The second most common response I receive from strangers after I have told them that I am a teacher usually involves a long story about how they had once been so bad in school, or how they had formerly treated their teachers so contemptuously that one of their teachers ended up either:

1. running out of the classroom crying, or

2. taking half a year’s sick leave to recover from a nervous breakdown, or

3. forsaking the teaching profession forever to become a used car salesman.

This line of conversation usually begins with the statement, “You should be glad that I was never one of your students.” It always ends with, “You should be glad I was never one of your teachers.”

The most common response to my stating that I am a teacher is the question, “Really. What do you teach?” My response is almost as automatic as the “hello” one extends to the clerk behind the checkout counter, or as sincere as “I’m fine,” proffered in response to the equally insincere question, “How are you today?” (How many of us don’t cringe when a person responds in depth – describing his latest bout of gastrointestinal pains, or her latest battle with the sniffles – to our simple, polite query?). I generally answer this question politely with one word: “English.” In the lines that follow, however, I go beyond the polite, insincere, one word response and I explore the answer to “What do you teach?”

Primarily, I teach children. Covenant children: Children with a passion for learning, and children as apathetic as sunbathing cats. Some exuding self-confidence, ready to conquer a world they hardly know; others imprisoned with a self-doubt so profound they may never find the key to their release. Some who are in pain, and some who are unscathed (it seems) by the broken nature of this world. Some who are models of the children I hope to raise. Some who relish life, enjoying the simple innocence of youth; others who relish the thought of being “bad,” of pushing the boundaries, of finding the edge between what they know is right and what they hope to justify. Some who learn with a speed I could never hope to emulate, and others who struggle to understand the most simple of concepts. Some who rely on others to do their thinking, some who have learned to analyze the world around them, sensing its flaws and appreciating its inherent goodness. But in the end, no matter how different from one another they are, I teach covenant children. A blessing often in disguise.

I teach “English” as well.

In English, we learn basic grammar such as nouns and verbs, and we learn more complex structures such as phrasal parallelism, copular sentences, and pronoun antecedents; we learn paragraph structure, essay organization, poetic techniques, punctuation, spelling, and vocabulary. But these structures in themselves are not important. During English, we learn that effective writing is far more than the structures that underlie it; it is a form of reaching out, of connecting one’s experience with another’s. We learn that writing is thinking, language is thinking, words are thoughts. Without them...

A truth about writing that I try to pass on to my students is that clear writing cannot hide a lie. And so I encourage my students to write clearly. I teach students that writing effectively also requires the ability to think clearly, the ability to express thoughts clearly, logically, and most important of all, honestly and passionately. For what value is there in writing if it isn’t clear and honest, and what is it worth if it doesn’t exude passion? I teach my students the importance of being honest. Of telling their stories honestly so that they can connect with people, so that people can read what they have written and say, “Yes, I’ve thought or felt that too.” I try to teach students the importance of first being honest with themselves. Of looking inward to see their own weaknesses, their own flaws, their own biased perspective, so that their writing is not polluted with the dishonesty we so often don’t acknowledge. I try to show students how honesty in writing can and should be transferred to honesty in speaking. I try to teach my students that true honesty means not hiding behind masks but that it involves expressing who they are without care for how they are perceived.

In addition to teaching writing, I also teach reading. By the time my students have worked their way up to my classes, they have learned the basics of reading. Yet despite the fact that they have mastered the skills required to recognize symbols and words, their ability to read is only just beginning to develop. When I teach reading, I teach my students to try understand the person who is reaching out to them through the lines laid out before them. Before I begin to explore a literary novel with my students I often quote to them from C.S. Lewis:

We read only to know we are not alone.

As students learn to read they learn to “crawl into someone else’s skin and walk around in it” (Atticus Finch). They learn to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. When my students learn to read, they learn to see connections between their lives and the lives of those who are either writing to them, or who are being written about in the pages before them. They learn to evaluate their own experiences in terms of others.’ Often they learn to recognize the benefits and comforts that come with being Christian; they read about characters who struggle through life without a clearly marked map, who don’t recognize their reason for being, who make wrong decisions. Sometimes they see parts of themselves in these characters – the Jew-hating merchant, ostracized Jew, the young criminal, the social outcast, the innocent little girl caught up in a world she doesn’t understand – and discovering this, they recognize that they are not alone and that their struggles are not entirely unique. Suddenly literature becomes infinitely more meaningful.

Teaching English, I also teach the importance of passion.

Most of all, I try to teach my students about passion. Passion for living, for reading, for learning. We study poetry, not to see what point it makes, but to explore the pure emotion it is built upon. Studying poetry, we consider life, love, death, and every shade of human emotion. We study Shakespeare exploring the ways in which passion for life can be expressed in words upon a stage. And we recognize how boring life would be if God had not created us as passionate beings.

I also teach myself. My students often teach me. They teach me about honesty, about repentance, about making mistakes, about owning up to them, and about moving on, learning from them. They teach me about the importance of change and of consensus. They remind me, through both their exuberance and their apathy, of why it is so important to work hard and to take life and its opportunities seriously. They teach me patience and forgiveness. And so often, they teach me the importance of simple faith. Working each day with them, I often am reminded of how they innocently see things in terms of black and white, not yet having found a need to rationalize so many shades of grey.

And so the next time a teacher answers your question “What do you teach?” with the word English, and you see a glitter in his eye and a slight smile upon his face, you know he’s merely being polite, there is so much more he really wants to tell you.