Lies I Told as a Teacher

Confession time.

When I was a teacher, I told a lot of lies.

For example, shortly after a wifi hub was installed on the ceiling of my classroom, my students started asking me what it was.  Without any hesitation, I told them it was a Student Monitoring Device.  There was a tiny camera imbedded in it that I controlled through my computer.  I could zoom in and out on individual student desks and make sure everyone was doing their work.

Later, when the yearbooks came in at the end of the school year and the boxes were stacked in the front of my classroom, the kids immediately wanted to know if those were their yearbooks.

I told them no.  I said those were textbooks for next year and since they covered a whole year’s worth of material, they were called yearbooks, but they were nothing but boring Language Arts textbooks.

I lied frequently.

I didn’t lie over the stuff that mattered.

I mostly lied to maintain order in the classroom.

I lied.  I used trickery.  I did whatever it took to make sure everyone was good and quiet and doing their work.

I fed into the idea that teachers had eyes in the back of their head.  Whenever I caught a student off task, talking to a neighbor, or snacking on candy or doing whatever it is these days that teenagers do when they are bored—I never called them out on it immediately.

Instead, I dropped my head, stared at my desk, made myself busy doing something, like grading papers and then, still without looking, I would say, “Johnny, back to work.”

Johnny would look up and see me not even looking at him and he would say, of course, “I wasn’t doing anything.”

And I would say—still looking at the papers on my desk—“You were handing Kayla a Snickers bar.”

And then I would look up, and Johnny’s eyes would get real big.  “How did you know?”

But all of these tricks came in the second half of my teaching career.  The fact is, for the first five years or so of my teaching career, I was horrible at classroom management.  I had my classes work in groups every day because I could not keep them quiet and I thought well, as long as they’re going to talk, I should at least make it look like that’s what I want them to do.

I had so many rules.  I made so many phone calls.  I wrote so many detentions and referrals.  I don’t know that much if any teaching got done.

And then I had a “eureka” moment.

The answer was not more rules, more discipline, more detentions.

The answer was less.

The answer was to make it easier for them to succeed, more rewarding for them to succeed, than to fail.

Today’s first reading is from Leviticus 5:1-13.  If you were reading the Bible for the first time, start to finish, all the books in order, Leviticus is probably the book that would make you give up completely and never finish.

Why are there so many rules?

And why so many ridiculous rules?

And what is up with all the atoning and the steps you have to take in order to have your sins forgiven?

Why is everything so complicated?

Leviticus seems like a book designed to see you fail.  There is simply no way you can follow every single rule in this book.

So why even bother with the book at all?

How is it relevant to me—to you—in today’s world?

Well—I would argue—precisely, because it is a book designed to see you fail.  That’s the whole point and why it is so necessary for us to examine it.  It is designed to see us fail.  It is filled with impossible tasks.

It is everything Jesus is not.

Look again at today’s reading.  Look at all that is involved just to have your sins forgiven.  First bring a female sheep or goat to the priest so he can offer it up to God.  But if you cannot afford that, then bring two turtledoves (but not a partridge in a pear tree), but if you cannot afford that, then bring some flour—bring all of this to the priest as a sin offering.

Contrast that with today’s Gospel reading from Luke 17:1-4 where Jesus speaks of forgiveness and what you must do if someone sins against you.  In verse 3, Jesus says simply, “…. If there is repentance, you must forgive.”

Or, look at Leviticus 20:10 which states that the punishment for adultery is death.

And now contrast that to John 8 where the Pharisees bring a woman who has committed adultery to Jesus to be punished … with death.  Now chances are if you remember this story at all, the part you remember is where Jesus says that he who is without sin should throw the first stone, but that’s just half the story.

When everyone leaves, after having thrown no stone, Jesus says to the woman, “Go and sin no more.”

Again the contrast between Jesus and Leviticus is incredible.

In Leviticus, the consequence for sin is death.

With Jesus, there is only forgiveness.

In Leviticus, forgiveness is an impossible dream.

But with Jesus, all things are possible.

Leviticus is a book about things that separate us from God.

But Jesus says, “Come to me.”

Earlier I said that I lied and used trickery to maintain order in my classroom, but the truth is that things didn’t become easier for me in the classroom until I left the Leviticus-style discipline behind, until I moved past setting my students up for failure and instead accepted a Christ-style method that rewarded students for positive behavior rather than punishing them for bad.

Every student of mine knew that no matter what their discipline history—in my class they had a chance. 

That is what Jesus gives us all—a chance.

Amen.