In Pilgrim's Progress, Christian passed through the valley of Humiliation after his lovely experience at the palace Beautiful.
I follow in his footsteps.
My last year at OHC was filled with the best experiences, the sweetest fellowship, the closest connection with Jesus, the most amazing canvassing programs I've ever led, the love and affirmation of some of the world's most talented and affectionate academy students... Those times were sweet.
Now I'm here -- learning more every day just how green I am, just how much I really don't know, everything I'm not good at. I feel like a little girl, scared and alone in a crowd of unfamiliar faces.
Humanity liked the comfortable fellowship, but my heart knows that the valley is what I really need. Humanity had too much push and shove around here...it needs to be put in its place.
Today I observed Ms. Wanda teach Freshman Bible, and I taught Senior Speech.
Watching her was delightful. I really enjoy seeing the creative things that seem to flow out of her so effortlessly. It is a comfort for me to realize that she once struggled through the experience that I am now and that the effort and experience have yielded this beautiful result. One day, I too will be a walking encyclopedia of teaching resources, a confident and assured classroom manager, and a clear and concise explainer. Although, when I get to that day I'll probably struggle with pride, so in reality its better to be here where I'm forced to lean hard on my Lord.
Observing
Ms. Wanda did something for the memory verse test that I thought was really cool. She had each student find three other people to repeat their memory verse to before they came to get their paper to write it. They are freshman, and their memorizing skills are not what they one day will be, so she is "scaffolding"-- giving them a framework to climb on in order to build their skills. I love how she does that.
Her classroom management is a marvel to me. Today while the students were working on something, Firecracker started conversing with one of the girls like she was his girlfriend, asking if she was ok, getting really close to her, and reaching out to caress her hair. (He had just done the exact same thing to another girl on the other side of the classroom. Bless him, I'm sure his little boy heart has no concept of what that does to a girl..) He glanced up to see Ms. Wanda looking at him.
"What?!!" he said, "Did I do something wrong?"
"I didn't say you did anything wrong."
"Then why are you looking at me like that?"
"I'm just looking." She smiled.
He moved back into his desk.
"Be careful." She said with meaning, as she turned her attention back to the rest of the class.
I was especially interested to see how she handled it when two of them ignored her instructions and kept talking with each other since that's one of the big struggles I had yesterday.
Firecracker, and another dear boy I'm going to call Mr. Moody, were having a conversation while the entire class was supposed to be taking their memory verse test.
Shhhhhh.... Ms. Wanda warned.
They kept talking.
Shhhhhhhhhh..... she warned again.
Still talking.
"Firecracker! Mr. Moody!"
They kept talking!
"Hey!" (louder now) "Mr. Moody!" she caught his eye. "You guys need to be quiet during the test."
They got back to work.
What I got from that was that she stayed on them, even when they were ignoring her, and she didn't let them get away with it. If she had given up after the first or third time and let them keep talking it would have communicated that it was ok to ignore her.
She's on top of them, and keeps the classroom running like a well-oiled machine, and they love to do what she tells them because she has a warmth and lovingness about her that communicates she believes in them. I'm working on pin-pointing how she communicates that warmth. I think the biggest thing is her smile. I need to smile more. Jaimie always tells me I look really scary when I teach because I get serious and focus hard on what I'm saying.
I think another thing is the way she handles classroom discussions. She focuses in on whoever is talking as though what they have to say is very important, and she always affirms them for sharing. She'll say, "Very insightful" or something like that.
Like I mentioned before, she is experimenting with the inverted classroom in her Bible class this semester. Today the students had done their reading of the story of Moses before they came to class, and had made a T-chart contrasting Moses before his wilderness experience with Moses afterwards.
They had written that T-chart on the left side of their notebooks (the left brain activity side) and now she had them complete two right-brained activities on the right side. They had to write out an answer to the question "Why should we study the book of Exodus?" and they were to create a job description for Moses. There are students in this class who have absolutely no familiarity with Bible stories. Not all of our students are Adventist. We have in this class one of the Catholic faith, and one Muslim. Understandably, the young Muslim has had less exposure to Bible stories. So Ms. Wanda is combining familiarizing them with the stories with taking a deeper look at the application of those stories to our everyday lives. She is doing an excellent job.
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