Teaching as Vocation—Part II: A Time to Love

The following excerpts of David’s upcoming book, Teaching to Learn, Learning to Teach: Reflections on Education as Transformation through Dialogue (Summer, 2014), are used by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers.

Biblical language distinguishes between two different experiences of time. Chronos time is the linear experience of time in hours, days, weeks, and so on. By contrast, kairos time is “opportune time” or “occasion time.” Perhaps it is best captured by the well-known verse declaring that “For everything there is a season. . . a time to plant and a time to pluck up  . . . a time to weep and a time to dance . . . .”

Times Zones of Teaching

When class is going normally, I consider myself to be on linear syllabus time, moving along with the subjects and methods that need to be dealt with. However, when one of these special moments presents itself, I immediately think of myself as being on kairos time, “opportune time”—a time that comes when it comes and we have to be open to it.

Then chronological time stops. I am no longer worried about the material I have to cover that day or where we are on the schedule. My demeanor changes and I am in a different time zone. In that moment, my one goal is to dive down with the student, take the class along with us, and see how long we can stay at that depth—by listening, sharing at the same level, and engaging each other in things that matter in some fundamental way. Then, I need to be prepared to resurface in a way that does not lose the profundity or the magic of the moment.

Love and Vocation and Preparation

I may simply be describing, to a greater or lesser degree, what everyone experiences who has a sense of vocation in their work—of being called to something, of doing what it seems as if one was created to be doing. There is a feeling of exhilaration that you are doing it. Some people say about their job or career: “I cannot believe that someone is paying me to do what I love to do.” That is certainly part of it.  

And I say this because I do not believe any of this can happen without love. Teaching and learning require meaningful dialogue. You cannot have dialogue without trust. And you cannot have trust without love. So I love my students.

In my latter years of teaching, I often prepared for class by preparing my spirit for the time with students in a class. I use my class list to pray for them individually before class time. I pray for their whole persons and life quite apart from the classroom. I pray that they may have a vocation of learning to match and complement the vocation of teaching. I pray that I may foster learning that leads to transformation, yet at the same time that they may be liberated from my influence so that they can be free to learn and think for themselves. I pray that I will love them for their own sake and not for what they can do to make me look like a good teacher. I pray that the class period may be sacred time and sacred space. And I tell my classes, not often, but often enough, especially after I have spent a number of meaningful hours with them over the course of a term, “I love you all” or, as I am dismissing the class, simply “Love you.”

Moments of Meaning

These experiences of teaching are moments of meaning and fulfillment for me, not because they are my private experiences of quiet ecstasy but because the students themselves are participating in them. They are experiencing what I have found meaningful.

I think it likely that most teachers at some level are seeking to replicate for their students the joy of learning that they themselves had as students. We recall those times when there was a teacher who “turned us on” to learning, a startling insight that left us with wonder and delight, the satisfaction of writing an outstanding paper and being recognized for it, a course we took in which our fascination just could not be satisfied and we found ourselves lost in the library or online digging for more, or a place where we experienced transformation.

Transformation—More Than Content

In other words, the content of the learning as well as the process of the learning has to be part of addressing our world and of participating in the creation of alternative worlds—a classroom that not only engages that world as it is but that also empowers us to imagine and create the world in new ways. 

This is what keeps the world of academia from becoming an ivory tower and keeps what we say and do there from being only “academic” or irrelevant and without power. It is partly that the courses seek to show how student learning is related to practical activities and responsibilities in life. But surely that is not in the end what makes a class relevant. Rather, what makes it relevant is the connection to and engagement with the issues we face in the 21st century. To do this is to think of the classroom as a laboratory for life. This is the only teaching approach that is viable in the world today.

Empowering Imagination

My next post will reveal how some of those experiences happened for me. In my upcoming book, Teaching to Learn, Learning to Teach: Reflections on Education as Transformation through Dialogue (Wipf and Stock Publishers, Fall 2013),  I want to take the liberty of sharing some of my educational background. I have been blessed with wonderful educational experiences in my life. Please allow me to share a few of them here, with you, as well.

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