A Praying Pedagogy

I treasure the privilege of being a teacher. Nothing is quite like it and it's not quite like anything else. Kind of like broccoli.

Unlike broccoli, teaching should be taken very seriously.

A teacher who doesn't pray is like a four-year-old jumping into the ocean without a life vest.
However, there are numerous times when you have life-impacting truth to offer your students and there are those select few whose eyes look like marbles.

So I pray, and I work harder. Find yet another way to wrap the content, expand my vocabulary, analyze and remove barriers, vary the atmosphere, create a shock. And those marbles continue to stare back at me.

At this point, I have to realize that unresponsive students are my responsibility, but they're not necessarily my fault. I never stop trying to reach those students, but I can't allow their attitude to be a cause of constant discouragement or self-bashing. Rather, I have to keep praying.

I sit in my room at night, at the end of everything I know to do ...and I pray. If I give up on prayer, I've given up on my students.