Usually I reserve Fridays for a joke, because by Friday most of us could use some humor. This week, however, I’d like to post a true story that illustrates why, in spite of all the, um, folderol, teachers have to put up with, why we continue to teach. This story comes from Nancy S. on the Talkies list.

Our youth group conducted our church service today. This is a high school group made up of all kids in the community, and ecumenical in nature. I know most of them and have had many in class. The young man who gave the sermon spoke about how communities should be uniting, not dividing, spoke about how the cliques that form in high school would be broken down if everyone worked toward the idea of embracing differences and sharing similarities instead of what makes them different. It was well-written and meaningful. They invoked a message that Mohammad makes that is very similar to the Golden Rule as a way of alerting us to the diversity that we find around us.

Following the service, I complimented the student about his meaningful sermon. His reply, “Well, actually, as I was writing it, I thought back to your class (10th grade Eng) and the lessons we learned there from you about how differences divide and similarities can bring us together, and I just wrote from that aspect. I wanted to tell you that,” he said.

Wow, that was so meaningful. I came away with my eyes overflowing. I thought back to the class I had with his group…and we did a lot of work with diversity, beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

So … keep teaching these kids. They do listen, and they do absorb and sometimes, it’s the good stuff that comes out to impress you.

Posted Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:01:54 and filed under Teaching. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.