Longing to Thrive

“For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, ¹⁰ so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, ¹¹ being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience,”

                                    -Colossians 1:9-11

I have been noticing lately that there is a staunch difference between living and thriving; and it was none other than my U.S. History class that has been showing me the difference. In order to understand what I mean you have to know a little bit of background on this particular class of students. They are a rowdy bunch that can talk a mile a minute until it comes to talking about class material. To them, everything else in this universe is more exciting than learning about Andrew Jackson’s Presidency or how a bill becomes a law. I do my very best to make lessons fun and exciting for them but for the most part it is to no avail. This particular class does everything they can to get me off track, to get out of homework, and to get under my skin. Sometimes their sinister plans work.  I have tried everything short of putting on a wig and bringing in a circus act to teach these kids the ins and outs of American History. The difficult thing about this whole situation has been that U.S. History is my favorite thing to teach and yet I cannot engage this group of students. There are times when I get discouraged and want to just give up on them. On bad days I think simply assigning them pages at the beginning of class and having them read the whole period only to give them review questions to do for homework just so I do not have to deal with their shenanigans. I have never actually done that but there have been many times when I have thought very seriously about it.

            This whole year I have been trying to assess the problem with this class and I have come to very few conclusions. I have tried everything I know how to do and nothing has seemed to work. I have tried to scare them into learning, I have tried to allow them to learn at their own pace, I have tried to make everyday  more fun than the last and each time I try something new I come up empty handed and more defeated. Now before you start calling me thinking that I have fallen into a state of depression because of this class just wait for the good part. Last Friday I realized something, I began to see that their lack of interest in,not only my subject but in school as a whole is not my fault. I discovered that the age old teachers’ question, “How do I motivate my students?” is simply not the question to ask. I had been looking for answers to this question and as a result I was killing myself trying to motivate these kids. I realized that I cannot motivate my students, I cannot force feed them learning, I just cannot. What I can do is help them motivate themselves. Each student is responsible for his or her actions, and when they realize that they have to account for the actions of their lives they begin to work, they begin to take interest, they begin to long for something better than just living-they long to thrive.

            Although my 16 year olds have not been able to grasp this concept of thriving quite yet and I have very little hope that they will in the near future, I can say that this idea has changed the way that I teach and the way I live. Sometimes it seems like I just roll through my day without even thinking. I act like my students. I forget that every breath I take and every word I say reverberates in heaven.  Therefore, my challenge has been to “live a life worthy of the LORD”. I have been challenged to stop living and start thriving! In my classroom I have begun to do this by putting my whole self into teaching, I am putting more time and effort into the personal relationships I have developed with my students. I have started praying for them by name. In my personal life, I have been taking every opportunity to invest in people rather than things. Thriving has taken on a new meaning to me, it has come to mean that my life is not mundane or ordinary, it is quite extraordinary and thus I should be living as the main character in story of my life instead of the supporting actress. This concept is true for all of us. We are created in the image of God so by definition we are extraordinary so let us all start living a life worthy of the LORD.