My first period speech class has the dubious honor of being good enough for me to push. It is simultaneously the class that I have the greatest hope for, and the class that most often ruins my day. After two months of leading discussion, persuading, lecturing, and chastising I saw signs that it was time to entrust them with the class, at least a little bit. I had been talking about being thoughtful people, about preparing them to lead, about giving them responsibility; and now it was time to push them out of the nest and see what would happen.
The scary thing about all this – and I warned them – is that the class will probably first experience failure. In such a class as mine, success and failure are obtuse terms (certainly an “A” doesn’t mean success), but failure is what generally happens; just as a kid learning to ride a bike for the first time will experience some “failure”. Though I have warned them several times about the perils of such responsibility, they didn’t seem to take it seriously till today when Sophie exclaimed that she was terrified that the other students would ruin the class for her.
Tuesday was the first day I started giving them back their class. During the previous weeks I had led discussion on a couple of good and thoughtful songs, and now Josh had the same assignment. He brought in “Hey Jude” – a fantastic song – but was appalled when I asked him to lead discussion on it. “I thought you just wanted me to bring something in!” So I started the discussion and then tried to hand it over. It was not a success. But neither was it an incredible failure. A very heart driven discussion came up about who we should trust and how to keep thinking in life: it was the sort of discussion that refreshes a teacher more than a good night’s sleep.
However, today that was the first real test. Out of the 1 hour and 40 min class, I gave them the first half hour. I didn’t give direction, I didn’t tell them to start or stop (other than to tell them to stop damaging the classroom). I just sat there while they did what they wanted. At the end of half an hour I asked them why they spent their time that way, and why they thought I wasn’t being more directive. Then I had them have a “digestive” talk about their next speech (a eulogy for someone they know). Again the class started to disintegrate. After about 10 minutes of conversational wandering, I started to explaining to them why it was important that they have actual responsibility for this class. It was then that Sophie got mad, and got to business.
She didn’t know where it was going to go, but it would go somewhere. She didn’t have a good idea what it was about, but she was determined for it to be about something. Initially the conversation went to environmentalism. Surprisingly enough, the conversation became more and more thoughtful, till the question of “how do we fix something that’s broken when we’re just mad that someone else broke it?” became “what is redemption?”
“You mean like theSwitchfoot song?”, asked Josh.
“Should we listen to it?”, asked Dan.
Though many people at Bending Oaks have had some Christian background, there is scarcely a more explosive topic than Christianity. It’s like throwing a conversational hand-grenade into a room of, well, juvenile delinquents. Eventually someone’s going to pull then pin and then there will be conversational shrapnel all over the place for the foreseeable future. I told the kids that most Switchfoot songs are very Christian, and they picked one of the most blatant ones. The song makes no sense outside of a distinctively Christian understanding of health, healing, and life. Still, they wanted to take a look at it.
And so, glory to God, we did. I printed out the lyrics, and we discussed them closely. I explained the references in the chorus, “I’ve got my hands/ in redemption’s side/ whose scars are bigger than/ these doubts of mine/ I’ll fit all of these monstrosities inside/ and come alive”. We discussed the figure of Jesus, the role of repentance, and the act of coming alive by placing our doubts and sins inside the scars of the Christ.
And as soon as Sophie asked, “Is redemption possible without Jesus?”, the bell rang.
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knotquiteawake says
Jesse, this is so cool. It must be strange to see development like that right in front of your eyes.