I had the pleasure of attending this year's KOTESOL conference. It had a simple and much needed theme. Focus on Fluency.

I caught the tail-end of Stephen Krashen's plenary session "The Secrets of Hyper Polyglots". He was presenting information from two amazing polyglots who have had a tremendous amount of experience acquiring different languages in different situations. They had written down their own conclusions about second language acquisition. His conclusions included that (a) polyglots understand that the driving force behind language acquisition is: comprehensible input and they recognize the limited role of conscious knowledge of grammar and error correction.
(b) They reject the popular immersion idea that all you need is to “go to the country".
(c) They seek high-interest “compelling” input.
(d) They warn us about striving for perfectionism, both in terms of producing and understanding language.
(e) They urge us to “trust the process.”

In terms of speaking dynamics, I was pleasantly surprised. He was engaging, told a number of jokes and made his points. And I admit I am intrigued by the idea of not having conscious knowledge of grammar. I am not sure I completely agree with him on this point. His polyglots were people who, for the most part, spent their time speaking the language. My students are supposed to be able read, write, listen, and speak in English. They are falling lately in the writing and reading of English because of only basic knowledge of grammmatical forms. 

Another session I particularly enjoyed was by the amazing teacher trainer who wrote the Communication Games series from years ago. Jill Hadfield was simply and quickly presenting information from her book Interaction Online. I did notice the connections between the in-class interactions from the Communication Games series with the online interactions she was presenting. There was a logical and categorized progression that she showed before she flashed her book on the screen for less than 30 seconds. I was not the only person more than a little surprised by this. Someone closer to the front was able to ask her to show the slide with the book on it.

Jill Hadfield had another session on Sunday that I was not able to attend. I understand from other KOTESOL members that it was equally amazing. I will be ordering the book closer to Christmas when I have time to read it.

The following weekend I had the pleasure of hosting a Christian Teachers Retreat/Picnic on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.

I was greatly blessed by our small crowd who shared grace, food, educational thoughts, and service ideas for our group. I was blessed by Grant Rush, Jinny and David Toft, Elizabeth Belkour, Jensah and Jeku Aromin, Rosemary Sorg, Hansun Kim, Justin, Aidan, and Jordan and a few others. None of us taught oe led a session. We just had a great discussion on how to share our faith with students, colleagues, and other people within KOTESOL. I came away thinking that I was just as blessed by these people who work and teach regularly as I was by the  KOTESOL community and the presenters.

Service opportunities are everywhere here when we really look with our God-given eyes. I look forward to building community with the Christian Teachers Special Interest Group! And to teach and serve in a way that brings honour to God.

Teaching from Rest by Sarah Mackenzie is actually a very short book about homeschooling, but it has much to offer in regards to teaching as a Christian.  Many of us get wrapped up in the everyday stress of checklists, homework assignments, presentations, grammar lessons, and the lot in regards to teaching.  Sarah Mackenzie, of Read-Aloud Revival (amongstlovelythings.com) fame, does a great job unpacking the concept of schole (Greek word for institutions of education) which has been interpreted as restful learning.  In this first post of a three part series, I would like to focus on the first part of the book entitled “Whose Well Done Are You Looking For?”.

In Philippians we are told to be anxious over nothing, yet we are anxious over many things.

Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God.  And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6-7)

We worry and fret over our students, the quality of our lesson plans, our relationships with other teachers.  We easily fall into worry and fret about our own lives.  Our souls are restless, anxiously wondering if something else out there might be a bit better – if maybe there is another way or another book that might prove to be superior to what we are doing now.  We choose anxiety as our guide instead of humbly submitting to God and letting Him guide us.

This book is a plea and an explanation on how to seek Him first.  Can we live and teach from a state of rest? We can, but we must approach the Holy Spirit every single day, asking Him to lead us and to quiet or anxious souls so that we can really bless our children (students) – not with shiny curriculum or perfect lesson plans, but rather with purposeful, restful spirits.

I appreciate that Mackenzie brings up the point that rest is not ease.  “This isn’t idealism. It isn’t simple and peaceful in the sense of being easy or gentle.  Teaching from rest is meaningful learning and growth – but without the anxiety and frenzy so common in our day.  Contrary to what you might think at first when you first hear ‘teaching from rest’, teaching from rest will take diligence, attention, and a lot of hard work” (4).

Unshakable peace is not going to come from getting through a certain amount of material over a specified amount of time, but it also doesn’t come from throwing in the towel and giving in when things get hard.  Peace comes from knowing that our genuine task is to wake up each morning and “get our marching orders from God” (4). It comes from diligence to the work God has given us, but this is diligence infused with faith, with resting in God’s promises to guide and bless us.

The bottom line is resting is about trusting God.  “Rest is trusting that God’s got this, even if I’m a mess, even if I’m not enough, even if I mess up everyday.  Because I do” (4).  Rest is also trusting that even though some of your students are not progressing in their English skills they way you intended for a course, they are learning and God is there with you in that process.

The author brings up the important point of rest being a virtue between negligence and anxiety.  Teachers, like homeschooling mothers, find themselves likely to fall prey to one camp or the other.  A course that is so condensed that it leaves no room for the soul to breathe will suffocate, but so will the absence of purposeful and intentional teaching. If we are doing our students a disservice “shuttling them through a set of books and plans without consideration for their souls, we are doing them an equal disservice by ignoring their formation and leaving our children (students) to form themselves” (7).

If our students are images of God (of course they are), then we are not meeting their needs or tending to their real nature when we swing like a pendulum to either the vice of anxiety of the vice of negligence.

Personally, I spent my first few teaching years leaning towards negligence.  I was relaxed.  It was not laziness exactly.  I went in to teach them intentionally and I thought it would a wonderful gift to my students to allow them to bloom on their own terms.  My neglect fostered laziness, carelessness, and a somewhat self-centered view of learning.  I was thinking about wisdom and wonder, and had come to the conclusion that I should do my best to step out of the way.  I had failed to build a bridge between the students God had put in front of me and the person intended each of them to be.

“The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.”      Plutarch, “On Listening” in Essays, trans Robin H. Waterfield, ed. Ian Kidd (London: Penguin Classics, 19930, 50.

This quote tells us that education is not the filling of a bucket.  This is not about filling the mind with information.  It is the lighting of a fire.  We have to remember that a fire does need to be lit and then stoked.  Otherwise, it will burn out.

In Luke 6:4 we learn that when a student is fully formed he or she will become like his teacher.  Clearly, a teacher cannot form a students by staying in the shadows.

Consequently, rest is not the absence of work or a failure to consider and carry out a plan.  It is work and leisure properly ordered.  It involves doing the right thing at the right time and realizing that our task to hear God’s call and follow His Commands, and then trust that God will God.  In a sense, to be at rest even while at work.

Our anxiety could be sidestepped by simply acknowledging who we are trying to please.  It might sound simplistic, but consider that your days will likely look different depending on whether you are doing it all for His pleasure, or doing it to please students, administration, colleagues, or anyone else.  Who are you trying to impress?

Teaching from rest is also about excellence.  Sometimes we get caught up with our exceptional language learners and focus on them.  We need to remember that God never demands that we produce prodigies or achieve what the world would recognize as excellence.  “Rather, he asks us to live excellently – that is, to live in simple obedient faith and trust.  He asks us to faithfully commit everyday to him and then do the day’s tasks well.  He’s in charge of the results” (10).
​
Teaching from rest has many aspects of what it isn’t.  It isn’t anxiousness, worry, or anxiety.  It isn’t idealism.  It is meaningful learning and growth for our students that will take diligence, attention and hard work.  It is a virtue that falls between the vices of negligence and anxiety.  We are to trust that God has everything just where He wants it to be.  Teaching from rest is about living in relationship with God; we are to live in obedient faith to the day’s tasks and He will bless the results.  In the end, teaching from rest is about being at peace in God’s presence.  As we rest in His presence, we are better equipped not only for teaching, but life in general.