We're on a Journey of Discovery

If I asked, “How does your faith inform the work you do as an educator?” how would you answer? It’s a question I asked one of our special needs teachers when I visited Southeast Asia.

Without hesitation she replied, “My faith informs my worldview, but the thing that I am learning is that my work with special needs children informs my faith.” Her reversal of the subject and object in the sentence grabbed my attention. She went on to explain that her students often hit her, yet she finds her love for them undiminished. “I’ve come to see that this is how my Father responds to me, when I so often fail Him.”

Mariana’s response reminded me that we are a learning community – a community that is on a journey of discovery. Our approach to teaching has embedded in it the concept of the teacher as a learner, not merely a dispenser of knowledge who trains productive units for participation in a soulless economy.