Student Choice and Voice

I have trouble connecting with the more condemnation side of the Bible.  I accidentally skipped right over it this morning and remembered the reading as more about losing and restoring.

But the line that really struck me is Jesus telling His disciples to let no one called them "Rabbi" which means "teacher" because they are all brothers and have one rabbi.

I think that might be the least followed piece of advice in the whole of the Church.  Or maybe it just seems that way because the Theology teacher I am teaching a class with is covering the hierarchy and the duties of the different ranks of the ordained -- and one of the three duties mentioned across the board is to be a teacher.

Strangely enough, it lines up in many ways with a lot of current theory on education: letting the students be partners in the learning, student voice and choice.  I teach not giving the students rules but trying to get them to see for themselves what does and doesn't work.  I try to teach them to evaluate a speech rather than check off a list.  I try to manipulate them into seeing what I need them to see -- give them challenges like only 3 words per slide so they stop insisting on putting titles on every single slide.

Much like Jesus set us a challenge, spoke to us indirectly so we could see what they mean for ourselves and thus have it really stick when He told the parables.  Because if we figure it out for ourselves, if we own it and it's meaningful to us, it becomes a part of us in a way that someone else telling us what to do doesn't.

It's not just a matter of pride to style yourself a great Rabbi or Teacher, although Jesus goes on at length about that.  It's less effective.  It's not how you get good done in the world.  How you change hearts and minds.  For that, you have to help people to do the work for themselves.  Which is why I'm loving my Advanced Theatre classes right now.

But more importantly, that's where the temple leaders really seem to have gone wrong.  It's not just pride and peacockery in itself that is the problem.  It's prioritizing those things over being effective in doing good out in the world.  Whenever we let anything be more important to us that our ability to do good for other people, to serve God, then we are doing a different version of gilding our tassles.  We are straying from the path.

You can be the humblest soul in the world and still be true proud of the reputation you've built to help people if it means you renouncing one of your Lenten restrictions.  Refusing to watch a bit of TV with a friend having a terrible day who asks you to sit with them because you gave it up for Lent -- how is that making you a better force for good in the world?  Going to Mass with a 100 degree fever and putting others at risk...what Mass does for you in a wonderful thing, but what are you doing to others?

Our ability to do good in the world is what counts.