I am joining a new school this fall, moving from Providence Classical Christian Academy in St. Louis to Clapham School in Wheaton, Illinois. Truth be told, it’s not exactly new to me. I will be returning to Clapham where I previously taught for five years. Although it’s not entirely new, five years have passed, and I return in a new administrative role. I have felt the new school feeling as a student, a teacher and an administrator.

Starting a new chapter is an excellent time to take stock of your core principles. Doing so helps to stay true to who you are as well as transition into the new environment with some semblance of equanimity. Perhaps these thoughts will help you at the start of a new school year, whether you’re new to a school or returning for another school year. 

Principle #1: Maintain the Long-term View

Whenever beginning a new endeavor, it is important to take the long view. We want to contribute something meaningful and of lasting value in this world. To start and flame out in just a year would be a failure. So we must ask ourselves, what does it look like to succeed at this long term? What can I do now to establish a legacy? What can I work on now that will be of lasting value?

I am a huge Liverpool FC fan. For the uninitiated, the Reds are a British football team. They almost won the Premier League last year (coming in second place to Manchester City), but did win the Champions League (the biggest club competition in Europe). At the helm of this footballing juggernaut is Jürgen Klopp, a German manager who has transformed LFC from a team living off the fumes of its former glory to a team that is competing against the best teams in multiple competitions. In his first press conference after joining the Reds in October of 2015, Klopp provided a perspective on his tenure that I quickly jotted on a sticky note on my computer desktop.

“It’s not important what people think when you come in, but what they think when you leave.”

As I was closing out my time at Providence, this quote lived with me as I increased my effort during the waning months of my time there. I wanted to leave a legacy at Providence and close out strong. I’ve seen too many times people decrease their effort at the end, they are already halfway into their next position. This can harm relationships and tarnish the good work one has done for the organization. The lingering impression after walking it in is that the organization has finally gotten rid of dead weight. I remember my track coach telling me to race past the finish line, not to it. We relax right before the finish line when we race to the finish line, allowing a competitor to slip past. In this vein, I intentionally gave 110% not just to the last day, but even beyond; making myself available to support the administrators replacing me. If Providence continues to succeed, then it says something about the quality of work I did there, especially in mentoring those who remain.

Now that I am starting a new position at Clapham, Klopp’s quote takes on new insights. It will matter very little what I accomplish in the first few days, weeks and months of my tenure at Clapham, if I don’t finish well and build something of lasting value during my time at Clapham. Building something of lasting value takes time and never happens solely on the effort of the new guy. One must listen carefully to the people who have been there, building relationships of trust. Obviously coming in new means that changes will be introduced, but it has to be consistent with the mission and values of the organization as it currently stands. One of the most valuable things you can build at a new organization is a sense of teamwork. The new academic standards, or the updated handbooks, or the new program initiatives should stem from a sense of everyone working together as a team, not as something that is dictated from on high by the new guy.

As I join Clapham, I recognize that the organization has had a life without me before I got here, and the organization will be around after my time is done. As much as I might hope to contribute to raise the game at Clapham, I will only play a small part in Clapham’s story. This idea is a powerful check to my ego and positions me well to think in terms of the broader aims of the organization. It’s counterintuitive, but the best way to establish your legacy is to check your ego and pour yourself out for the benefit of the higher cause.

Principle #2: Build Relationships as Your Primary Purpose

Being new to school can feel lonely. You don’t have the background that others have and you are entering into an environment where everyone seems to know each other. It can be hard to break into a group where strong relationships have already been formed.

However, one of the primary purposes for joining a new organization is to build relationships. And the best way to build relationships is to go back to the basics. First, you must listen effectively. You’re listening not only to what people are saying, but you are also paying attention to important topics of conversation, you’re listening to how people talk with you and with others. By paying attention as a listener, you can learn how to speak the language of the new organization. It can feel a bit like learning a foreign language. The better you can speak that language, the more you can accomplish in the environment. Second, you must speak simply and clearly. Make your points succinctly and without too much flowery ornamentation. There will be time for your personality to come through over time, but be careful not to overwhelm others with showy speeches. Third, seek opportunities to help others on their projects. You might think it’s important to get started on your top priorities. But because building relationships is of primary importance, you can quickly build a sense of teamwork and common purpose by helping others. This also fast tracks your acquisition of institutional knowledge. You are also likely to see connections between their work and your work and how they both contribute to the mission of the organization.

Ultimately, you are building bridges of trust. Trust takes time to build. And like a bridge, trust must carry freight in two directions. People want to know that you can be trusted, just as you want to know that you can trust your new colleagues. Every replied email, congenial conversation, completed project and positive social encounter lays down another plank on the bridge of trust. Working as a team requires multiple layers of trust between several people. A great way to destroy trust (and trust bridges are easily broken), is to talk behind the backs of others. Hopefully conflicts won’t arise in the early days at a new organization, but they are bound to come up. Instead of letting conflicts break down trust, use conflicts to reinforce trust. By being proactive to resolve conflict, people will learn that you are a team player who fights to maintain good rapport with everyone.

Whether you are coming in as the new boss or in an entry level position, it is helpful to remember that we are all under authority. There is always some else up the chain of command you answer to. In order to accomplish whatever goals you might have in your new position, it is essential to form good relationships up and down the hierarchy. A boss who doesn’t trust you won’t assign the exciting new initiative to you. But if you start by building trust, more and more responsibilities will be thrown your way. It’s not only your boss, but your peers, those who report to you, and even those who are further down on the org chart. Every person in the organization plays an important role and deserves your full commitment to building relationships of trust.

Principle #3: Contribute to Something Greater than Yourself 

The great thing about working in a school is you are immediately connected to a project greater than yourself. How inspiring is it to influence a new generation through the daily work of training and mentoring students whom parents have entrusted to your care?

Simon Sinek, in his book Start with Why, calls us to begin thinking not about what it is we do, or how it is we do it, but why do we do it in the first place (this is my very poor summation of an excellent book, but see Jason’s later article “Marketing, Manipulations and True Classroom Leadership” for more development of this idea). More recently in his podcasting and YouTube videos, he has begun referring to a “just cause” that your company, or in our case your school, takes on as its fundamental reason for existing in the first place (here’s a video of him talking about “just cause”, complete with bed head). This idea replaces the overused and somewhat mundane expression of the mission statement. There’s a reason this school exists – its just cause. The “why” is something we need to reconnect to consistently and regularly (dare I say daily, even hourly). Our just cause is to make a deep and lasting impact in the lives of students. I don’t know of an industry that has a much higher calling outside the church itself.

Charlotte Mason has been a source of inspiration for me as a teacher. The model I was raised in centered around the teacher in what I call the lecture-and-test method. The student is largely a passive listener until the testing time comes, and must snap into action to regurgitate the previously disseminated information. As a student I found this tedious and ineffective. As a teacher I found this exhausting. What joy it was when I was introduced to Charlotte Mason! She taught that children as whole persons had the capacity to interact with ideas and knowledge. It is not the teacher’s duty to spoon feed children this knowledge as though our students were baby birdies needing prechewed worms. (See Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, 8-20).

Instead, as teachers we guide our students to ideas and knowledge through great books that inspire them. I am not the focus of the students’ attention, but the book is. I am merely the guide. Teaching became something like taking a child on an adventure through all kinds of wonderful vistas of literature, poetry, history, music and artwork. I could set them loose in these fields and then bask in their wonderment, correct their errors, celebrate their breakthroughs and interact with their understandings through discussion. Instead of students who hated school because it was boring, I encountered students who were excited to learn despite the fact they were the ones putting in the greater part of the effort to learn.

When we are connected to the higher values of our learning environment, not only are we inspired, but our students catch that spark of inspiration too. We all get that sense that we are working on something that is both meaningful and fraught with purpose. This kind of work transcends the individual. When you are caught up in something greater than yourself, you begin to lose yourself in your work. And yet at the same time find that you as an individual are being made better. The meaning and purpose of higher value work adds value to our own lives. Unlike the downward spiral of menial work that takes from the individual his best energy, so that he needs to spend his non-work time recovering, the upward spiral of inspirational work feeds the soul of the worker.

Principle #4: Work Smart, Not Just Hard

Teaching and leading in a school is hard work and requires energy . . . significant energy. It’s a challenge to maintain work-life balance. Even if you finish lesson planning and grading during the school day (and few are able to accomplish that), we still bring home our concerns about certain students or are trying to solve classroom management problems. There’s often a school event to attend or a student who wants you to attend their recital or game. It isn’t any one task that makes teaching hard work, but all together it can be a job that is physically and mentally demanding.

If we’re connected to our inspiring motivation, our mindset should be to get after it with an aggressive attitude. However, it can be helpful to think through our top priorities, whether as a teacher or a leader. What is the most important work to be done each day, each hour, each moment? There are many tasks to be done in the day: from mentoring a new teacher to checking emails, from writing lesson plans to teaching today’s lessons, from grading math homework to making copies for tomorrow. The task list can be long. So what should be chosen? Often times we choose the tasks that require time and effort without thinking about long-term strategy or high level values.

It was difficult during my first few years as an administrator to prioritize the most important things. Everyone else’s fires would dominate my day, and most of my high value tasks went undone. There were many authors (Stephen Covey, David Allen and Tim Ferris to name a few) who taught about prioritizing your tasks and literally scheduling them like a meeting. One of my highest values was investing in the teachers. I began to schedule items on my calendar like, “Observe math teacher” and “give feedback to teacher.” By investing in the teaching staff you immediately solve other issues like student discipline, student retention, parent satisfaction, test scores, teacher retention, etc., etc. I could solve some of my long-term strategies (hire, train and retain the best faculty I can) by prioritizing time to observe and mentor my teachers. This is what it means to work smarter, to rise up out of the mentality to just get the work done in order to make sure the work you are doing is synchronized with your highest values.

It is not always obvious which task is the highest value. Here’s where the 80/20 principle, or Pareto’s principle, comes into play. For most of the work we do, usually only 20% accomplishes 80% of what needs to be done. Leveraging this concept helps us to see that some tasks are more obviously attached to, say, teaching a class, whereas several tasks have no obvious connection to teaching a class. So if my goal is to be about the business of teaching a class, why would I attempt the tasks that have little to do with teaching? If I applied my best energy to the 20% most associated with teaching, I could have a more productive and more satisfying day. This kind of thinking helps divert energy away from making copies, arranging the classroom, and checking email first thing in the morning. Instead, my 20% might include strategizing about a struggling student, finalizing the plan for an upcoming field trip or reworking a classroom system. Save some of those lower priority tasks for later when you have less energy and creativity, and perhaps they can be delegated to students (arranging the classroom at the end of each day) or to a parent offering to help after school (making copies).

Sometimes it’s difficult to see which tasks are the highest priority when we are immersed in all of the various areas of work. As an administrator, this was an area where I loved helping teachers out. Some would admit, “I’m stuck!” and offer several tasks that needed to be done. I would simply asks questions based on value and long-term strategy, and they would often be able to see for themselves what needed to be done. I was able to do this because I myself wasn’t immersed in their task list, so I had separation to be able to examine value. I enjoyed helping teachers in this way, but they often didn’t even need me. Separation can be created through sleeping on a decision or stepping out of the classroom for a moment. My advice to administrators is to constantly preach the highest values of the school, which will ultimately help the teacher remain connected to those values when they are making decisions about what to do each day.

Principle #5: Lean into Difficulties and Problems

Despite the planning and efforts to maintain focus on our highest values, fires do need to be put out. Problems and difficulties show up all the time. If you’ve ever watched downhill skiers, you’ll notice as they approach the gates – the obstacles on their course – they lean into them. We can do the same thing, aggressively tackling the difficulties that come our way. 

There is a temptation to avoid problems or somehow plan them away. However, it’s almost impossible to root out difficulties and problems altogether. We know they will arise, so the best approach is to plan for your plans to go awry. Embracing this concept can help alleviate the stress-inducing aspect of the fires that come our way. We know they are coming, so why fret about them? By being prepared for problems, we actually open ourselves up to a problem-solving mindset.

One of the ironies of life is that the pathway to joy passes through patches of challenge. If there were no challenges, difficulties or issues, there would be less opportunity to encounter joy. Teaching is a vocation full of meaning and purpose, but it comes at a cost. We suffer for our art by dealing with the messiness of life. Teaching students brings us into contact with the child’s capabilities and limitations. It involves us in the family’s life, albeit tangentially. The school brings together families with vastly different perspectives, interests and standards. Problems are bound to arise in such an environment. But as we work with our peers, our students and our families, we can cultivate profound joy through our engagement in the problems that come our way. 

The benefits of taking on our most challenging problems is that they provide a context for creativity and the exchange of ideas. Trying to figure out a class dynamic (every class is different and what worked last year likely won’t work this year) forces me to be creative and opens me up to listen to ideas generated by my peers, my boss and even the students themselves. We might fear exposing an area of personal weakness or ignorance, but the fastest way to acquire new growth is through humble admission that I am a person in need of growing. We can cultivate a growth mindset in our classrooms through our own commitment to growing our skills. 

Resources

There are many great books and articles out there on leadership, although very few on educational leadership. The following are a few books that have been foundational in my thinking.

Covey, Steven, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Hughes, Kent. Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome.

Sinek, Simon, Start with Why.

__________. Leaders Eat Last.

Willink, Jocko, Extreme Ownership.

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is an exploration of both order and chaos. There are quite a number of ideas he explores that provide tools for us to use as teachers.

Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist from Canada and teaches psychology at the University of Toronto. He has risen to fame through the new media by posting class lectures on YouTube and participating in debates and panel discussions with people like Sam Harris, Douglas Murray and David Rubin (side note: I think the Vancouver debate between Peterson and Harris is an excellent example of charitable debate). Peterson’s career has focused on emotional wellbeing through the creation of meaning especially through systems of religious belief and cultural mythology. His first book, Maps of Meaning, amounts to his theoretical exploration of how humans construct meaning in life, while his second book, 12 Rules for Life, spells out more practically some of the abstract concepts contained in his first work.

Peterson has attracted criticism for his views, especially concerning his opposition to state-mandated politically correct speech, identity politics, climate change and gender roles, the latter of which we’ll explore briefly below. Despite criticisms of his work, I have found many his ideas compelling and full of potential educational value. While I might differ with him on, say, the particulars of biblical hermeneutics, or might question some of the applications of his major ideas, I think Peterson has thoughtfully articulated many ideas that frame the nature of our modern culture and that provide a compelling way forward toward creating lives of meaning.

A Posture to Learn — Looking to Lobsters

The first rule Peterson sets out is stated, “Stand up straight with your shoulders back.” The rule is based on Peterson’s analysis of serotonin and dopamine neurochemicals in lobsters, which have a very similar neurochemistry to humans. In a dominance hierarchy, winners enjoy a release of positive neurochemicals and losers produce lower levels of serotonin, which is then reflected in their posture. A dominant male lobster raises his claws in a show of self-confidence, demonstrating its positive outlook on life, whereas the lesser lobster cowers physically, mired in a wash of negative neurochemicals. Our culture is less prone to the physical blows lobsters land on each other in the deep sea, but we still have this basic hormonal setup. Peterson’s advice, then, is to take on the posture of the winner: stand tall with your shoulders back. We can enjoy the benefits of positive neurochemistry by striking a positive pose.

For educators, I think this can be translated into good postural habits. Students slumped over their desks or tipping in their chairs are not positioning themselves for optimal academic engagement. Sitting up straight with shoulders back, eyes forward in an open and ready position is going to help a student place their focus better. A student striking this positive pose is more likely to feel more positively about their learning. It’s no surprise that students who strike a defeated pose feel defeated by their school work. As teachers, we should hold our students accountable to their posture by cultivating habits of posture, such as sitting and standing up straight.

The Hierarchies of Life

More controversially, Peterson identifies how both lobsters and humans (not to mention all animal life) operate within hierarchical structures. The dominance model of hierarchies implies that an individual climbs to higher rungs in the hierarchy through success in interactions with others. The dominance hierarchy is pretty old, since it is hard-wired into our nervous system. Even if one doesn’t accept an evolutionary paradigm, Peterson’s work here provides a neurological basis for hierarchy that is still demonstrably embedded in our humanity. It explains our positive and negative reactions to success and defeat. Peterson’s advice to walk tall with shoulders back is a recognition that hierarchies are a reality in life and are here to stay, for better or for worse. If life is chaotic (which it most certainly is), then taking upon ourselves a posture to meet the challenges of life by bringing order to our chaos is to our benefit. To see ourselves as part of a hierarchy enables us to take responsibility for our role in the hierarchy, whether in a family, school, work, or society.

Peterson has received much of his criticism for this point from feminists who see Peterson’s claims as a promotion of a tyrannical male hierarchy. The feminist claim is that male dominance has been tyrannical throughout history, making Peterson’s claims about roles of men and women within society’s hierarchical structures a threat to the egalitarian aims of feminists. While it is true that hierarchies can be misused by tyrants, Peterson does not think that becoming competent within a hierarchy entails tyranny. Quite the opposite. It is competence, he claims, that would lead to mutual happiness between men and women in marriage and broader society.

Peterson has clarified over the course of several interviews his stance, championing equality of opportunity for women and men over equality of outcome when it comes to careers. Removing barriers for women to compete for jobs with men is a desirable outcome. But creating mandated quotas actually undermines freedom of choice, which is bad for society. He notes that in many Scandinavian societies that have created the most egalitarian laws, we see some of the widest differences in career choices, meaning that when given equality of opportunity, men and women will often choose careers based on a set of criteria that is grounded in factors such as personality and gender differences.

These are important issues for educators to work through as we contemplate how best to serve our students, creating opportunities for all while recognizing that not all will fit into our cleverly devised metrics. Thus, enabling all students to take our highest level courses is a noble aim. But if more girls than boys opt into advanced language courses and more boys than girls opt into advanced science courses, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the system is broken. It wouldn’t necessarily be in the best interests of the students or the school to force more girls to take advanced science or more boys to take advanced languages. In my experience, these trends seem to ebb and flow, with some classes skewing one direction and the next the other. This ebb and flow is organic.

Less organic is the posture we take toward roles within hierarchies. In my previous post on Jesus as a learner, I mentioned how he learned obedience through what he suffered (Heb. 5:8). He embodied particular roles with the hierarchy of authority in various spheres, such as submitting to authority within a family or learning from the teachers of the law. Our students should learn how to live properly under authority, with respect and obedience. This is not some tyrannical power trip over children. Instead, it is teaching them to be at peace with their role as students who are under the authority of their teacher. It is not as though they will not live within structures of authority later in life. There will be bosses and magistrates. Cultivating a proper posture toward authority will enable students to enter into the world as self-controlled, competent people.

Practice Makes Better

Finally, there is an element of “fake it until you make it” mentality in Peterson’s first rule. Taking on the posture of standing tall with shoulders back doesn’t occur when we feel like it. Instead, the feeling of worth and wellbeing often occurs later. How do we begin to get rid of the feelings of self doubt and personal defeat? By doing something simple but powerful in posturing ourselves differently. When I used to teach string bass lessons to middle and high school students, one of the rules I taught my students was to act like an accomplished bass player before playing. They could visualize themselves as top performers who could rip through the difficult passages with grace and composure. I often saw this advice translate into better practice and better performance. Yes, they still had to put in the work of practicing the difficult passages. And yes, they still often made mistakes in performances — everyone does. But the mistakes weren’t as earth shattering as they once were. The confidence in their performances went up. And the joy in their music making increased.

Much of what a student does is practice. We often think of practice as homework exercises, construed as largely academic work. However, it is a wise teacher who considers the whole child. We are also helping the student practice their posture, their perspective on their work, the affections and loves. Learning how to practice when one doesn’t feel like it can be as important a skill as completing a set of long division problems. Peterson’s first rule, stand tall with shoulders back, is not simply about posture. It also speaks to a mindset that an individual take responsibility for their lives by focusing on one simple thing to practice. By getting some forward momentum on that one habit, others begin to follow.

Peterson writes about setting up automated routines in our life:

The acts of life we repeat every day need to be automated. They must be turned into stable and reliable habits, so they lose their complexity and gain predictability and simplicity. This can be perceived most clearly in the case of small children, who are delightful and comical and playful when their sleeping and eating schedules are stable, and horrible and whiny and nasty when they are not. (12 Rules, 18).

Imagine how complex getting started on homework is. Find a place to work, unpack the bag, identify the problem set, get yourself into work mode, stave off distractions that are likely more prevalent at home than they are at school, etc. If we were able to craft a stable and reliable set of habits where the time and space are automated each day, it reduces the complexity and effort it takes to even begin doing homework.

Homework is just one area, and probably not even the most important area, we should consider helping our students create practice routines. Organizing our folders, sequencing packup, and a whole host of the day’s routines can be a wellspring of opportunities to engage students in learning how to bring order into the chaos of the school day. We should never merely teach content. We are helping our students acquire rules for life so that these children may shape lives of meaning and purpose. As we craft our lesson plans and call upon our students to engage in academic work, we also ought to be mindful of ways we can cultivate healthy habits in our students’ lives.

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John the Baptist as Teacher

John the Baptist lived an austere lifestyle. He adhered to asceticism, wearing garments made of camel hair and restricting his diet to locusts and wild honey (Mark 1:6). John’s ministry lines up with the classic prophets of the Old Testament, as seen in his challenge of the political and religious elite in Jerusalem, but also in the manner of his address. For instance, he says of himself, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,” clearly alluding to Isaiah 40:3 (John 1:23). John the Baptist as a teacher draws upon the way in which discipleship or mentoring was modeled among many of the classic prophets. Martin Hengel notes particularly the relationship between Elijah and Elisha in his book The Charismatic Leader and His Followers. Hengel’s point was that Jesus calling his own disciples mirrored that of the OT prophetic tradition (see in particular pp. 17-18). This model, though, is likewise helpful in understanding John the Baptist, who also had a group of disciples (John 1:35), including Jesus of Nazareth.

John’s role as a teacher of Jesus might seem a bit of a stretch, given that John is never depicted as teaching Jesus. But the evidence that John played a formative role in Jesus’ life is seen in his inclusion at the beginning of all four gospels, right at the conclusion of Jesus formative years. Jesus’ baptism by John points to the familiarity between the two. In Jesus’ baptism at the hands of John there is simultaneously a submission on Jesus’ part to John as well as a recognition by John of Jesus’ superior role and mission. J. Ramsey Michaels bases the discipleship of Jesus to John on the phrase “he who comes after (ὀπίσω) me.” E. P. Sanders concludes after a close study of John 1-3, that Jesus’ mission “while independent of that of the Baptist’s, is similar in nature and near in locale.” The scholarly consensus is that Jesus spent some amount of time as a disciple of John before beginning his own ministry, but this consensus has not gone unchallenged. A recent PhD thesis at Edinburgh proposes that Jesus in all probability did not spend any time as a disciple of John. Max Alpin’s reasoning is essentially based on the fact that “Jesus had great confidence in his beliefs,” meaning “we simply would not expect him to have chosen to submit himself to John’s leadership.” In my estimation, there seems to be no problem with an individual having great confidence in his beliefs submitting to the teaching of a prominent religious figure. I think the prominent role John the Baptist plays at the beginning of all four gospels points to an essential influence John had on Jesus to frame his early ministry. The gospel of John elaborates by hints a closer connection, showing that Jesus chose his own first disciples from among John’s disciples (John 1:25). Seeing Jesus’ early ministry in light of time spent learning from John provides insights into some key moments in the gospels.

John’s message was simple: ““Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2). People came from far and near to hear John and some received baptism, while others scoffed. The message is expressed with simplicity, yet is full of meaning. There is the call to listeners to an active response. The imminence of God’s heavenly kingdom evokes an emotional factor eliciting hope or impending doom. When we look at Jesus’ ministry, we see he proclaims the very same message. Matthew records Jesus first message: “Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand” (Matt. 4:17). Now this wasn’t a rote, memorized, dry recitation. Jesus’ proclamation has all of the conviction and passion that John expressed. The point, though, is that we have in this shared message a link between teacher and student. Viewed from the vantage point of models of communication, we can verify that the teacher’s message has been properly decoded and assimilated. John the Baptist, his role as predecessor completed, recedes into the background in the Gospels, perhaps as we would expect in a story centering on Jesus himself.

Jesus as Learner

Jesus as learner is a remarkable reality when we take into account his divine and human natures. Consider that the fullness of God (all knowledge, all power, everywhere present) became incarnate in a helpless baby (no knowledge, vulnerably powerless, physically present in one location). Paul expresses this as making himself “nothing” (Phil. 2:7). This humiliation meant that Jesus had to learn information he had called into existence. The author of all language had to acquire a mother tongue as we did. He learned the trade of carpentry from his father. He devoted himself to learning the very scriptures that he had inspired and that pointed to himself.

I think the incarnation tells us something profound about learning. Jesus entered fully into our human experience, validating something fundamental to our nature: to be human is to be a learner. We can fall prey to the notion that education is temporary, something to finish early in our youth before getting on with “real” life. True, much that has to be learned occurs early in life. Jesus’ training under John the Baptist was limited to a definite span of time followed by Jesus’ own career as a teacher. But Jesus’ learning is not isolated to his formative years. Hebrews 5:8 provides the insight that he learned obedience through his sufferings. Helmut Koester explains that “Jesus was never disobedient to God,” but that Jesus was able to “demonstrate obedience” by encountering difficult situations in his humanity “where the will of God was challenged and obedience was required.” In other words, the entirety of Jesus’ incarnate human experience was a learning experience, captured by the Greek word μανθάνω in Heb. 5:8. All of his life experiences, particularly those which caused him to suffer, were learning experiences. At one level, we can imagine that Jesus divesting himself of divine attributes to become human flesh (Phil. 2:7), was a form of suffering through the new limitations encountered in bodily form. But we can also point to the sufferings chronicled leading up to his crucifixion. The author of Hebrews makes this connection in 9:26, concluding that Jesus’ sufferings culminated in a one-time sacrifice to “put away sin.”  His entire life was a learning experience (just as his entire life is a teaching experience, but that is a topic for another time).

Learning is a profound aspect of human nature. Part of being image bearers is that we are learners. God incarnates himself in Christ into this nature. We must throw off the conception that learning is either for the ignorant or for only a short period of life. If learning is part of our nature, then all of life contains opportunities to learn. Learning doesn’t just occur in the classroom, but also in all possible spaces and throughout all possible ages. There is always something new to learn. This is not a result of the fall, but it is an essential aspect of our nature. In the Garden, prior to the fall, we see learning occur as God instructs the first man to obey the command to not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:16-17). Calvin refers to this event as “a kind of first lesson in obedience.” There is yet another moment of applied learning as God brings all the animals before the first man to be named (Gen. 2:19).

Learning and Teaching as Followers of Jesus

Today we have a tendency to treat education as a means to an end. Learning occurs for a brief spell at the beginning of life so that one can accomplish things later in life. Jesus’ incarnation as a learner, however, shows us that learning is something inherent to us as humans. Therefore, we must be careful not to compartmentalize learning as something to finish so that we can get on with the business of living life. The utility of education cannot be made to overshadow our human longing to learn. Learning is a creative and generative endeavor that reflects our own creation in the image of God. In light of this, we can consider several principles that enlighten our understanding of the nature and goals of education.

First, God’s revelation to humanity occurs through language. We see this first illustrated in Genesis 1 as all of creation is spoken into being by divine expression. The reflection on the incarnation found in the gospel of John expresses Jesus as the Word made flesh (John 1:14). Not only in the fact of God revealing himself to his creation, but also in the means by which he reveals himself, education and learning are essential aspects of our relationship with God. Divine truth is disseminated in language we can comprehend, making it possible for us to learn. This doesn’t mean that it is easy to learn God’s self-disclosure. That is why education must cultivate the intellect. God’s word is not only to be read, but also reflected upon, interpreted and applied. This is not to say that the spirit does not guide understanding of the text (a point which we’ll turn to momentarily), but we can at least say that a trained intellect is predicated upon the manner by which God reveals himself.

Second, through the incarnation God demonstrates his empathetic care for people. Jesus became human in the most vulnerable, helpless and powerless manner possible as a baby. Emptying himself of divine attributes, he enters into human experience and knows our sufferings (Heb. 2:18). Because of this, as the author of Hebrews drives home, Jesus is able to carry out his priestly role, supplicating for humanity because he knows through what he has learned, but also because his perfect life and divine nature gives him access to the throne of God that we ourselves lack apart from him. Empathetic care, then, must be a chief educational goal. Students must learn to care for God (reverence) and for other people (respect). Our daily work in each of our subjects must be imbued with care and devotion. We can cultivate a sense of our own priestly role in the world as caretakers of creation.

Third, Jesus, by entering into human form, entered into human structures of authority. Jesus became a child within a family, submitting himself within the hierarchy of the relationship between parents and children. Jesus at various points also recognized other authority structures, by having people he healed become cleansed by the priests (Luke 17:14), or by rendering to Caesar what is Caesar’s (Matt. 22:21). We all live in hierarchies of authority, and Jesus entered into this aspect of our humanity as well. Learning the proper response to authority is an essential aspect of education. Obedience begins with self-discipline, learning to do what we ought in the face of competing desires to do what we want. But we must also learn how to obey teachers, employers, church authorities, government regulations. In order for these hierarchical relationships to work properly, roles of submission and authority have to be recognized. It is certainly the case that power and authority have been abused, and pushing back against authority in such cases can correct wrongs. But the throwing off of authority is not the normal operating procedure, it runs counter to our nature as humans. Jesus himself suffered from power wielded against him, but he still entered into our human structures. Considering who Jesus is, we can further explore this concept of authority. All authority is derived from some higher authority, a progression that eventually leads us to the authority that resides in God himself. Whatever role we think of—judge, president, teacher, parent—has a delegated or deputed authority to carry out whatever the role demands. The incarnation of Jesus Christ places the ultimate authority (God himself) within the hierarchy of authority. I think this points to something good and right about hierarchies of authority.

Fourth, human beings are soulful creatures, part of God’s physical creation, but spiritual just as He is. The temptation for those of us in education is to divide humans into physical, spiritual, emotional and intellectual components. We do damage to our students, though, when cut them apart in this way. We too often appeal to the intellect without consideration of the whole person. A child properly educated grows in all ways, in every part of their being. Caring for the whole being of our students means we help them develop a personal understanding of physical conditioning, of well ordered affections, and of their spiritual nature. By solely teaching to the intellect, we ask the student to sit still, to quiet their emotions, and, yes, our lectures lack spirit. Jesus taking on human flesh shows us our multifaceted nature. Not only do we see intellect, but emotions, physicality, and, of course, spirit.

Conclusion

It is with reverence that we contemplate the mysteries of the incarnation. Too many heresies attempted to sell short Jesus’ nature without fully articulating his divinity or his humanity. This meditation on Jesus as a learner obviously highlights his human nature, but hopefully not at the expense of his full divine nature. I believe the value we gain bears fruit in understanding our own nature as image bearers. We as teachers are created in the image of God, and we teach others created in the image of God. Jesus’ incarnation, his suffering, his death, his resurrection, all are part of the plan to accomplish our redemption. Jesus’ life also provides for us principles that can guide us as educators, giving us a robust educational philosophy.

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