That Teacher in the Mess

In my freshmen year of high school, I was required to take Integrated Science and Physics (or at least that’s what I think the class was called). My teacher was in her first year solo and had student-taught the previous year. This teacher happened to look very similarly to me – same kind of freckles and wavy brownish/red hair. We had similar taste in music and coffee shops. As if she was my big sister, I saw myself in her, but more apparent than these superficial characteristics to me was the way I saw myself in her on a soul level. This teacher was a mess. She mumbled when she spoke. She rambled in a straight-from-my-brain-to-my-mouth sort of way. And she always looked like she got half a night’s sleep. I was drawn to the mess. I related all too well to the mess. And, even more so, I related to her love for Jesus.

The first day of school in her science class, she casually remarked that, unlike in science, the existence of God could not be proven. I said I could prove it, because I had watched some lecture on TV comparing the existence of the Loch ness monster to the existence of God. The tele-evangelist had made, what I felt, was a bulletproof argument for both God and the god-like monster. Because of that rant, she lent me a book called “The Science of God”, which led to what has now been more than a fifteen year old friendship.

As a public school teacher, she wasn’t allowed to talk about Jesus or Christianity. But I could feel the love of Christ radiating from her and, every now and then, she’d say something that confirmed my suspicions. Seeing a Christian like her outside of a church building with all its disingenuous affronts made me hopeful. I felt comforted seeing someone who wasn’t putting up a front and trying to pretend to be perfect, someone who was so openly just trying to figure it all out one tough day at a time.

I sought her out in between classes, at lunch, after school. She even let me come with her and some other teachers one time to a trivia night at a local restaurant – a tradition I would then adopt for the next five years with my friends. I listened to music she listened to, read Christian books she recommended and studied things that she felt were important – like the “science of God” and why we should care for the homeless. I don’t know why she put up with me, but I’m glad she did. I wouldn’t be who I am today without those experiences.

When I came out to my parents in high school, my mom asked this teacher to try to talk some sense into me. This was well after I had been in her class, but I still looked up to her. She just sat next to me at a park and mostly listened as I talked about my parents and other teachers and students at school who were giving me a hard time, how I felt like I was being real about something that I had felt for a long time. At the end of it all, she said one thing: just don’t let this become you’re identity; do not forget that you are more than this. She bought me a copy of her favorite book, The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning, which is a book that always feels like it was written for me every time I read it. The message: we are a mess and Christ’s love for us is reckless, foolish and unstoppable. We cannot earn it. We never will. And the church should focus on this unreasonable God who is after our hearts, not perfection.

For the past two years, I’ve been a part of Teach For America and that has been a great experience. TFA teachers are some of the most creative, hardworking and inspired teachers I know. They push themselves (often to the detriment of their own health and well-being) and continually hold themselves to better results. Their sense of urgency for education equality is contagious. I may not agree with all of the things that the organization promotes, but I will say that the TFA teachers I have met are some of the most inspiring and effective humans that I know. And for two years, I’ve tried my best to run alongside them. (Why wouldn’t I? They’re incredible!)

But, I’m realizing something. My heart is in a different place. It’s still back in my old science classroom with that teacher from high school who spoke Christ’s name every day without even having to say it. My heart is back in the mess, in her vulnerability and her lack of fear in showing us that she didn’t have it all figured out. Good teaching techniques are important – solid checks for understanding, having a great LTP and planning for culturally responsive teaching – but that isn’t why I became a teacher.

My decision to become a teacher came from a walk in prayer in a Peruvian desert. When I heard God speak to me and say I should join TFA, I literally laughed out loud at the absurdity (because that organization had emphatically rejected me two years prior). I was assigned to be a math teacher, even though all of my friends said, “Whatever you do, don’t teach math”. All the same, I felt God calling me to be a math teacher, and I struggled through a year of learning math. I almost quit many times along the way, because I kept failing the math certification test. After the third time I failed the exam and months of preparation, I found myself crying in a small prayer house in Lubbock, Texas. I couldn’t pass it and told God that, if I was going to be a teacher, God would have to do it for me. I couldn’t pass that test alone. Two years in, I still struggle when learning a new math concept. I have to sit with it for a long time. But it turns out that a lot of my students find math just as hard, and some much harder. We reside in the mess together. I can’t tell you how many times the math classroom has felt like a holy experience – not because of the perfection, but because of the grit and the struggle: Watching a student who refuses to give up; crying for a student who has given up; sitting with another teacher who understands just how much a teacher loves their students. These are holy experiences. And the classroom can become holy ground.

So, here it goes. Here’s to a year in the mess. And it’s in that mess, that I’m inviting Christ into my classroom. I may not actually say it with my words, but I hope that Christ speaks all the same.

If you are a praying person, please pray for this teacher. She had surgery recently and is in recovery.