Where is He?

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him." When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born.  ^"In Bethlehem in Judea," they replied, "for this is what the prophet has written: 

"But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
who will shepherd my people Israel." (Matthew 2:1-6)

I was packing up to leave work when a bundle of students slowly passed by my door, pressing their hands intentionally against every wall and locker. Noticing I was still in my room, a girl who isn’t one of my students left the group to come into my room and explain that the Bible club was having a prayer walk and “Is there anything we can pray about for you?” I said something about family and how what they were doing was cool. Then she said, “Mr. M, I don’t really know you. Do you know Jesus?” Without hesitation: “Yeah, I know him! He’s my Savior and the reason I live.”

The honest answer would have been to say that some days I feel like I know him, and most of the days I believe he’s my Savior. To say, “Yeah, I know him!” with such zeal is just not true. My confidence about Jesus’ identity is about as steady as a three-legged chair, so I’m grateful God’s grace isn’t dependent on my understanding. I cannot comprehend why it is so exhaustingly difficult to figure out who this Jesus really is.

With all the holiday emphasis on glittering décor and extravagant presents, this Christmas bustle is a great reminder that I am so vacillating in my understanding of Jesus. Reading Matthew’s Gospel, I think the author found himself in a similar predicament, or at least he seems to be writing to those who do. Matthew walked with this man named Jesus, was present for his miracles as well as his death, and he witnessed Jesus’ resurrection. But who is Jesus really?

In the beginning of Matthew 2, the Magi from the east ask, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.” The Magi’s assurance confounds me. He’s a king, and we’ve come to worship. They have never met Jesus, yet they are already so sure of this newborn’s identity and what their response should be—they just need to find him.

How did the Magi reach that point of confidence? What happened in their process of belief that led them to travel miles in search of this child in order to bring him gifts? I don’t know, and maybe Matthew doesn’t either, because he remains mute on their history.

In response to the Magi’s question, “Where is the one,” Matthew quotes Micah 5:2 and a prophesy made 700 years prior about a promised ruler (Matt. 2:6). It seems that Matthew is witnessing connections unfold, and as Matthew reads through the ancient Scripture, he finds Jesus there. I think it’s critical to note here that Matthew uses Micah’s prophecy not to validate ancient Scripture, but to validate Jesus. He asserts a connection between Jesus and the prophesied Messiah.

While Matthew watches ancient Scripture and finds Jesus there, a couple verses later in chapter 2, the Magi find the king by watching the stars. Throughout the rest of the Gospel, people find Jesus in deserts, in fishing boats, and in their living rooms. Matthew finds him at a tax collector’s booth, but he soon finds him on a cross. In the last chapter of his Gospel, Matthew writes that eleven disciples finally found Jesus on a mountain in Galilee, and “When they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted” (Matt. 27: 17).

I am so like those eleven. I cannot stop doubting the identity of this man, and yet like them I cannot stop worshipping him. The Magi ask, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?” and Matthew says, “I’ve found Him in Micah! I’ve found Him in the Stars! I’ve found Him in a tax collector’s booth! I find Him everywhere!”

I may waver when you ask me exactly who Jesus is, but I can say I know where to find him. I find him in the classroom while I teach and on the sidewalk while I run. I definitely found him in that little girl who asked me if I knew him. I find him in so many places, and hard as I try, I can’t seem to get away from him. Maybe we can be content with our inability to pin down who Jesus is. Maybe it’s enough to simply look for Jesus everywhere, and when we find him, for we surely will, fall on our knees in worship.

The Power of the Tongue

This morning in my Educational Psychology class, we watched a documentary called "A Class Divided," by PBS Frontline. The film is about a 3rd grade teacher named Jane Elliot teaching at a school in Riceville, Iowa, an almost all-white town. As Elliot recalls, it was right after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered, and blatant racism plagued America. She was watching the news, and journalists kept asking black people that were a part of the civil rights movement what they were going to do about their people now that their leader had been assassinated. What would their people do now? Elliot says she was disgusted by this subtly condescending language, this language ridden with racism beneath the surface, this language distinguishing between an "us" and a "them" based on skin color.

Elliot decided to push back all of her lesson plans for the week and do a unit on discrimination. Her class of 28 third graders was all white. She began by asking the students about racism, what they thought about black people, Indian people, people that looked different from them. Words like "nigger" and "stupid" and "dirty" slipped out of the mouths of young, developing, frighteningly impressionable minds. When asked, the students said that it wasn't fair to judge others based on factors like skin color, but this mentality of "us" and "them," this racism, was deeply imprinted on these children.

What happened next amazes me. Elliot plays no games. She tells her class directly that they are going to do an experiment for the children to understand discrimination better. Dividing the class into two groups, brown eyes and blue eyes, Elliot tells the class that blue eyed people are naturally better people. They're stronger, smarter, more responsible--better. Brown eyed people, however, are lazy, irresponsible, and much more stupid. They make bad decisions and just aren't as smart. Collars were passed around for all of the brown eyed students to put around their necks, that way the blue eyed students would be able to tell from a distance. Blue eyed children received 5 extra minutes of recess, access to the water fountain, extra attention from the teacher, and were treated as superior students to their brown-eyed peers. Elliot even instructed her blue eyed students not to communicated with the brown eyed students and not to play with them because they were better than those brown eyes.

Before long, the class began to perpetuate this mentality that Mrs. Elliot was feeding them through their behavior. When a brown eyed student would do something wrong, a blue eyed student would blurt out, "It's because they're brown eyes." Little undercuts like that. During recess, the children actually listened to Mrs. Elliot; no blue eyed children played with brown eyed children. A fight even broke out between two previous friends, and a brown eyed boy punched a blue eyed boy in the gut for calling him "brown eyes." The students began excluding other children and making condescending comments about the other students' intelligence and capability based solely on eye color.

The next day, Mrs. Elliot told her students that she had lied to them the previous day: brown eyed students were really better than blue eyed students. The collars traded owners, and the top became the new bottom, yesterday's bottom the new top. And the exact same behavior occurred. Mrs. Elliot taught this same lesson for three consecutive years with different classrooms, and she received the same results every single time. I know. Terrifying. It's appalling to see how easily discrimination can breed and infest someone so quickly, especially our children. Obviously, there are huge truths here about racism, sexism, and discrimination of any kind.

However, what's haunted me all day is a truth much more universal I believe. Mrs. Elliot tested the students each day that she conducted this experiment. The students on top consistently scored higher on assessments. The students on bottom consistently scored lower. Reverse the standards, put the top on the bottom and the bottom on the top, and the results are the same. After this experiment with her students, Mrs. Elliot always has a debriefing. She explains to her students that discrimination is not only illogical but wrong. No matter what your skin color, eye color, or whatever, each one of you is intelligent and beautiful. Each one of you is great. After the debriefing, all the testing scores of all the students were higher for the remainder of the year.

Astounding.

In only 24 hours, students changed completely. They freaking scored higher if the teacher said that they belonged to the smart group. If they belonged to this smart group, children felt better about themselves, tried harder, scored higher. As Eliot states herself, "Almost without exception, the students' scores go up on the day they're on the top, down on the day they're on the bottom, and then maintain a higher level for the rest of the year." Something strange happens to these children that alters their academic abilities. They realize their intelligence, their greatness. It's incredible to think about how spoken words can influence children so drastically within the classroom environment in a simple 24 hour time-frame.

Proverbs says that "Death and life are in the power of the tongue" (Proverbs 18:21).

In America, suicide is the second highest cause of death for teenagers. In America, 2.5 million juveniles are arrested every year. In America, 74.9% of whites graduate high school, 50.2% of blacks, 53.2% of Latinos, and 51.1% of American Indians. (Swanson, 20004)



What the hell kind of words are we speaking to our children?!



If spoken words can have such a drastic influence on children within the classroom, imagine the effect, the eternal effect, that our words can have if we speak LIFE into a child. If we pour LIFE words into a child, imagine the effect that our words can have on that child's destiny. Rob Bell says, "Jesus reminds his disciples, ‘You did not choose me, but I chose you.’ People in the Scriptures essentially are loved into their futures. Think of how many of us had encouraging or affirming or inspiring words spoken to us years ago about our worth, our value, our future, and how those words shaped us. We often carry those words of agape around with us our whole lives.”

Seriously, what kind of message are we giving our children and our youth?

What Teachers Make

One of my friends showed me this poet. He's quickly becoming one of my favorites. The poem I've chosen to highlight by posting it here is the one that speaks to me the most. If language offends you, I apologize now. Try to see past and get the message. Imagine the difference if we were all so intentional and deliberate, especially our teachers.



What Teachers Make, or
Objection Overruled, or
If things don't work out, you can always go to law school

By Taylor Mali


He says the problem with teachers is, "What's a kid going to learn
from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher?"
He reminds the other dinner guests that it's true what they say about
teachers:
Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.

I decide to bite my tongue instead of his
and resist the temptation to remind the other dinner guests
that it's also true what they say about lawyers.

Because we're eating, after all, and this is polite company.

"I mean, you¹re a teacher, Taylor," he says.
"Be honest. What do you make?"

And I wish he hadn't done that
(asked me to be honest)
because, you see, I have a policy
about honesty and ass-kicking:
if you ask for it, I have to let you have it.

You want to know what I make?

I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional medal of honor
and an A- feel like a slap in the face.
How dare you waste my time with anything less than your very best.

I make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall
in absolute silence. No, you may not work in groups.
No, you may not ask a question.
Why won't I let you get a drink of water?
Because you're not thirsty, you're bored, that's why.

I make parents tremble in fear when I call home:
I hope I haven't called at a bad time,
I just wanted to talk to you about something Billy said today.
Billy said, "Leave the kid alone. I still cry sometimes, don't you?"
And it was the noblest act of courage I have ever seen.

I make parents see their children for who they are
and what they can be.

You want to know what I make?

I make kids wonder,
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write, write, write.
And then I make them read.
I make them spell definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful, definitely
beautiful
over and over and over again until they will never misspell
either one of those words again.
I make them show all their work in math.
And hide it on their final drafts in English.
I make them understand that if you got this (brains)
then you follow this (heart) and if someone ever tries to judge you
by what you make, you give them this (the finger).

Let me break it down for you, so you know what I say is true:
I make a g-d difference! What about you?

Collateral Blessings of Going to Class

Every Monday, I have a night class from 6 to 9, the teaching of writing. The class is composed of half undergraduate and half graduate students, all either prospective or current teachers, so it makes for some very interesting discussions. I love the class. One of my fellow undergraduate friends, however, always has the same complaint: the undergraduate students are optimistic and passionate, aiming to change the world through teaching; the graduate students are negative and bitter, having lost their love of teaching. I suppose to some extent this is true. At least, I understand why he would say that. I hope he saw things differently tonight.

Recently, the graduate students have been giving presentations and leading class discussions for the first half of class. One of the graduate students tonight presented on self-efficacy and writing. She was asking a lot of good questions, like what are the connections between self-efficacy and writing, and whether or not being a good writer will affect a students' self-efficacy. This graduate student teaches at an alternative school in Charlotte, and she talked about how a lot of her students are very poor writers. Regardless of whether or not they really are poor writers, they certainly see themselves in this light. Many of these students have been told their whole lives that they're not good at school, that they're stupid, that they won't succeed in life. So many of the students at this alternative school have internalized what they've heard, and their self-efficacy is practically non-existent. They don't ever see themselves as being able to succeed in life--life outside of the streets--and especially don't see themselves as being able to succeed in the classroom.

As a part of her presentation, this graduate student read a letter one of her students had given her. This student has been in and out of trouble his whole life and currently is in juvie. 17, about to turn 18, and in the 9th grade. His letter would be considered as "bad writing" by school--lots spelling and grammatical errors. This graduate student, this student's teacher, however, didn't read that letter as "bad."

He wrote about his life, his struggles on the streets and in the classroom. He talked about how he's never been a good writer and he never will be. He had no potential in school and no future outside of trapping--drugs was his only future.

This student bared his soul in that letter. And school would call it "bad writing." In class, I started getting caught up in my own anger over how the education system works. I was fuming, barely listening I was so mad. I'm glad life didn't leave me in that place for long. I hardly had any time to be angry. This graduate student, reading her student's letter, started crying. That completely unplanned, choking kind of crying. For a while, she just stood there. Her lips trembled, her face grew red and wet, and she just stood there. When she finally started reading the letter again, it took her several tries to find her voice, and when she did, it came out in soft, short breaths.

Everything that we had talked about in class that day--grammar, writing, literacy, self-efficacy, --melted away, didn't even matter. The love this teacher had for her student overshadowed it all. And it re-focused me on why I'm in this education track in the first place.