Even before a word is on my tongue, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether.
Psalm 139: 4

The last few days before the two-week winter break are always difficult, because students are restless, they don’t want to work, and they act out in strange and not-so-wonderful ways. Most of my students have learning disabilities, which makes academic work much more painful for them than for students who can read and write with ease. Sitting at their desks and staying on task is sheer torture for my students. Many of them jump out of their seats frequently and find it almost impossible not to chatter, even when I am talking.

Thursday was an especially torturous day. Within minutes of the start of my third-period language arts class, the jumping began. Four boys danced around the room, aiming paper balls at the trashcan, pretending they were shooting baskets. I asked them politely a couple of times to get back in their seats. They ignored me.

“Get back in your seats right now!” I bellowed. My raised voice got their attention, they knew I meant business, and they sat down.

To reinforce my bellowing, I shook my finger at each of the offenders in turn and said, “You will stay where you are until the bells rings, you will do your work, and you will not get out of your seats. Do you understand?”

At that moment, the acting principal walked into my classroom. “Are you having trouble with students not doing their work?” he asked.

“Did you hear me yelling at them out in the hall?” I asked.

“I didn’t hear a thing,” he said. “We’ve had some issues in other classes this morning, and I just wanted to make sure everything is all right in here.”

“It is now,” I said.

Satisfied that everything was under control, the acting principal left. In retrospect, I’m positive that he heard every word I yelled, but because he knows that I work with some challenging students, he chose to ignore my raised voice. Yet even before the words were on my tongue, says the psalmist, God knew what was coming.

During these last few days before Christmas, as I ponder what God knows about me—including what I’m going to say and how I’m going to say it before I open my mouth—I am grateful that God’s knowledge is tempered with love. God doesn’t hold my bellowing against me, but teaches me new and better ways to use my tongue. After all, “a soft answer turns away wrath” (Proverbs 15:01).

“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near.”
Matthew 24:32.

Dried figs were a treasured childhood treat. I liked biting through the sweet leathery skin of the fruit and crunching the tiny seeds between my teeth. It wasn’t until I was an adult and had moved to Florida that I tasted my first fresh-from-the-tree fig. When I bit into the succulent fruit, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

Fig trees and other plants have lessons to teach us, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear. Watch the buds of the fig tree swell and then unfurl into leaves, says Jesus. When that happens, summer is near.

While I’ve learned a few things from plants (how to recognize and avoid poison ivy, for example), I’ve learned more from people. Two of the lessons that my fifth-grade teacher taught me I’ve never forgotten. That’s because Mrs. Pearl Shirley liked to speak in aphorisms, which, as far as I know, she made up herself, and which she drummed into my brain by quoting them in her classroom several times a day.

“You’d better get on the stick before the stick gets on you,” Mrs. Shirley said to students who were dawdling or off task. She meant that there would be consequences for inaction.

That aphorism came to mind recently when I was planning where to travel during my upcoming spring break. I found airfare to Copenhagen for the bargain price of $678 in March, while airfare at that time to most other European capitals was running $800-$900. But I didn’t get on the stick, and by the time I had finally decided to purchase the tickets, they were no longer available.

“You’d better use your head for something besides a hat rack,” Mrs. Shirley said to students who shrugged their shoulders and said, “I don’t know,” when she asked them a question about the lesson. Mrs. Shirley meant that one’s head is more than a decorative appendage; it’s to be used for a high and noble purpose: thinking. A mind, as some wise person has said, really is a terrible thing to waste.

There are lessons to be learned, whether from fig trees or teachers or seasons of the year. As I learn the lessons of Advent—faith, hope, and love—may I become better equipped to meet the needs of my students.

Good and upright is the LORD; therefore he instructs sinners in the way.
Psalm 25:8

Gone are the days when teachers wielded canes or paddles or rulers to beat their students into submission. Beating was never a very effective pedagogical method anyway. The student who received the caning or paddling was likely to harbor such a grudge against the teacher that further learning was next to impossible.

I know, for I was one of those students.

I enjoyed singing, even as a very young child. I had a wonderfully kind and patient music teacher during my first years of school, Mrs. Janice Giles. She carried a pitch pipe with her as she moved from classroom to classroom, teaching songs that I remember to this day, including “White Coral Bells,” “Go In and Out the Window,” “Haul on the Bowline,” and “Low Bridge, Everybody Down.”

Then I moved to sixth grade and Mr. Roger Carpenter’s music class. He nearly made me lose my love for music the day I made my own “instrument.” I discovered that I could produce a curious vibrating sound by putting the pages of my music book between my lips, and then humming and blowing simultaneously. My classmates enjoyed the sound and I thought Mr. Carpenter did too, because he turned from the piano to look at me several times and gave me what appeared to be a slight smile.

Suddenly he bolted up from the piano bench, snatched the music book from my hands, and escorted me from the classroom. On the way out, he grabbed his 16-inch wooden paddle. The music room was near the auditorium, so Mr. Carpenter marched me onto the stage, took me behind the curtain, and summoned another teacher as a witness.

I was terrified. I had never been paddled in school before.

“How many swats do you think you deserve?” Mr. Carpenter demanded.

I wanted to blurt out “None!” but I knew instinctively that such an answer would only serve to exacerbate Mr. Carpenter’s wrath.

“Three,” I said. He ordered me to bend over and touch my ankles. Then gripping the paddle with both hands, he swung it like a baseball bat at my buttocks. The force of the blows nearly knocked me over, yet I was determined not to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he had hurt me. I stifled my tears and walked back to the classroom as nonchalantly as I could, even though I was limping slightly. For several months after that humiliating—and painful—experience, music lost its magic for me.

Unlike Mr. Carpenter, the Master Teacher never beats students to force them to comply or to learn. Using a mixture of goodness and uprightness, the Holy One teaches willing pupils everything they need to know to live full, rich and fruitful lives. As I sit in the Master’s classroom, I expect to receive invaluable instruction that will guide me on my way through Advent and into the New Year.