One of the things the Lord has taught me this summer as I prepare to teach English again (it's been over a year since I've taught an English class) is this:
Show, don't tell.
For the math teacher, such a practice is easy--work through the difficult math problems with the students. For the chef, easy. Walk through the steps of a recipe with the learner. For the coach, easy. Demonstrate how to properly perform a layup for the athletes.
For English teachers, this means one thing: We have to write--about anything and everything, really. If we want our students to be effective writers--writers that will change the culture in which we live--we must be attempting the same. As Christians, our goal is to advance the kingdom of God by being faithful and wise followers of Christ. Nowhere in Scripture are we given permission to sigh, wash our hands of the world we live in, and refuse to become informed, involved believers.
In my preparation for the beginning of the school year, I re-read a wonderful passage from Gene Veith's Reading Between the Lines. The book is a call for Christians to once again become readers--readers of books that are true, good, and beautiful. We are, he argues, people of the Book. God designed His Word to be written and recorded for us to read and teach to our children and our children's children. And that means we must be readers.
My goal this year as I begin my third year of teaching is to show my students what they need to learn, not merely tell. My goal for them is that they develop a love for the true, the good, and the beautiful in the written word (both their own and the words of the great authors).
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On an entirely separate note...
At random moments throughout my day, I will be stopped with a specific memory of my time in London. I love those moments but I also wish I never had them. It will be a while before Michael and I make it back over the Great Ocean, but I stumbled upon a review of the play "Faust" which we saw in London, and I wanted to share the article with you.
The link is below.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/17/theater/17glus.html?_r=1
It was written on December 17, 2006, only a few weeks after we had seen the play. Taken from Goethe's Faust, the play tells of a man who, in a quest for unlimited knowledge and power, sells his soul to the devil. You can only imagine what horrors follow.
Set in an abandoned warehouse, the play ran through two times over a 90 minute period, and it was wholly interactive. You could travel freely through various rooms of the warehouse and catch a scene taking place. Once the actors ran from the room, you had the freedom to follow them (if you could keep up) or find another room to enter, where other actors performed a different snippet from the play. Like a puzzle, you had to sort the pieces together to develop an understanding of the play itself. This was definitely one of my favorite experiences while in London.
A copy of the play is available on DVD through the punchdrunk.org, but you have to become a member of their "Friends of Punchdrunk" to get a copy (for a mere 20 pounds, or 40 USD).
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