My Secret Weapon

By Joy Adams

Before becoming a stay at home mom, I was a public high school teacher for 9 years.  During this time, I learned a lot about myself, others and the power of prayer.

Teaching high school was both extremely challenging and rewarding.  During those first few years, the days were long and the nights were even longer.  Managing lesson planning, classroom management, school responsibilities, and grading were seemingly never ending.  The level of multitasking required, especially those first few years, is comparable to the around the clock nonstop schedule of raising babies and toddlers.  Similar to parenting, teaching can often be exhausting, mentally draining, and especially in the beginning, thankless.

I learned quickly that if I did not know all of my students’ names by the end of the first week, I was like a car without gas, powerless.  By my second year of teaching, I made it my goal to know all their names by day three.  Depending on the year, this was 80-140 students.  Everything is a balancing act.   On the good days I was like the circus master at a three ring circus but on the rough days, I felt like I was herding cats. In the beginning there were a lot of herding cats days.

Every year there would be a few students who would challenge me with their behavior.  They were the natural born leaders who lacked discipline, the disruptive class clowns, the troubled and rebellious souls, and the socially unaware.  Each class had its own unique balance of these special characters and of course they were mixed in with their counter parts the natural students, the quiet observers, and the trying to be invisible.

Learning to take charge of and creating a healthy and safe learning environment for ALL my students was like going into battle.  A battle in which casualties were not an option.   The very students whose big personalities, daily tried to derail the learning process and whose very presence could be like a toxin in the environment, were in fact the prize.  In fact, each and every one of my students was the prize and so I had to learn to battle in the invisible realm.  Like a stealth bomb squad, I had to learn to deactivate the triggers before it was too late and I had to learn to forgive yesterday’s indiscretions, before they poisoned today’s chance for new beginnings.

Early in my teaching career, I attended a teacher’s workshop in which the presenter asked us to close our eyes and think of the student that caused the most disruption in our classroom.  It was an easy activity to do.  Immediately I had about three students in mind who were daily challenges and on many days I felt like I was losing, big time.   Then the presenter told us to get out a piece of paper and write down all we knew about them.  What was their favorite sport?  Did they have a mom and dad at home?  What did they want to do after high school?  Did they walk to school or get a ride?  What is there favorite subject? I quickly realized that I did not know anything about these students.  I only knew their behavior in my classroom. I was so embarrassed by my empty page that I placed my hand over the paper to hide its emptiness.  I had some work to do, it wasn’t going to be easy, but if I wanted them to care about the things I cared about, it was time, I started to care about what they cared about.

I began asking all of my students more questions.  Sometimes through conversation, sometimes through a random short answer question on an assignment, I began finding out who they were outside of their daily time in my classroom.  This helped but in many ways teenagers, like many of us, are still discovering who they are and sometimes they have found such agreement with the social identity that they have been assigned, “class clown”, “popular girl”, that they are only confident in presenting themselves to be a very limited version of themselves. I began to ask God to show me a glimpse of who he had created my students to be so that I, within my interactions with them, could call out their destiny.  Prayer became my key.

I started by going into school extra early about once a month to pray.  I would pray over the entire room, over the atmosphere, over each individual desk and for the students who would sit in them.  When I began to do this, a shift occurred.  It was easier to maintain an atmosphere of peace within the classroom. There were still behavioral hiccups along the way, but God was giving me new ideas to be able to address these hiccups from a place of peace and strategies to help stop the indiscretions before they even started.

On testing days, I would take advantage of the quiet and stillness of the room and I would, silently, in my head, pray over each and every student.  I would ask God to show me who they were, what about them was special, and for keys to unlocking them into their destiny.  I was amazed at the change that occurred. I began to see glimpses of my students in their future.  I saw future fathers and mothers, I saw innovative business leaders, and I saw community members.  Often the very characteristics that could get them into trouble at school, were also the same God-given characterizes that would launch them into their future.

Prayer made me see my students from God’s perspective.  It changed the way I interacted with them and it changed my expectations.  The goal was not for them to know the four reasons for World War I, or how to factor polynomials in Algebra, although I taught both those things, the goal was to empower students  to go after their dreams and to not allow them to let the “tests” of life stand in their way.

During my last year of teaching, my principal honored me by nominating me for our county’s Teacher of the Year award.  I did not make it any further in the county’s selection process, however just the honor of this nomination was special to me.  Generally this type of award gives the impression of some kind of teacher magician who produces academic prodigies, but the reality is my students never aced the SATs or were awarded full scholarships to anywhere.  My students were the ones who persevered and overcame homelessness, teenage pregnancy, the death of parents/siblings, the deportation of a parent, learning disabilities, personal and family illnesses and just plain old high school.  Many of my students would never be on the honor roll, but I would not have traded them for the world.  My students knew that they were more than a letter grade to me, and that was the reason my principal nominated me for teacher of the year.

I am a third generation teacher.  I am gifted in the area of teaching, but no matter how knowledgeable a teacher is on a subject matter, it does not mean a thing, unless that knowledge is able to transfer to its subjects.  The reality is, people do not care about what you care about, until they know that you care about them.  This is true, not just in the area of education, but in every aspect of life.  For me, it was prayer that unlocked my ability to see and truly care for my students.  It was prayer that transformed an angry sophomore from ‘hating’ me and my class, into a senior who requested to be my TA and told my class of freshmen “Don’t mess with Mrs. Adams, she actually cares about you.”  It was prayer that caused a girl who stormed out of my classroom during her sophomore year, to return to me repeatedly as a junior and senior (even though she no longer had my class) for guidance and to celebrate her successes.  It was prayer that convinced my undocumented student to not drop out to go work in the fields, but to stick with it and graduate.  Remembering the sincerity of his “thank you” on graduation day, can still bring tears to my eyes.

Prayer is a game changer.  It alters mind sets, transforms atmospheres, and unlocks people’s ability to care, forgive, and grow.  Jesus had a lifestyle of both prayer and compassion for the cares of others.  It worked for Jesus, worked for me, and it can work for you too.  If you find yourself in a position of “just not caring”, being stagnant, or daily losing your battles, the best thing you can do is pray.  Never underestimate the power of prayer, just be forewarned, the person it changes the most is you.

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