The Teacher as Minister of Grace
William Harkins, FSC
Keynote Address
Cardinal Spellman Retreat House
Riverdale, New York
April 20-22, 1988
TEACHER AS MINISTER: SIGNS AND METAPHORS
It is an honor to be here as a presenter. Let me start by outlining the
presentation. I will begin with some brief introductory considerations on the importance
of sharing with each other your own images and insights on teaching. Then I want to look
at both parts of the expression "teacher as minister," asking what we mean by
teacher and what we mean by minister. With each word, we will start with a bit of
etymology. The word teach is etymologically rooted in the word "sign" or
"show." So in looking at the teacher side of teacher-minister we will be looking
at three variations on the theme of teacher as sign. The word minister is etymologically
rooted in a Latin word meaning "to serve," "to be a servant," or
"to be near at hand to offer assistance." And so in looking at the word minster
we will center on three specifically Lasallian images, metaphors or analogies that give a
fuller sense of what it means for a teacher to be near at hand to help -- to be a minister
of grace. Thus we approach teacher as minister along the road of signs and metaphors.
Some introductory considerations are in order. First, in this presentation, references to
teachers include not only classroom teachers but also guidance counsellors, campus
ministers, administrators and staff members. Second, many important forms of teaching go
on outside schools. This presentation does not deal directly with non-school teaching,
though much of what is said about teacher-minister might pertain.
Third, your experience is important. My premise is that individually and collectively you
bring here a rich teacher-as-minister experience, even though you may not use that
terminology. I encourage you to share your experiences, your insights, your images of
teaching. Teachers do not often have the opportunity for such sharing. And sometimes the
hectic daily pace of schools may discourage reflective sharing. So in this peaceful
setting, I encourage you to share your insights into teaching.
These introductory remarks take us to the topic at hand: the teacher as minister of grace.
I want to begin with the word "teacher" because the word bears some reflection.
I want to approach the word from the vantage point of its root meaning, its etymology,
partly because its etymology is usually ignored but also because as an old Latin teacher I
have the Latin teacher's congenital addiction to etymology. Bear with me. I make no claim
that etymology affects how a word functions historically; but I do think the etymology of
the word teach is a sensible place to start.
I ask you to picture the word teach and say it to yourself. Notice the "t...ch"
in teach. It has the look, the sound and the same root as the word token -- as in "I
give you a token, a symbol, a sign of my affection." This meaning remains embedded in
the French and Spanish words for teach (but not in the word for teacher in those
languages). The modern language teachers among us can point to "enseigner" and
"ensener" as the French and Spanish words for teach. To teach is to en-sign; to
give a sign; to speak in signs. Recently, the community of Gallaudet University
demonstrated the power and beauty of speaking the language of signs. The etymology of
teacher reminds us that all teachers do speak a language of signs, do symbolize. To teach
is also to decipher signs, to show some token of the richer, fuller meaning of what is at
hand.
There is, of course, a learned study of signs called semiology; but that would take us far
afield. What I want to do is simply present three reflections on teacher as sign in a way
that might interact with three Lasallian metaphors on teacher as minister. The order will
be as follows: one reflection on teacher as sign - the teacher as a sign of how to do
something; two reflections on metaphors of teacher as minister, dealing with two of De La
Salle's images; a second reflection on sign -- teacher as a sign of hope; and a final
reflection that summarizes the signs and the metaphors.
In reflecting first on teacher as sign, we can ask the elemental question: What do signs
do? The answer of course varies. What some signs do is tell us what to do and how to do
it. For example, the squiggly-arrow road sign tells us to slow down and negotiate the
upcoming curves carefully. The wave of the trooper's hand gesturing us to pull off the
road is a sign that we did not slow down enough. In public places, the little figures on
doors of public lavatories are important signs. They do not tell us what to do, but they
tell us where to go to do what has to be done. The complicated dots and arrows and words
on the top of an aspirin bottle tell us how to open the bottle. It is easy to forget that
the teacher is a sign, and explanation, a clarification of "how to" do
something: how to add numbers, write a paragraph, analyze a chemical compound or a
historical argument; how to translate a sentence, dribble a basketball, play an
instrument, draw a figure, address a problem in math or in the guidance office. In this
sense, the teacher is a master, the student an apprentice. The teacher is a sign of
competence, showing how to do it. The teacher is a sign of hope, showing that it can be
done.
A quick aside. There may be no historical connection, but I find it interesting that the
word "learn" shares etymological roots with the word "last", as in
"shoemaker's last." Allow a flight of fancy that describes the teacher as one
who shows the learner how to trace a line around the foot and from the tracing make a pair
of shoes. Think also of the teacher as one who teaches how to read footprints, tracing
where they came from and where they might be going.
The teacher is a sign showing how to. No learning is more important to John Baptist de La
Salle than learning how to live in God's presence. De La Salle calls on teachers to be a
sign and symbol of how to walk in the presence of God. The teacher-minister is always in
some way a sign to students of God's loving presence. In a truly Lasallian school, adults
are likewise signs to each other of God's loving presence.
Before offering a second reflection on teacher as sign, I want to shift to
"minister". Etymology again gives us a useful starting point.
"Ministrare" is to act as a servant, to attend to someone's needs. As a minister
of God, the teacher can be called a minister of grace, with grace loosely defined as the
life and love of God in the lives of people. John Baptist de La Salle loved analogies,
images, metaphors. Two metaphors especially help us picture more clearly the minister
emphasis of teacher-minister.
The first Lasallian image or metaphor or analogy that I want to present is one that will
be more familiar to us older folk than it is to the younger folk among us. It is the image
of the guardian angel. Years ago when you went to grammar school you did not need to be
reminded that your guardian angel was sitting next to you, invisible but definitely there
with a clear job -- to help keep you out of trouble. The guardian angel prayer said it
all: angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God's love commits me, ever this day at my
side to guide and guard. A guide to show the way -- a patron, so to speak, in the European
tradition; a reminder to keep out of trouble -- an enforcer. In his meditations, De La
Salle frequently invokes the image of the guardian angel. This is not surprising.
Unambiguosly, De La Salle states that teachers must excel in two ways: tenderness and
vigilance.
Caring and watchful like the guardian angel, the teacher finds every possible way to
enlighten and assist students. The teacher is alert to any sign of trouble, in order to
keep students out of danger. Thus, De La Salle writes that it is all too easy for children
to trip and fall over a steep precipice. Therefore, they need the light of watchful
guides. In meditating on the guardian angel, De La Salle writes, "You will see
clearly every obstacle ... and keep away every harm." (5th Meditation for the Time of
Retreat)
Traditionally, angels have been associated with enlightenment. But De La Salle emphasizes
that it is not enough for teachers to enlighten students. Listen to these three-hundred
year old words of De La Salle. Remember that he was often dealing with young street kids.
You may find that the watchful but compassionate roles assigned to the guardian angel
continue to give some sense of what it means for a teacher to be a minister. De La Salle
writes as follows:
(First) It is your duty to admonish the unruly in a way that will lead them to give up
their former way of life. (Second) You must cheer the fainthearted, support the weak and
be patient toward all. (6th MTR)
But as guardian angel, the teacher does more than admonish, more even than cheer up the
fainthearted and support the weak. The teacher also tries to get youngsters to look out
for each other. De La Salle writes: "You must help them be kind to one another,
compassionate, mutually forgiving -- just as God has forgiven them. You must help them
love one another, just as Jesus Christ has loved them." (6th MTR)
Consider how teachers as ministers do this today. Consider also what it means for adults
in a school to minster to each other: supporting and looking out for each other;
encouraging each to be kind to one another, compassionate and mutually forgiving.
The metaphor of the guardian angel who enlightens, guides, watches out, takes care,
teaches students to be caring for each other, is complemented by a second metaphor: the
image of teacher as good shepherd. The shepherd-sheep metaphor has some things going
against it today. It can connote an undesirable excessive docility. But the emphasis in De
La Salle's use of the shepherd-sheep image is not on docility but on relationship.
A second problem with the image is that some of us who are city folk may never fully
appreciate the image of a shepherd (masculine or feminine) with sheep -- outdoors day and
night, good weather and bad. The Great Outdoors -- possibly your idea of "No Place to
Go." I ask you, nonetheless, to take an imaginary journey to times when the shepherd
was the embodiment of total dedication: leading the way, watching for predators, knowing
the peculiarities of each sheep, loving and giving each sheep the care it needs. As a good
shepherd knows every sheep, so the teacher knows each student and the needs of each.
Let me quote De La Salle at length. Again despite a time lapse of 300 years, the image
survives remarkably well. De La Salle reflects as follows:
One of the qualities which Our Lord says distinguishes the shepherd is that the
shepherd knows all the sheep individually. This is also one of the essential qualities of
those who teach. They must get to know their pupils and discern the manner in which to act
toward them. Some pupils require much patience; others must be goaded on. It is necessary
to reprimand some in order to correct errors; others need to be continually looked after,
lest they wander and perish. The variations in the shepherd's conduct depend on knowledge
and discernment of character -- a gift you must beg God for. (Meditation for the Second
Sunday after Easter)
So far, the good shepherd metaphor parallels the guardian angel. The teacher-minister
must know each youngster individually and must discern the best way to regard each one.
But there is an added dimension to the good shepherd image. Just as the shepherd must know
the sheep; so too the sheep must know the shepherd. The sheep must know that the shepherd
is a good person, a trustworthy person, one who will not lead them astray. Young people
must know that when they walk as sheep with the shepherd, they walk with a teacher who
walks in the way of the Lord. In this manner, writes De La Salle, "the sheep will
love their shepherd, enjoy the shepherd's company and find therein repose and
relief."
In a sense, the teacher as minister today is a person whom students trust with their
lives. And as ministers to each other in a Lasallian school, adults trust each other, and
find each other's presence a source of peace and renewal. The shepherds know and care for
each other.
Ministers are present, caring, ready to help. This is true of guardian angel and good
shepherd. It is true of the teacher who is minister of grace. We have noted that the word
minster is rooted in the Latin word "servare" -- to serve. As sign, the teacher
show how. As minister, the teacher is present to help.
So far we have considered two images: guardian angel and good shepherd. Together they give
us a partial picture of the minister of grace.
I began by reflecting on the notion that the word teach is rooted in the word sign.
Teachers are signs in many ways, beginning with how to do something or how to understand
something in a step-by-step way. The steps of teaching are orderly but not inhibiting.
Maria Harris reminds us that the steps of great teaching are like the steps of a dance.
The work of such a teacher is full of life and rhythm, joyful, done with gusto without
being disorganized.
We can move to a second reflection on teacher as sign if we stay for a minute with the
dance analogy but shift our attention to a teacher who is, in fact, a teacher of dance.
The dance teacher is a sign of how to dance. But the teacher is a sign in another way too.
The dance teacher is a sign of the reality of a world of dance and dancers, outside the
immediate experience of the student. So too every teacher can be a sign of other possible
worlds for students. The math teacher betokens a world of math and mathematicians; the
English teacher a world of books written long ago and poems waiting to be written. The
science teacher and social studies teacher are signs of challenges met and challenges yet
ahead. Every teacher can be a sign that the world facing the student is not the only
possible world. To students, poor or affluent, whose world is disorderly, oppressive,
unfair, or apparently inevitable, the teacher is a sign of hope. The Christian teacher
testifies to the possibility of an age of beatitudes brought on by Jesus discovered in the
neighbor, the needy, the naked and the homeless.
As signs of other possible worlds, teachers enable students to see possibilities otherwise
unthinkable, to see themselves in ways otherwise unimaginable. As signs of other possible
worlds, teachers allow students to build on whatever is ennobling in family, friends and
surroundings. And when a student's family, friends and surroundings are reasons for
despair, the teacher is a sign of a world where hope triumphs over despair.
I want to present one final reflection on teacher as sign. It overlaps a final metaphor
especially important to De La Salle. The sign and the metaphor are implicit in something
De La Salle urges repeatedly. The teacher must touch the hearts of students.
As you know, in the gospels the word "signs" often is interchangeable with the
word "miracles." Jesus went about doing signs, doing miracles. Often the sign of
the healing miracle was a touch. After a touch, the blind eyes see, the deaf ears hear.
The touch is energized by the spirit of God. "That is why," says La Salle,
"you must ask Jesus that your teaching be energized by his spirit." (3rd MTR)
When such a teacher touches the heart of a student, a kind of miraculous power is at work.
"Touching the heart of the student" signifies what it is to be a
teacher-minister of grace. As important as touching hearts is for De La Salle, it is not
something we read much about in contemporary educational literature. No one here would
pick up a current treatise on education expecting to find a section on "the urgent
necessity of touching the hearts of students." But one day when I was reflecting on
this theme, I received a 1987 New York State Education Office document that I had recently
sent for. The document had an imposing title: "Resource Monograph on the Middle
Grades." I expected nothing but bureaucratic prose. Imagine my reaction when I saw
that the Table of Contents was flanked by anonymous poems. I presume them to be student
poems.
Before commenting on the poems, I should note that it is by example more than by any other
means that a teacher touches the hearts of students. De La Salle makes this point
repeatedly, insisting in various contexts that "example makes a much greater
impression on hearts and minds than words." The teacher not only gives example; the
teacher is and example of what it means to trust in God; what it means to care for others.
With thoughts like this in mind, and with some incipient doubts about whether images of
guardian angels and good shepherds might mean anything to today's committed educator, with
some questions about how indeed the teacher can be a sign of hope, I gave the first poem
the kind of desultory reading one often brings to anonymous student poems. I half noticed
that it was "about" all the things important for a good school. I cam to full
attention at the final two words. They were "touching hearts."
Then I read carefully the final poem. It may not be a classic of poetry. But its words
could not have better picked up the urgency De La Salle places on touching the hearts of
students. Let me conclude by presenting for your consideration the words of a young poet:
Listen to me
Tell me the truth
Trust me
Be kind to me
Expect good
Accept me
Touch me
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