Teaching Love

I Corinthians 13:13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Teenagers are strange creatures. When I was in college, people would look at me with raised eyebrows and gapping mouths when I spoke of my major and intentions to teach high school. “Why?” they would ask. I thought, why not?

Let me dispel myths that teaching any age compared to another is “easy.” I’ve worked with all ages of children, and teenagers just happen to be what I like the most. Teenagers have driven me to the point of wanting to pull my hair out, but one afternoon with my daughter’s Kindergarten class filled with waist-high people was all it took to reassure myself that teenagers aren’t so bad. The Kindergartener (like my daughter) who has to pee every thirty minutes is no more or less frustrating than the sophomore who asks to be excused every class period. A teacher of any age group must have the passion and heart to handle the group as a whole while simultaneously meeting the needs of the individual. It’s a huge task for teachers.

I think that most teachers, and parents, can empathize with what follows to some degree. Basic sociology teaches us that we all have many different roles and identities in life. Teachers are time keepers, organizers, planners, motivators, and encouragers. We are responsible for maintaining a controlled and safe environment for learning. We want to be a friend, a trusted person, in the lives of our students, but we must maintain discipline in the classroom. We have procedures to follow and procedures to enforce in order to have an environment that fosters learning.

As my first year of teaching comes to a close, I think about everything my students have taught me this year. They have helped teach me in ways that only another teacher can understand. Every lesson did not go exactly as I had planned. There were good days and hard days. There were days I knew my students listened, days when I wondered if they even heard a word I said, and days when it was my turn to listen.
In an English class, we have the opportunity to study literature and universal themes that apply to each of us in different ways. The perspectives that my students bring to the classroom are often very different from mine, because their lives and lived experiences are so different from me and each other. We read Nicholas Sparks’ novel A Walk to Remember. It’s a wonderful book about growing up, making choices, and losing a loved one. It lends itself to discussions about Christianity, God’s plan, facing one’s own mortality, and love. They groaned at first. The guys said it was a “chick book” and made fun of it. But by the end, I think we had all grown from our discussions.

Love is a universal theme that we can all relate to. It is something we crave, we must have it for survival; it’s something we truly need. If love is not found in the right places, it will be sought after from the wrong places. Boy or girl, tall or short, gay or straight, skinny or fat, believer, or non-believer, young or old…it doesn’t matter. Love transcends skin color and ethnicity and language. We all struggle to fit in, to find our place, and to be loved.

I am expected to teach many things like grammar and literacy skills and writing. I’ve been taught to encourage and embrace diversity. All of these have validity. I was told to love my students, and I do. I didn’t realize that it was necessary for me to teach love as well. For some people, love comes easier than others. Some have more exposure to it. Yet others have only the conflicting and misleading images of love from our society and culture where “anything goes” and some forms of diversity are embraced a little too much, in my opinion. We wrote about what love means to us as individuals. I was surprised at how quickly some students wanted to share and pumped that we had finally found something we could all relate to.

. Then we came to the portion of the book that includes I Corinthians 13, you know, what’s often referred to as “The Love Chapter” in the Bible. We consulted and delved into the primary source, being the chapter in the Bible. We analyzed the text and processed it, compared and contrasted our lived experiences with those of the characters in the book. But most importantly, we all came to examine our lives and relationships. We learned that love is more than an emotion we are caught up in at the moment. Love is a commitment, whether it is husband/wife, boyfriend/girlfriend, parent/child, teacher/student, or friend /friend. We learned what love is and what love isn’t. My students helped me to take a long, hard look at my own life, relationships, and interactions with people.

In some places of the world, we couldn’t have those conversations. There may come a time when Sparks’ book is banned, and the opportunity to discuss I Corinthians openly in a classroom setting is not allowed. I may get a phone call from an angry parent when this hits the press, who knows! But for now, it isn’t banned, and our lessons were aligned with state standards. Not taking advantage of the opportunity to share and learn about love would have been tragic, and I must answer to standards higher than the state.

At one point, the room was silent, and I couldn’t buy a comment from my most talkative bunch. One student said, “Mrs. Rorrer, you really got me thinking!” I was joyous and sad all at the same time. Their silence was an indicator that their brains and hearts were working; their tough guard had been momentarily let down. I realized that for many, this was the first time they had really thought about the subject, and even sadder, some may have no real influence of love in their lives. It’s not possible for me to answer life’s hardest questions…the kind that aren’t found on any exam or EOG Test…the kind they struggle with deep inside and cover with a superficial smile. In other words, as their English teacher, I will never know the full extent of the influences they encounter beyond the parameters of my classroom. I don’t force my beliefs on them, but I do encourage them to share their beliefs through writing and discussion when applicable. These formats help them process and make sense of the complex world in which they live.

Love is our greatest challenge and largest responsibility as teachers and parents. Teenagers are tough. They have thick skin. But when you take away the i-pods, cell phones, hip clothes, and punk attitude, one thing is sure. Our children want to know what love is. More than that, they want to know that they are loved.