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Describe a recent time when you’ve been discouraged with a student’s progress. Have you witnessed a change in the student’s life, or are you still waiting for that change to occur?
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It was a couple of years ago when I was student-teaching. The student was probably too young for that group, but barely made it in for his age. His abilities were lacking because the focus wasn’t there. He also had a history of being a bit of “trouble” and may have come from a troubled home. Nevertheless, it was worth investing in him. Encouraging him in his struggles and sharing in the little victories boosted his confidence. This was in public school, so I was limited from sharing Christ. I could only share Christ through my actions and behavior. I saw this young student begin to grow. I think he simply needed someone sincerely taking an interest in him and his progress. He needed to know that he was valuable and there were people on his side. I pray he will come to know Christ if he doesn’t already. As Christian educators, we care because Christ cared. We love because he loved. We live according to his will and way, because he came to show us that when he was here with us on Earth.
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One of my students was not progressing well in her English. She had been my ESL student for 2 years and still made many of the same mistakes because she would never acknowledge that she made errors or needed correcting. She would say things like, “It doesn’t matter if I …” She also spoke in ways that sounded disrespectful to me. We floundered together for a while. Eventually I talked with her, with her mother and asked the school counselor to speak to her too. The girl slowly began to see her need to learn and to listen. The mother was not fully supportive but did know the daughter’s tendency to speak rudely and worked on that with her at home. The counselor worked with her on Growth Mindset. Throughout the whole thing, she had faith and a relationship with the Lord. She even told me once, “My brother is so stupid he doesn’t even believe there is a god.” Her faith was an encouragement to me even when her English was not. She did however begin to make the progress that she needed and improve in her writing. These challenging students are the ones that I remember for years to come. I work so hard to see them grow. I still remember my first student in 2000. She was a Thai girl in a boarding school in India. She hated learning English, being in boarding, and just about everything else. Now she is an adult and still keeps in touch. She often thanks me for pushing her and loving her. She is not a believer, but her brother is, and I pray that she will come to faith in Christ too.
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Recently I started to watch a student grow immensely. They had struggled with math concepts at the beginning of the year, most likely due to Covid-19 interrupting the previous school, but had taken off the last couple of months before the school year ended. But just when I thought we had turned a page he started to regress again. No longer completing assignments and the parents left with no idea of what to do. The piece that concerned me the most was that he now understood the concepts but seemed to lack the motivation to complete them. It was heart breaking to see this student continue to make the decisions they did but I continued to invest relationally knowing that this wasn’t the end of their academic story.
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At the beginning of this school year, our small Christian school was one of the only schools opened to onsite education, as most schools were online due to COVID. As a result, we got many new students whose parents wanted them to have an in person teacher. Most of the new students did not come from a Christian background and one in particular was very firm in what he had been taught and believed, which is evolution. It was very discouraging because throughout his first week of being there it seemed like I couldn’t teach anything without him wanting to “prove me wrong” by raising his hand and then sharing evolution with the course. I quickly switched gears in what we were learning about in both Science and Bible course to help answer some of the doubts he had about Christianity and Jesus. By the end of the first semester, as he was preparing to transfer back to the now open public school, he shared that he now believed in who Jesus said He was and believed that God had created the heavens and earth. He admitted he had more questions and that he knew he should stay at our school so he can continue growing his faith. He did end up transferring it, but it was wonderful to see the transition in him and how his attitude changed from knocking anything I said about Jesus or the Bible to wanting to study it and learn more.
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There is a student at our school whom our youth pastor had counseled and shared the Gospel with last school year. He then emailed the faculty to pray for this young man. This student was not in my course but his sister was. I prayed for his salvation and one day had the opportunity to talk to his sister about her relationship with God and that I was praying for her brother. She told me she knew the Lord as her personal Savior and she deeply appreciated me praying for her brother. Toward the end of this school year, an email came out from our Bible teacher that this young man had given his life to the Lord as his Savior !! How wonderful it was to hear of this and how God had answered our prayers. What a change in this student’s life.