temporarily (heaven for earth), but His character does not waver. His actions changed temporarily (sleeping, living as a human), but His boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable remain steadfast. Love came down to die, but He lived before dying. He did not lead a life of negating every need, emotion, and opinion in the name of sacrificial love. That isn’t living. A person with no needs, desires, emotions, or opinions—that person cannot love anyone because that person is dead. I believed that sacrificial love was constantly denying myself for others. But, my rational mind cried out, where is the line? I could not sustain a lifetime of sacrificing all of me. Christ sacrificed once; His public ministry, although physically taxing, lasted only three years. How could I, a mere mortal, expect to last longer than God with Us? How could I distinguish between others’ needs and others’ wants? When I voiced concerns about knowing where the line was, I heard criticism about being too used to getting my own way and that if I spent more time serving others, then I would feel better. So, I continued to act on those lies, ignoring my physical comfort for someone else (because love sacrifices), ignoring my true needs for someone else (because love sacrifices), and denying my own desires (because love seeks not its own). With no needs or desires, I felt like I ceased to be. Mercifully, not all my relationships succumbed to these lies. I noticed that in these relationships I was wholly myself, a glaring contrast to the fragmented shadow I was in others. Desperate to be whole again, I turned to the model of sacrificial love. Who is this God Who can sacrifice Himself and not lose Himself? When did He sacrifice? What did He sacrifice? Christ did “what we could not do for ourselves,” I read one day and then read it again. “Denying ourselves to do for others what they cannot do for themselves is showing the sacrificial love of Christ. This is what Christ did for us. . . . he saved us.” All this time, I was sacrificing myself for others’ whims, things they could get without my sacrifice. Looking at what Christ (and His followers) sacrificed for added more clarity: they sacrificed most often for the sake of the gospel. Especially around the holidays, I sacrifice time, energy, rest, and money in the name of love, spurred by sweet stories of sacrifice, but I can place a boundary around that sacrifice—what am I sacrificing for? I can still agree with the reformed Ebenezer Scrooge that “mankind [is] my business,” but I can temper that sentiment with my true responsibility to mankind: sacrificing for true needs, sacrificing to point to Christ. After enjoying many Jordan Peterson psychology lectures on YouTube, I finally took his Big Five Personality test and signed up for his Self-Authoring Suite, which guides people through writing about their past, present, and future with the goal of learning from the past and present to plan for a better future. Since this in November (and some of us have NaNoWriMo goals to accomplish), the Self-Authoring Suite seemed the perfect birthday present to myself. (I will admit to “opening” my present before my actual birthday.)
Before writing about the present, I was prompted to examine both my faults and virtues. I wasn’t excited about either one. To quote Jo March from the movie Little Women (the line isn’t in the book), “I’m hopelessly flawed.” But instead of inwardly recoiling from a list of my flaws or ducking my head in embarrassment at a list of my virtues, I was able to clinically acknowledge them in the first steps. There was no sense of shame or embarrassment or guilt. The fact that these items were on the list meant that others have them too. And there is strength, and perhaps humility, in numbers. As I read the list of virtues associated with Extroversion and Introversion, I was supposed to select a certain number of virtues that characterize me or are important to me. From my experience with personality tests, I knew exactly where the “extrovert” characteristics ended and the “introvert” characteristics began. I cringed as I saw one of my main characteristics in the introvert section. I struggled to choose the right number of virtues since many of my main characteristics were in the “introvert” section. I read the extrovert section again and again, hoping in vain to find something resembling me up there. Then I had an Oh! moment. The instructions finally bore through the mental barrier society helped build in my mind. I was looking at the list wrong. I double-checked the instructions. Yes, it said to select from the list of virtues. Everything on the list was a virtue. All of the things at the bottom of the list that were clearly part of introversion were . . . virtues. Even though Susan Cain’s Quiet certainly helped me feel less apologetic about my introversion, even though I know that God makes extroverts and introverts alike and uses both equally, even though I’m actually very close to the middle of the extroversion/introversion scale, I still view most of my introverted characteristics as faults. I still feel wrong for not being able to accept every social invitation. I still feel guilty for needing to be home alone to rest. Excited about my breakthrough, I told a more introverted friend about my moment. She stared at me blankly before asking why I thought being the characteristics I mentioned were bad things. Not being American, she never learned that being an introvert was something that needed to be cured. I failed. My students who had helped me prepare for my audition were incensed.
“You should have gotten the part,” one student said. “No,” I replied, “the director chose the best person for the part.” “But you have a cold. He should have considered that.” “I could get a cold before the performance. Based on my audition, he made the right decision.” “But you worked so hard,” other students said. “And so did others,” I countered. “Hard work does not mean I deserve the part.” When I first asked my students to be a test audience for me, I thought I was modeling for them how to prepare for an audition or interview. I allowed them to see my nerves, my rough early audition, and later my polished audition. They saw the difference in my stages of preparation. They saw mediocre transform into quality. When they asked me the day after my audition if I had gotten the part, they did not doubt my answer would be yes. And that’s when I realized a lesson that they had never learned. The entertainment industry tells story after story of how hard work pays off: Rudy struggles with grades, tuition, and physical limits, but still has his moment in the end; in Save the Last Dance, Julia Stiles’s character struggles with a new school and the loss of a parent, working hard to be accepted into Julliard, and, in the end, she succeeds; even in the comedy She’s the Man, Amanda Bynes’s character works hard and is allowed to play soccer on the guys’ team. We tell our students that their hard work is what matters, but we don’t tell stories of people who work hard and don’t achieve their goals. These stories teach that hard work ensures success. Hard work has become a reason for giving a higher grade than was earned, an excuse for giving a position to an unqualified candidate, and a mitigating circumstance for any situation. Recently, I started watching Mayim Bialik’s YouTube channel. I wish I could share one of her videos with all my students and, more importantly, the influential adults in their lives. Mayim shares about a humiliating experience in which she failed. Not sure what take-away she was going to close with, I was surprised and relieved at what she said: instead of numbing the feeling and hiding from it, she thought over the experience and learned from it. As I listened to my students excuse away my failure, assigning blame to circumstances (my cold) and the director (he wasn’t “understanding”) and downplaying the others who auditioned (“You were better.”), I realized that my failure was perhaps the first time my students were seeing a story in which hard work did not equal success. Of course they were crying “foul!” They had never learned that sometimes hard work isn’t enough. Suddenly, the lesson I thought I was teaching was dwarfed by the opportunity to show how to fail. I had worked hard, I was thoroughly prepared, but someone was better. I had no regrets or complaints because my audition was the best I had to offer. And when my students came to our performance, I was glad that they could see the higher quality performance of the lady who got the part I had auditioned for. I can continue to work hard and continue to audition. And if I ever do get the part I audition for, my students and I will know it will not be because the director took pity on my hard work; it will be because I was the best choice for the part. On vacation, I toured one of the historic sites I have been looking forward to visiting for nearly three years: the Terracotta Warriors. Conflicting thoughts filled my mind as I followed the hostel’s tour guide through the excavation pits to see the remains of a long-dead emperor’s dream of immortality. Two-thousand-year-old clay warriors fill the pits to protect the emperor’s burial grounds—a monument to his greatness and, according to the guide, his insanity. We joked and laughed at the cultural disconnect as our very Chinese tour guide treated our hodgepodge group of Western adults as though we were children and would be forever lost if we strayed from her for even a moment. But even while I laughed, I felt frustrated because I felt Thoughts hanging over me, but I wasn’t allowed to reflect quietly and take in the somberness of this monument to what? Hubris? Cruelty?
The guide told us that each statue’s face was unique, matching the artists’ faces rather than the historical figures they represented. She presented the idea as though seeing those hundreds of unique faces immortalized in statues honored those artists, even though she told us that they were slaughtered later to protect the secrets of the burial chambers. I struggled with the feeling hovering around me, refusing to coalesce into words, as I obediently followed the tour guide around the ancient site that continues to draw tourists and impresses them with its ancient magnificence. Days later, returning home on the train, I was reading a book about a Holocaust survivor, and epiphany struck. Looking at the Terracotta Warriors, I felt as though I were visiting a Holocaust Museum except that everyone else was pretending that it wasn’t. What is the difference between a pile of left-behind shoes and eyeglasses in a Holocaust museum and a pile of broken clay faces in a history museum? Each pile represents lives spent because of unbridled pride and power. Because one site is ancient, we admire the “human accomplishment” of a “less advanced” society. Will future (more advanced) generations, untouched by the horror of the Holocaust, visit a museum and express admiration for “human accomplishment” at the medical discoveries Dr. Mengele made from his experiments on prisoners in the concentration camps? Perhaps plaques will name the many twins in his famous studies in a show of immortalizing the victims while still celebrating the Angel of Death’s accomplishments. I couldn’t escape the feeling that while the Terracotta Warriors began showcasing one amazing absolute authority that now it is showcasing how amazing another absolute authority is trying to be. It is a source of cultural pride. As part-German, I cannot view the Holocaust as a credit to my heritage. We in the West would be appalled at the inhumanity of celebrating a tragedy. Yet, as one of my friends explained, Eastern cultures are more honest. They celebrate these monuments, not viewing them as symbols of man’s failure to be human, but rather as proof of the power and greatness of their civilization. They excuse the countless deaths because of the ruler’s “madness,” but they laud the result of that madness. Perhaps the West is becoming more honestly depraved, too. Someone shared on social media an article about a missionary killed by the tribe he was trying to reach. The poster added a single-word caption: “good.” His post had received likes and laughs. How could someone applaud a young missionary’s death? Hours after seeing that post, I was watching tv. After several episodes of the smug villain tormenting Chuck with impunity, one of the good guys abruptly kills the villain. And the word “good” escaped my lips as my heart added, “Someone needed to do that.” Why do we admire an emperor commissioning a monument to his greatness at great human cost, but condemn Dr. Mengele’s achieving scientific discoveries at greater human cost? Why am I appalled at seeing a social media post approving a death and then have the same thought myself hours later? Whether East or West, ancient or advanced, we are human with hearts of darkness that only the True Light can save. There comes a point in every trip that I dislike. Everything is packed. My apartment is neat and clean. I’ve triple-checked dates and times and given copies of my itinerary to people who would track me down should I disappear. I, the uber-planner, am ready to leave, but it’s not time to leave yet. The window of un-usable time leaves me antsy: too much time to stand there; too little time to start something. I’m stuck in the in-between.
On regular days, I encounter this too much time/not enough time conundrum occasionally, but it’s easier to manage that time disparity on a normal day when I don’t have to leave my apartment in pristine vacation condition. My recent vacation brought me once again to this in-between. My trip hadn’t started yet, but it controlled all my decisions for days. In the grocery store, I planned carefully all my meals so there’d be no leftovers (the trip I forgot to throw away the leftover kimchi left an indelible mark in my pre-trip fridge-cleaning process). I moved laundry day later in the week so that the right clothes would be ready for both pre-packing and packing. Even when I took out the trash changed. I carefully considered automatic, mundane tasks for a week. Even though my active decision-making was finished once I reached the in-between, I still judged my options against the trip. Did I want to read? Sure, but my trip book was packed and starting a new book just to leave it behind was not fair to either me or the book. And besides, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on reading; there was too little time to get lost in a book. Did I want to work on a craft project? Of course, but I had just forcefully convinced all my yarn to coexist peacefully in one drawer. I was pretty sure that if I pulled one skein out, they all would burst out in a cotton/acrylic explosion. As I waited in the in-between of my vacation, I appreciated these musings, especially as this vacation coincided with Holy Week. Every day I am caught in the in-between—already saved, not yet home—living in this present world, remembering that I’m not of this world. That reality is easy to remember for the big meaningful tasks of the day. But those mundane ones, well, I barely notice them. One of the mercies of daily life is routine, the automation of the mind which spares us the mental labor of concentrating on every task. I’m not suggesting that I should second-guess every step of my chores or that I should decide whether—in light of eternity—to switch laundry detergents. What comes to mind is what Thornton Wilder’s Our Town highlights: our mental absence during routine, our forgetfulness that life is comprised of a string of mostly insignificant moments. Yet, even as I teach Our Town to yet another group of young adults who don’t appreciate the play’s mundanity, I think Wilder addressed only half of the picture. He shows that the insignificant moments are life here and now, and that the sweetness of those moments is more than we can handle noticing all the time. And certainly, Wilder is correct. It is nice to savor the sweet mundanity of smiling across the room at a friend I don’t get to see every day or be pleasantly overwhelmed by the swelling of the chorus in Handel’s “Worthy is the Lamb.” But the joys awaiting us are also far greater than we can imagine here in the in-between. Recently, I was checking my newsfeed to make sure that America still existed and saw an interesting headline about reading. (Admittedly, I’m not sure whether to call it a headline or not since I really think the article was not news. In our information deluge, it’s hard for me to determine what to call some of these things that are included in my newsfeed, especially since most of it is hardly newsworthy.) In the article, the author shared that she thought of herself as a reader but recently realized that she doesn’t actually read.
That’s when I had a similar epiphany. I think of myself as a Writer, but let’s be honest: there are many days that I chose watching tv re-runs over writing. I, too, think of myself as a Reader, but since my overseas move, I read less and less. (In my defense, I keenly dislike reading on a screen and brought only five books with me.) I think of myself as a Musician, but I more often choose to relax by taking a walk instead of picking up my guitar. (My primary instrument is piano, which didn’t fit into my suitcase when I moved; the guitar could at least take the place of my carry-on.) A new co-worker and I met over lunch the other day, and she asked me how I spent my time. I opened my mouth to casually say, “Oh, I read and write and play the guitar.” But no words came out. My neglected blogs nudged me in the elbow. My novel draft cast me a dirty look. Speaking of dirt, a thick layer of dust muffled my guitar’s laughter. And my five lonely books seemed to be crying for their families packed away in storage halfway around the world. Apparently, who I think I am is different than who I say I am. Words are powerful. So often I doubt positive words that other people say about me, choosing to believe that they are just being polite or kind. Instead, I treat the negative words I say about myself as Gospel Truth. “Oh, I’m not an adventurer.” “That’s so unlike me.” “I am not a kid-person.” “I could never do that.” And, yet, a friend recently challenged me on my tendency to box myself with these words of power. Instead of pointing to how I feel about kids or adventures, she pointed to my actions. I say I’m not an adventurer, but I moved halfway around the world and regularly (albeit accidentally) embark on short adventures over here. I say that I’m not kid-person, but I absolutely love joining my friend for family dinner, which naturally includes her kids, who inexplicably like me. Much of what I have done this past year are things that I claim are “not me.” But apparently, they are because I did them. I’m still musing over this new Me, feeling a little like Peter Callahan as he tries to figure out whether he likes Jell-o when the hospital orderly brings him lunch. This much I know: although I longed for Bilbo’s invisibility ring, I hosted a social event for fifty people this weekend. Although I would rather engage in an intellectual dual with the dragon Smaug than teach small children, I volunteered to teach small children at camp this summer. Perhaps that is because in spite of all my self-identifiers (Teacher, Writer, Socially Awkward, Coward, Invisible), I remember the only identifier that changes all of the others: Follower. Who I am in Christ is far greater and different than anything I am on my own. Only in Him can I be a People-person or Brave. Or perhaps, the truth is that in Him, those labels and their power diminish because He enables us to change and be what we are not. Just as living abroad has changed my coffee habits (in case, you’re wondering: I have a legitimate way to blend the coconut oil into my coffee now, a happy development) and my writing habits, it has also changed my teaching.
Because I am teaching language and my classes are three-four times the size I’m used to, I have students use voice recording technology frequently so that I can listen to them using the target language both in and out of class. At first, I just had them record themselves talking outside of class, but when one of my units was on having academic conversations, I realized that I could not hear each group discussion during class. So, I’ve adjusted and have them record conversations in class as well (not all the time—don’t worry: after a decade of teaching, I’m finally starting to admit my limitations. One teacher can do only so much with the time she has been given. To try to do more is asking for a mental break-down.) One of my habits as a teacher is to either daily or weekly reflectively journal on my teaching: Did this lesson go as well as I planned? What should I change for the next unit? Students J, P, and X did not understand; what different approach could they need? (Admittedly, this is the same journal in which I record my student funnies and insults.) As much as I journal, it’s still hard to detach my thoughts from the experience. Imagine my surprise when I realized that now I get regular glimpses of life on the other side of my desk. As I was listening to a recording of one student painfully delivering each word of his introduction, a burst of laughter in the background drowned out his voice for a couple seconds. I thought, wow, that other group is having some fun, but they are probably making it harder to Student D to gather his thoughts. Then I realized which group was being so noisy: it was the group I had briefly joined. That was my laugh. Oops. The voice recordings are a wonderful fly on the wall, allowing me to hear my class from all over the room. And since the technology choice I use is also social media, I regularly find pictures of myself posted, frozen at the front of the room in various unflattering poses with inexplicable facial expressions. The captions the students post to these pictures might be flattering (and appropriate for their culture): “my beautiful teacher” “my funny foreign teacher,” “My teacher—so cute!” But I see other students in the picture unengaged; I see the awful glare on the blackboard that obliterates my writing; I see the time stamp on the post! I’m not a fan of Robert Burns (my students each year get bonus points for identifying him as my least favorite poet), but this year has certainly been a “To a Louse” moment for me as every day I get to see myself as others see me. Teaching is hard. But as hard as teaching is, I think being a student is harder.
Recently, I began reviewing my grad school textbooks and notes to consolidate them. (Yes, I realize how absolutely nerdy that makes me sound. I long ago accepted that I enjoy being a nerd.) As I reread the first chapter, I added, copied, and discarded notes from my original notebook. When I finished and compared my original notes and my new notes, they were completely different, and, sadly, the new set of notes (not the old set) actually reflected that I understood the material. The old set showed that I didn’t know what information was noteworthy. Even some of my definitions were wrong! I remembered how lost I had felt in those early classes, taking notes that (now) demonstrated how much I misunderstood. In teacher school, we were told that good teachers continue learning. At the time, I thought that meant that teachers kept learning about their subject and how to teach. When I started my masters, I realized that perhaps learning anything new helped me as a teacher because, as one of my students explained, then we understand a student’s perspective more. So, this summer, I’ve started learning a new language and remember anew what it feels like to be a student, to be the one in the room who doesn’t have the answers. When I struggle with a concept, my teacher assures me that I will understood it, much like I do for my students. But on my new side of the desk, I know how absolutely lost I am, and I wonder how my teacher can possibly think I’ll make progress. I get frustrated when I get answers wrong not because I didn’t understand the vocabulary words, but because I didn’t understand the question or the directions. I get overwhelmed when I see how much material I still have to learn and how little I have learned. I get discouraged when I miss the same question for the third time that lesson (something I sometimes wondered whether my students were doing on purpose). On the flip side, everything is new, so each word mastered is a major victory (unlike later, when full sentences or, gasp, paragraphs become the yardstick). So, yeah, teaching is hard. But the struggling of learning is perhaps harder. |
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