Called to be a Teacher
In 1978, my first teaching post was to Bourke High School. On opening the letter, I went from stunned silence to disbelief. But, yes, it was true and a harsh reality for a person who had grown up in the beach city of Newcastle. On arrival, I discovered the Baptist Church had been praying for twelve months for a Christian teacher to be appointed at the school. As a relatively young Christian, I had a clear call from the Lord to teach and now He had planted me in the place of His choosing. My re-orientation to see my teaching role as a vocational gift had begun. At this stage, I didn’t know how my faith related to the task of teaching and learning but had a desire to serve the Lord. This placement seemed to be a mismatch in my eyes. So, the question I had to begin with was ‘who is the teacher that teaches?’ for teaching the Jesus way is an autobiographical process – the teacher is the method.” (Beech, 2015, p. 7).
Teaching like any other human activity, emerges from who we are. Our sense of personal identity and calling and most importantly our view of God will be deeply influential on how we fulfil our educational task. Os Guinness, the Christian writer, defines calling in this way. “Calling is the truth that God calls us to Himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do and everything we have is invested with a special devotion, dynamism and direction lived out as a response to His summons and service.” (Guinness, 2003, p. 10) Throughout History, the call of God upon the lives of men and women have brought the most complete re-orientation of life and inspired works of faith in the most difficult and challenging circumstances. All of us have a calling to count for God in His wonderful creation.
The 1986 USA Teacher of the year, Guy Duod, who wrote the classic “Molder of Dreams” believed that there was no higher calling than to teach children. Henry Brook Adams said that a teacher affects eternity and can never tell where the influence stops. In Bourke, I learnt there is no richer meaning in life than to receive and live out your calling. The Lord was primarily concerned about conforming me to the image of His Son and through this experience He showed me aspects of my character that He was renewing. My Heavenly Father showed me that He had gifted me to teach and that I would be truly myself in the place of His choosing. He had called me along the line of my giftedness for service and this calling would sustain me in the most challenging of times.
In 1987, God called me to Christian Community High School (now Regents Park Christian School), where He began to open up the wonder and riches of an education unfolded through the lens of God’s Story. Some teachers may feel that they have almost stumbled into Christian education as they applied for a job in a number of schools and were employed by the Christian school. In the providence of God, He has placed you there for a reason and it is so important to affirm that you are called by the Lord for His Spirit enables us to love the learners, love learning and love bringing them together to bless our students. The rediscovery of calling is critical for our students in a world that tells them they will have at least 10 jobs in 5 careers, many of which haven’t been invented yet. What a privilege it is to model to them what it means to be called and find one’s ultimate purpose and direction for living. We can set them in a direction aligned to their giftedness.
Our influence on students is enormous as we spend so much time engaging with them that who we are and what we do eventually permeates into their hearts and minds and shapes who they are. For Jesus said, ‘when a student is fully trained, he will be like his teacher’ (Luke 6:40). For truly we are called to be moulders of young lives as His Spirit works in and through us.
“You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.” (2 Corinthians 3:2,3)
Grace and Peace
TEC Team
References
- Beech, G. (2015). Christians as Teachers. Wipf and Stock
- Guinness, O. (2003). Rising to The Call. Thomas Nelson