How do you treat the students? Are you strict? Lenient? Do you have your classroom management down, or do you struggle with it from time to time? Those questions matter, and for most of us, our answer depends on the situation. A better question is: do you treat the students as if they are who you know they can be?
What does that mean? Our students will make mistakes, and they will misbehave. That’s life, we sin. We teach because we believe in what our students CAN be, and we know what Jesus sees in them. They don’t always show us that, just as we don’t always show them our best selves.
How we treat our students on our worst day tells us all we need to know about our school culture. At our worst, we need to be better than most because what we do is that important. We have no way of knowing how our students will end up, and we need to treat each of them as if they are the most important person because to someone they are. To us they are.
Remember that next time you feel your patience slipping or your blood pressure rising. The students will treat others how we treat them. We are, and should be, held to a higher standard. Our future depends on it.
