The Unexpected

I love those education workshop leaders who say things like, “If you leave work exhausted at the end of the day, you are working harder than your kids.”  The implication is that you are a terrible teacher.  The implication is that a good teacher would have her children arranged into perfectly run learning centers where students simultaneously practiced critical thinking skills, peer tutoring, and creative thinking.  When they were not announcing brilliant comments and insights to their group members, these children would be working quietly in their seats and contemplating their unique role in the universe.  I am not that teacher.  At least not in Period X (dubbed X to protect the not-so-innocent).  In Period X, I do my best to keep my hair from turning grey by the moment; my kids from spewing profanity, hitting one another, or (popular this month) stealing each other’s hats; a pencil in everyone’s hand; and, oh yeah, teaching.  When my sweet babies leave Period X, I almost always give an exhausted sigh in the direction of my coteacher and ask, “What do we do about (insert student name here)???”

 

Today, before I left work, we had one of our everyday conversations about a child that we have continuously been unable to reach.  Erica, my coteacher, made the comment about this kid – we’ll call him Johnny – that I thought was right on target.  She said that Johnny is different than our other kids because he doesn’t respond to any of the tactics that normally work with the type of kid we teach.  You see, Johnny is representative of the group of kids who is always in trouble.  He is the type of kid that most teachers lack patience for.  He is probably used to being told he is doing things the wrong way, making bad grades, and being sent out of class.  Erica and I are both typically successful with these types of kids because we are patient and kind and encouraging.  Admittedly, we probably tolerate too much bad behavior in the classroom, but neither of us wants to be quick to send students out of the room.  We want them to have an education, and we want them to feel valued and special and cared for.  We want them to know that we aren’t giving up on them.  Usually, when we talk softly to kids and have patience with them and help them on assignments, they respond.  Johnny doesn’t.  I still don’t know what to do about Johnny.  But, our conversation today did make me think about our method and what made it so successful with most students.  I think we are successful because our response isn’t expected.

 

You see, some of our students are beat down so much during the day – maybe at home, maybe by other teachers, maybe by fellow peers, maybe by themselves. They come to our room expecting the same old same old.  They expect to fail.  They expect US to expect them to fail.  When their expectations of us don’t prove true, they respond.  They want to work for us.  They want to please us.  They want us to like them.  Now, I don’t want to paint a rosy, fake picture.  Their desire and their actions don’t always line up, but when Erica and I respond to their behaviors and attitudes with kindness and patience and encouragement, we defy their expectations and leave them unguarded.

 

The same is true in interactions with other adults.  I’m reading Lysa Terkeurst’s new book, Unglued, and I picked it up after school today.  In the chapter I read today, Lysa talks about how we should respond to other people when they are rude to us (perhaps God had seen my Period X today and thought I needed some encouragement!).  She writes that responding to rudeness with kindness and love is a way we can share Jesus with that difficult person.  Why does that behavior work?  Because it isn’t what people expect.  They expect us to be rude in return just like my students expect me to give up on them.  Sometimes, Lysa writes, the rough exterior a person shows is simply their attempt to protect themselves from what they expect in our response.  When we respond in contrast to their expectations, we break down their guardedness and share the Lord.

 

As I meditated on my earlier conversation with Erica and on Lysa’s words, it came to me that the ability to defy our expectations is what makes the gospel so glorious.  The amazing wonder of the gospel is that While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8)!  As humans, we are nothing.  We are hopeless and sinful and so far away from God it isn’t funny.  We are unredeemable…expect by the blood of Jesus.  The amazing thing about the gospel is that we never could have expected that anyone would want to die for us – much less the God of the universe – but He did.  One of the first verses I ever memorized was Ephesians 2:8-9 which says, “For by grace are we saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves – it is a gift of God - not of works lest any man should boast.”  How beautiful, right?  We are not saved out of anything we did, so we can’t boast.  We have nothing to brag about.  How unexpected that gift of grace. 

 

I love new Christians because they are still experiencing the unexpected.  New Christians still have that awesome wonder in their eyes and attitudes.  That incredulous question of, “He died for ME?  He wants ME?”  If we have let that feeling wear off, we have allowed the unexpected greatness of the gospel to disappear.  Maybe Christmas is a time to reclaim the understanding that the amazing thing about grace is how unexpected it is and how undeserving we are.  And perhaps, Christmas is also the time to surprise other people – that difficult little Johnny on the forth row who presses all your buttons, that grumpy clerk at the grocery store who sighs deeply when you ask for paper bags, that little red car that cuts you off in traffic.  Maybe now is the time to give them what the gospel gave us – unexpected love, undeserved kindness, unexplainable generosity.