Tonight was our annual Fundraiser for school. It was a great time to catch up with friends and parents of my students. It was also a sweet blessing and time of closure, as the reality of not getting to teach there this next year slowly sinks in.
Here is the speech I gave, for those interested.
He walked into the first grade classroom, started
to unpack his things and turned in his homework.
He sat down, looked at the task on his desk to complete, then looked up at me, with concern on his face.
He sat down, looked at the task on his desk to complete, then looked up at me, with concern on his face.
“Have you read the instructions?” I asked.
“No, I just- I’m sad for all the homeless people.”
He replied.
Although I wasn’t expecting this to come out of
his mouth, I wasn’t overly surprised by his words. We were praying for those
without homes that week.
In fact, this particular student’s dad had just emailed
me the night before saying how in awe he was over his son’s longing to want to
pray for those who are homeless and those who are suffering, particularly in
the city of Seattle.
Together, we talked about those who don’t have
homes, those who are suffering and what we can do to love them.
We were able to talk about the compassion Jesus
had (and still has) on those suffering and hurting. We were able to discuss living
in a broken world and our need for Jesus. The best part is we were able to talk
about the promises of the gospel and that even in an imperfect world, we can
serve a perfect God. Not only were we able to talk about it, we were
able to pray about it as a class. These are the moments I live for:
becoming broken for and falling in love with the city of Seattle, right along
side my students.
When I first decided to become a teacher, I never
realized the huge opportunity God would give me to not only teach math and
reading, but to disciple students as well.
It’s an extremely unique opportunity, that I hope
never gets lost amongst the academia of classical schooling, but that our staff
would realize is an integral part of classical schooling.
One of the core foundations of classical education
is not only teaching our students, but teaching our students how to learn and
think. In fact, something I pray daily for my students is that they would “love
to learn.”
However, how can we ever love to learn without
understanding the reality of the gospel story in every subject? How can we
truly love to learn if the gospel isn’t interwoven into the lessons we teach?
This year, my class has been studying the history
of Seattle. As we study the foundations of this city, we see how God has had a
plan for this city from the very first time Arthur Denny and his family set up
camp at Alki Beach.
My students grow sad when they hear stories about
people like Chief Seattle who worshipped many gods… yet at the sound of this
news, many of them recall the words of the song we sing weekly, “Are there more
Gods than one? No there is only one true God. In Isaiah 45, God says, “I am the
Lord, apart from me there is no other.”
My prayer for Seattle Classical Christian school
is that it would never be a school with a high focus on academics, yet lacking
in our love and fervor of the gospel. I pray that we would be able to
successfully intertwine the two, with the gospel of Jesus Christ being the firm
foundation on which we build.
Sally Lloyd Jones paraphrases Matthew 19 in the
Jesus Storybook Bible as, “Jesus turned to his helpers and said, ‘No matter how
big you grow, never grow up so much that you lose your child’s heart: full of
trust in God. Be like these children. They are the most important in my
kingdom.’”
I pray we are able to keep our own child's heart
as we disciple our children well and that we are able to teach a child the
tools he or she needs to continue learning beyond Seattle Classical Christian
School - the most important tool being Jesus’ story of coming to a broken
world, dying an underserved death for an undeserving people and giving us
eternal life so that we may know Him, love Him and serve Him in ALL we ever do.
**No matter how hard I try, most of my writing has 1-2 sentence paragraphs. (Thank you, Journalism).
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