4. To ‘Know and to be Known’.
What might that look like in a school community?
There is a certain vulnerability that we need to have regarding other members of our school communities, whether with colleagues or our students.
Who am I? Who tells me who I am? Who tells me what I do well, what I’m succeeding at, what I’m failing at? Who tells me my strengths and weaknesses? How do we help others to discover their identity and giftings in Christ?
Some of our most interesting questions from our own grandchildren involve them wanting to know stories about their Dad (our son). They love to hear what their father was like at their age!
We need to be sensible in a school context that we are not sharing our every thought and emotion with our students – that can lead to inappropriate sentimentality. So, we need to work out what is helpful and edifying for our students to know about us, and what is wise for them to share with us.
A good starting point is fundamental information like family background. Talking about how we became teachers. What we enjoy doing. We then invite students to share about their lives.
Another good thing is to relate our stories to the Big Story – how our lives find meaning and purpose in God.
We may, for example, share the story of how Paul came to know Christ (Acts 9). This can then lead into sharing with our students how we came to know Christ. This opens up group discussions around where they are at the moment in their journey of faith.
We may look at Paul’s pleading with God to relieve him of a problem (2 Cor 12:7-10). We can chat about times when God didn’t seem to answer our prayers; were we disappointed? Our question to our students becomes “Have you ever been disappointed?”
We might talk about Moses in Exodus 2:11-15; who seemed to make a mess of God’s calling and thought that he might be disqualified from being used by God. We can share of times in our own lives when we thought that might be true. Our young people are now free to explore times when that might have been true for them.
The important thing as that we encourage our students to realise that God knows them, which frees us to be both vulnerable and secure in sharing our lives with one another.
Blessings
Brian