"They're After My Lesson!"

A benign conspiracy to undermine my teaching

I experienced a frustration yesterday so unique and niche to the profession of teaching that it has driven me to write about, at 4am in the morning, because my brain won’t stop going over it. It was a collection of many events that accumulated into what felt like a conspiracy specially designed to strike at the foundations of my construction as a teacher.

On one hand, this frustrating convergence felt like the collapse of an entire year of teaching.

On the other hand, it will likely never be truly noticed by the students involved - and likely won’t make that much of a difference in the long run. Which, of course, makes it all the more frustrating to teachers built like me.

Sounds dramatic right?

Here’s a quick backstory: I am teaching a New Testament Survey course this year to high school sophomores. Though I’ve been able to take elements from my previous courses, I’m largely re-writing this one from the ground up with a fresh scope and sequence, lessons, and assessments. This process takes a lot of effort and it constantly feels like I’m laying down a railroad track just as the train is passing over it. By the end of the school year, it gets especially difficult to keep up the energy.

The last unit for this course is the book of Revelation. It’s not one I have taught much about before. It’s a notoriously thorny book even for the most engaged student - but I would be dealing with students nearing the end of a school year who are being crushed by the double whammy of exams/projects and the suddenly beautiful weather outside. I knew it would take 2-3x the effort to get my unit to a place I thought was healthy.

So I spent a lot of time doing outside reading, plotting out lessons, identifying learning targets, creating graphic organizers, crafting activities, and thinking through key themes. Since we are on block schedule, my first day teaching the lessons became first drafts. I often found myself spending hours going back in and adjusting and re-printing note packs so that the second day teaching the lesson could be that much better.

This brings me to yesterday and my lesson on Revelation 21-22 - The New Heavens and New Earth. I spent a lot of time working on how to frame these passages correctly, connect them to the previous lessons, and place it as a culmination of the entire year of themes and images we have learned throughout the New Testament. After four classes, I was honing everything in: where to emphasize, anticipate pitfalls, make surprising connections, land a joke, etc. I got feedback from one student, “I used to worry about what the end would look like, but I feel much better about it now!”

I was excited to share this lesson with my final class of the day - not just because I thought it would help them understand the topic better, the unit on Revelation, or even put the full New Testament course in perspective - but because I thought it could be a really helpful lesson in their personal faith. On top of that - it just feels good to teach a well-designed lesson.

Then it all kinda fell apart. The first major hit was that I knew I would have to shorten the lesson. Many of my students would be gone in our next class due to an AP test, so I needed to push forward a mandatory school survey. It took out 20 minutes of the planned 80 minute class and, more importantly, a bit of their zest and engagement at the end of the day.

The second major hit was afternoon spring sporting events. Nearly half the class had to leave thirty minutes in. The third major hit was the weather. After a long winter here in Minnesota, the spring weather has turned beautiful. I had a large number of students come into the class begging to be able to spend some time outside. While taking the survey in the first 20 minutes of class, many of them were longingly looked out the window. It didn’t help that many other teachers were taking advantage of this turn in the weather and word of their going outside had spread.

So what to do here? You’ve got this important meal for the students that is intended to finally bring everything together and it's just falling apart. The natural response is to just push off important parts of the lesson to a later day right? Well, there’s an issue.

Great lessons don’t always work a la carte like that. Years of training and experience has taught that lessons are kind of like journeys you take your kids on where you try to expertly balance the pace, the engagement, and the challenge by curating just the right sequence of activities for them. Lopping off significant chunks or spreading them out over multiple classes automatically lessens it.

To make matters worse, nearly half of the students would be missing for an AP test next class anyways. Remember, this is a culminating lesson - we are at the end of the year. I have a slew of planned activities like community circles, project presentations, and final exam reviews that can’t be canceled or pushed anymore.

Frustrating right? All that time, energy, and thought to craft and re-craft a lesson that would expertly bring everything together, was just kind of dashed by a benign gathering of circumstances completely out my hands. I’m not naive or prideful enough to argue that this lesson is some sort of capstone that will deprive them of understanding the New Testament (that would be horrible design on my part), but it did represent something so much more than just a lesson.

This happens all the time as a teacher.

The real kicker is that the students in that last class will never quite know or realize how important those 80 minutes were in the design of their learning. A further kick - when someone later shares in feedback, “That New Heaven/ New Earth stuff didn’t make sense.”

Let me wrap up this up on a more positive note though. Here’s three final thoughts about frustrations like this.

1. Sharing: I’m certain that non-teachers reading this have had analogous frustrations in their workl: the “I’ve worked and trained all my life to prepare something and through no fault of my own it all kinda fell apart” frustration. It’s cathartic to share the teaching version out loud. These moments are horrible right?

2. Accepting: My natural tendency is to try and assign blame. After all, I gave my full effort so something or someone else has to be responsible! Well, sometimes there might be something nefarious afoot - but 99% of the time it’s just an unfortunate confluence. Spring sports are great and our admin has done their best to try and maximize their impact while minimizing class disruption. Of course students are distracted by beautiful weather on a lovely spring day. I can fight that and persist in grumbling, or I can try my best to accept and adapt. The true difficulty, from the teaching side, is accepting and trusting that this lesson (as good as it was!) doesn’t make or break a year long relationship with the students. It will be all right in the end. (I repeated this several times to myself in that last class)

3. Not in Vain: I know that the work spent on crafting these lessons is worth it. It’s moments like I’ve described that cloud that a bit though. It is a strange quirk of teaching that I must simultaneously accept that a student’s learning (and spiritual growth) is largely out of my hands and also that I can be a huge influence and impact on the student. Focusing too much on either end is a recipe for an unhealthy despair - “none of it matters - just do a worksheet and watch this Bible project video” or “Every last bit matters, I can’t give up 5 min. of my lesson!” Finding the balance and doing faithful work unto the Lord will never be in vain.