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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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The past school year, I had two students that discouraged me. Let’s call them Bob and Carl. Carl was new to a Christian school and didn’t know how to behave. He got in trouble a lot, and was very disrespectful. He was prayed over throughout the year. A few weeks before summer break, he accepted Christ as His savior. He still had some trouble but his behavior and attitude improved. Bob is a different story. He had a rough start in life and was adopted by a Christian couple. He is disrespectful, a course clown, and disruptive to the classroom. When you have time to spend with him individually, he has a great personality. He has an image to uphold and rejects Christ. He is soaked in prayer, and I pray that one day, I will be a brother in Christ.
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As rewarding as this field of Christian Education can be, there are certainly times of utter frustration and discouragement as well. One year I had a dear little child that had been removed from their parent at a young age, then removed from the grandparents care for the same neglectful practices. They were in the custodial care of a distant family member and struggling with disrupted sleep patterns and a diagnosis of ADHD. This child was creative and imaginative, cute as a button, but struggled with reading, language, and spelling skills. The child missed weeks of school at a time, some weeks for valid reasons, and some weeks for questionable reasons. While at school they would make slow but steady progress, but after every extended absence, very little work would be accomplished and the gaps in the learning were making it virtually impossible for the child to achieve success in even the smallest assignments. I poured as much encouragement and love into that young life as I could, emphasizing Gods love and purpose for their life. I do not know where this little one will end up in the years to come, but God does, and I am thankful that they at least heard the Gospel, memorized scripture, and were immersed in a Christian World View for the year that they were in my classroom.