Teacher

Brian Grazer, Hollywood producer of such movies as Apollo 13, Splash, and A Beautiful Mind, writes:

More than intelligence, or persistence or connections, curiosity has allowed me to live the life I wanted. And yet for all the value that curiosity has brought to my life and work, when I look around, I don’t see people talking about it, writing about it, encouraging it, and using it nearly as widely as they could.

Curiosity seems so simple. Innocent even. Labrador retrievers are charmingly curious. Porpoises are playfully, mischievously curious. A two-year-old going through the kitchen cabinets is exuberantly curious—and delighted at the noisy entertainment value of her curiosity. Every person who types a query into Google’s search engine and presses ENTER is curious about something—and that happens 6 million times a minute, every minute of every day.

Possible Preaching Angle

Brian Grazer writes about curiosity in a way that might remind us of how Jesus habitually piqued curiosity in others, whether it was the woman at the well or the disciples imagining a camel squeezing through the eye of a needle. Curiosity can be what enables the searcher to find the life they are looking for in Jesus Christ.

By now you’ve probably heard about the Alaska Airlines flight in early January that experienced a sudden loss of pressure when a mechanical failing in the Boeing Max 9 caused a door plug to pop out midflight. Many consider it a miracle that the flight was able to safely land without any fatalities or even major injuries.

For the FAA and the NTSB, the crisis did not end when the flight landed safely back at Portland International Airport. Both agencies needed to get to the bottom of how and why the door plug flew off in the first place. This required locating any of the debris that flew off midflight, including the door plug, which is the size of a normal airplane exit door.

Enter Bob Sauer. Sauer works as a science teacher in the area of Portland in the plane’s flight path. Sauer heard that NTSB authorities were searching for debris in his area. So, on a rainy Sunday night, he took a flashlight into his dark backyard to see if he could spot anything that seemed out of place. Sure enough, dangling midair among a small grove of cedar trees, was something that didn’t belong.

Sauer told a reporter, “It was definitely an airplane part. It had the same curvature that the fuselage has, and had a window in it.” Sauer called an NTSB hotline, and sent a few photos of his discovery. Within a day or so, investigators descended on his property, excited to confirm that it was indeed the door plug.

It turns out the plane was not directly overhead when the door plug failed, but landed in Sauer’s yard because of the several scientific factors. In light of this, Sauer used the incident as a teaching moment, and spent the first fifteen minutes of his astronomy class Monday morning explaining the discovery and relating it to the principles of terminal velocity, such as the plane’s airspeed, and wind speed, and air resistance during its descent.

Sauer was glad it hadn’t landed on his house; something that size moving at that velocity would’ve punched a hole in his roof.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Christian parents can follow this example and find teachable moments in life and use them to instruct their children. Teachable moments involve using everyday situations to illustrate biblical principles and teach children about God and faith. These moments can be tailored to the child's age and comprehension level, showing them the biblical relevance to their lives.

A burst of recent editorials have criticized AI tools like ChatGPT as a threat to educational goals over concerns that students would abuse the technology. However, educators are beginning to come around to the value of artificial intelligence – not for students, but for the teachers themselves.

Kansas high school teacher Mike Harris said that normally, designing a 16-week drama class that adheres to state standards would take him at least a full workday. He asked ChatGPT to engage the task, however, and he said he had a workable outline in a few minutes. He also used it to break down the class into daily lesson plans. The 10-year veteran drama teacher said, “To me, that’s the wonder of the tool. This is one of those once-in-a-millennia technology changes.”

Experts recommend using caution when applying AI tools to complex tasks, particularly in the field of education, because the technology is still prone to making errors. Still, many educators would rather use their time rigorously fact-checking the output of an AI rather than starting from scratch.

Sarah Alvick is a social studies teacher who says AI is also helpful for teachers having difficulty engaging students with the task of writing. She said, “You’ll have a kid who sits for a whole week, saying, ‘I don’t know what to write about.’” With AI, she tells students to use it “to assist you, not to do it for you.” She is concerned about the loss of critical thinking, but seems to feel that the positives outweigh the negatives.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Technology constantly brings changes to the way we do things. We need to wisely put it to use as a tool, without it becoming a crutch or a way to avoid hard work.

The kids at Summit Elementary School in Butler, Pennsylvania, are looking out for their peers five miles away at Broad Street Elementary. Broad Street is in a food desert, where it's difficult to get fresh produce.

Two years ago, Summit Elementary school students, led by teacher Angela Eyth, began growing fruit, vegetables, and herbs on campus, with the bounty going to families at Broad Street Elementary. Angela said, “It's amazing when you start with a small idea and it can grow. No pun intended.”

The Summit Elementary students are not only learning how fruits and vegetables grow, but they are also gaining math skills through measuring and estimating and coming up with solutions to problems. Recently, they figured out a way to keep out bugs that eat kale.

The school received a grant to build a stand at Broad Street Elementary, where they will put out the corn, squash, carrots, beans, and other items they grow. This is just the beginning—future plans include planting sunflowers, Christmas trees, and a pollinator garden. Angela said, "The kids are in charge of everything. They're so proud of what we're doing here."

When he was a kid, Kevin Boyer's parents left him special notes in his lunch box. Now he's keeping that tradition alive with his own students. Boyer is the family and student support coordinator at Gorsuch West Elementary in Lancaster, Ohio.

Last year, he wrote a personalized letter to every student in the school, and he's doing it again this year. Every day, he pens six notes, so that by the last day of school, he will have written a letter to all 600 students. Boyer makes it a point to learn the name of every kid in the school. He also finds out their interests and hobbies so when it's time to write their letters, they are one-of-a-kind. Boyer told local reporters that some students tape their letters to their desks, while others have told him they proudly display the notes on their refrigerators at home.

A quarter-century ago, a middle-aged pastor and writer named William Stidger was reflecting on his gratitude for a teacher he had in his youth who’d introduced him to great literature and sparked a love for the written word that had helped prepare him for his future vocations. Realizing he had never thanked her for the way she had touched his life, he decided to “atone” for this omission, and that very night penned her a handwritten letter of thanks. Just a few days later, he received a reply; written in shaky scrawl, it read:

My Dear Willie, I am now an old lady in my 80’s, living alone in a small room, cooking my own meals, lonely and seemingly like the last leaf of fall left behind. You will be interested to know, Willie, that I taught school for 50 years and, in all that time, yours is the first note of appreciation I ever received. It came on a blue, cold morning, and it cheered my lonely old heart as nothing has cheered me in many years.

At the end of the school year in 1997, Judith Toensing wrote in one of her sixth grade students' report cards, "It's been a joy to have you in class. Keep up the good work! Invite me to your Harvard graduation!"

Twenty-one years later, the student did just that. Kristen Gilmer, 33, kept and treasured the note from her former sixth-grade teacher saying, those powerful lessons encouraged her to study public health. So when Gilmer graduated from Harvard as a doctor of public health in May 2018, she made sure Toensing was there to share the big day with her. "She lit a fire in me," says Gilmer.

In a survey of 2,000 Americans on gratitude, some 80 percent agreed that receiving gratitude makes them work harder, but only 10 percent managed to express gratitude to others every day. "Thanks"—whether sent up, down, or sideways—was rarely heard.

The Wall Street Journal reports that being appreciated is one of the great motivators on the job, even better than money. Researchers at the London School of Economics analyzed more than 50 studies that looked at what gets people charged up at work. They concluded that we give our best effort if the work gets us interested and excited, if we feel that it's providing meaning and purpose, and if others appreciate what we're doing.

Two business professors designed a study in which they asked professionals to advise students about the cover letters they were using to apply for jobs. After receiving the suggestions, the students asked for help with another letter. Some 32 percent of the professionals agreed. But when students added a single line to their note about the first feedback—"Thank you so much! I am really grateful!"—a full 66 percent of the advisers agreed to help again. A simple expression of gratitude doubled the response.

The musician, poet, songwriter Leonard Cohen used the following image for the creative process of writing (for teachers, artists, preachers, etc.):

[The creative process is] like a bear stumbling into a beehive or a honey cache: I'm stumbling right into it and getting stuck, and it's delicious and it's horrible and I'm in it and it's not very graceful and it's very awkward and it's very painful and yet there's something inevitable about it.

Possible Preaching Angles: 1)Teachers; Pastors; All who teach and preach Scripture know the labor of studying the Word and the delight of discovering its sweetness to present it to others; 2) Arts; Creativity; Vision; The creative process can be a fire in the bones that combines agony with a drive to complete the vision.

It's the sound no relay runner wants to hear: Ping. Ping. Ping. At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the United States men's and women's 4x100-meter relay teams dropped batons—and heard the pings of them hitting the track—during a disastrous performance that prompted the chief executive of USA Track & Field to promise a "comprehensive review" of the entire relay program. Four years earlier in Athens, shoddy baton passing by the American men had allowed a British relay team to pull off an upset, while the United States women were disqualified after a botched exchange. There have been similar troubles at the world championships.

On the surface, relay batons do not seem hard. They are about 12 inches long, smoothly cylindrical, free from adornments, and they go by a simple nickname: the Stick. Yet every runner fears the ping that can make years of hope come tumbling down the track. One sprinter compared the challenge of the baton exchange to a harried traveler's trying to catch up to (and hold hands with) his wife as he maneuvered on a moving walkway in a crowded airport.

But if you want to win, you have to pass the baton. Before the 2012 London Olympics, one of the men on the USA's relay team said, "We've got the history, and we've got the talent right now. No one can deny that. We just need to get the stick around. That's it. We just need to get the stick all the way around and win."

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Legacy; Leaders; Leadership; Mentors—are you passing the baton on to others behind you? (2) Parenting; Children; Youth ministry—are we passing the baton to the next generation"

The power of story is getting unlikely attention. In a fascinating collaboration, literary scholars and neuroscientists have teamed up to explore the impact that stories have on the human brain.

A Wall Street Journal article by Allison Gopnik entitled "Want a Mind Meld? Tell a Compelling Story," described a variety of brain scan studies that show that stories not only shape one's thoughts, but also foster a connection between a storyteller and listener. The closer the connection, the greater the understanding of the story. Gopnik concluded that "results suggest that we lowly humans are actually as good at mind-melding as [Star Trek's] Vulcans or the Borg. We just do it with stories." Other experiments have looked at how stories help develop neural pathways, and affect our relationships by altering how we order and understand information.

Possible Preaching Angles: The best story of all, the story that we need to hear above any other story, is the good news about Jesus Christ.

The human brain weighs three pounds. It is the size of a softball, and yet with it we have the capacity to learn something new every second of every minute of every hour of every day for the next three hundred million years. God has created us with an unlimited capacity to learn. What that tells me is that we ought to keep learning until the day we die.

Leonardo da Vinci once observed that the average human "looks without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting, inhales without awareness of odor or fragrance, and talks without thinking." But not da Vinci. The quintessential Renaissance man called the five senses the ministers of the soul. Perhaps no one in history stewarded them better than he did. Famous for his paintings The Last Supper and Mona Lisa, da Vinci trained himself in curiosity. He never went anywhere without his notebooks, in which he recorded ideas and observations in mirror-image cursive. His journals contain the genesis of some of his most ingenious ideas—a helicopter-like contraption he called an orinthopter, a diving suit, and a robotic knight. While on his own deathbed, he meticulously noted his own symptoms in his journal. That's devotion to learning. Seven thousand pages of da Vinci's journals have been preserved. Bill Gates purchased eighteen pages for $30.8 million a few decades ago.

Every year revelers from around the world head to Pamplona, Spain to take part in the running of the bulls glorified by Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises. The festival, a heady nine-day mix of partying and adrenaline-chasing, draws hundreds of thousands of people from around the world to Pamplona, a city of around 300,000. Fifteen people have been killed in the bull-runs since records began in 1911. The most recent death occurred five years ago when a Spanish man was gored.

Bill Hillman, a Chicago-based journalist, is an expert on the event. He even co-authored a book subtitled "How to survive the bulls of Pamplona." But on July 3, 2014, just knowing about bull running, even knowing enough to write an instruction manual on bull running, wasn't enough. A 1,320 pound fighting bull named Brevito lagged behind the pack just before entering the city's bull ring at the end of a rain-slicked run in the annual festival. At the opportune time, Brevito gored Hillman in the right thigh and a 35-year-old Spanish man in the chest. Both men recovered, but the co-author of Hillman's book 's told The New York Times, "We will probably need to update the book."

Possible Preaching Angles: Leadership; Preaching; Teaching—a great example of practicing what you preach or living what you teach.

As a middle-school student in the 1980s, Lee Buono stayed after school one day to remove the brain and spinal cord from a frog. He did such a good job that his science teacher, Mr. Al Siedlecki from Medford Memorial Middle School in Medford, New Jersey, told him he might become a neurosurgeon someday. That's exactly what Buono did.

Years later, after yet another successful surgery, the patient suggested that Dr. Buono call his former teacher who had inspired him and thank him. So Buono did. Siedlecki hadn't heard from Buono since he was in high school.

"I want to thank you," Buono told him.

"I was flabbergasted," Siedlecki remembers. "I said, 'Of all the people in your entire career, you want to thank me?' It was the same feeling I had when ... my kids were born." Siedlecki continued, "I started to cry. It made me feel really important that I had that influence."

Lately, Siedlecki admits, "I almost am afraid to say that I'm a teacher to some people." Not anymore, he told Buono, "Because you called me …. I'm going to help as many people as I can to find their passion too."

On October 14, 2012, the Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner broke two world records that had stood for over fifty years. He smashed the previous world record for the fastest dive, breaking the sound barrier and reaching a velocity of nearly 834 miles per hour. He also broke the world record for the highest freefall, jumping out of a balloon 128,000 feet (or 24 miles) above New Mexico.

But the 43-year-old Baumgartner gladly admits that he couldn't have done it without the help of his mentor—the previous world record holder for both records, 84-year-old Joe Kittinger. Kittinger, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, has been an integral part of Baumgartner's team. Months prior to Baumgartner's record-breaking dive, Kittinger provided him with advice and encouragement whenever the younger man doubted his ability. Right before the actual jump, Kittinger told Baumgartner, "All right, step up to the exterior step. Start the cameras. And our guardian angel will take care of you now." During the fall, Kittinger's reassuring voice from mission control guided Baumgartner throughout the dive, especially during one particularly tense moment. Early in the dive, Baumgartner started spinning out of control—the same problem that had nearly killed Kittinger during his dive. Baumgartner kept talking to Kittinger, whose deep voice offered reassurance. In fact, Baumgartner didn't allow any other voice than Kittinger's in his helmet.

When the dive was finished, Kittinger had only praise for Baumgartner's new world records. Kittinger said, "Felix did a great job, and it was a great honor to work with this brave guy."

An article in National Geographic highlighted the special bond between the two men. Prior to the jump, Kittinger said, "I'll be the only one who knows how Felix feels at that moment when he jumps from that step, 'cause I've done it."

Baumgartner agreed: "[Joe] knows how lonely you are at that altitude." Then he added, "It feels like, if Joe's there, nothing can go wrong."

Mike Howerton describes how different were the motivational methods of the two men who coached his high school football team—Coach Crow and Coach Rush. When his team was losing during halftime, the two coaches would give two very different "pep talks."

Coach Crow would come in growling, spitting disdain in his words at us: "What a bunch of losers. Whaddya say let's get your girlfriends suited up; they'd do a better job. Your flimsy arm-tackles make me wanna puke. I'm gonna go look for some diapers for you babies to wear in the second half; maybe then you won't embarrass yourselves so bad." He'd leave, and absolute silence would descend, virtually no sound except for the muffled sobs of Monty, our kicker, in the corner.

Then our defensive head coach, Coach Rush, would come in. He'd look each of us in the eyes with his steely glint. When he began to speak, you could feel strength flow into your limbs. He would begin with something like this, measured, masculine, and building in intensity: "I don't see high school students. I see lions. This locker room is filled with lions. A bunch of lions is called a pride. A pride of lions hunts together. A pride of lions kills together …. Lions are majestic to behold …. Lions are the kings of the land, and this is your land. You are the pride here. But there's one thing I haven't heard you lions do tonight. I haven't heard you roar. Now we're gonna go out there … and everyone in this two-bit town is gonna hear you roar because you are LIONS and LIONS ROAR!" And we'd erupt in an ear-splitting roar (even Monty) because we weren't seniors or juniors; we were LIONS and LIONS ROAR, and we'd go out to inevitable victory. When Coach Rush died unexpectedly a few years later, he was so beloved that there was a motion to name the stadium after him.

Atul Gawande, a distinguished Harvard surgeon and author, argues that everyone needs a coach. After working eight years as a surgeon, he realized that his operating room success had slowly reached a plateau. Soon after that realization, he attended a medical meeting and had an afternoon free, and tried to track down someone to play in a game of tennis. Finally, he went to the local tennis club and was told that he could practice his ground strokes only if he paid for a lesson and hit with the club pro.

Gawande writes what happened next:

He was in his early twenties, a recent graduate who'd played on his college team. We hit back and forth for a while. He went easy on me at first, and then started running me around. I served a few points, and the tennis coach in him came out. "You know," he said, "you could get more power from your serve." I was dubious. My serve had always been the best part of my game. But I listened. He had me pay attention to my feet as I served, and I gradually recognized that my legs weren't really underneath me when I swung my racquet up into the air.

My right leg dragged a few inches behind my body …. With a few minutes of tinkering, he'd added at least ten miles an hour to my serve.

Not long afterward, Gawande was watching tennis star Rafael Nadal playing a tournament match on TV.

The camera flashed to his coach, and the obvious struck me as interesting: even Rafael Nadal has a coach. Nearly every élite tennis player in the world does …. But doctors don't. I'd paid to have a kid just out of college look at my serve. So why did I find it inconceivable to pay someone to come into my operating room and coach me on my surgical technique?

Coaching operates from the premise that "no matter how well prepared people are in their formative years, few can achieve and maintain their best performance on their own."

The apostle Paul knew that we need coaches in living as Christians. Watch me, he said. And let me give you some pointers. We learn by seeing truth lived out and modeled. We learn by imitation. Some things are caught, not taught. Some things are caught and taught.

At the age of 23, Second Lieutenant Karl Marlantes was in charge of 40 marines during an intense battle in the Vietnam War. Marlantes had moved his men into the jungle as they waited for U.S. jets to bomb a hill that North Vietnamese soldiers had overtaken. Unfortunately, the jets came and dropped their bombs on the wrong hill. So when Marlantes led his men out of the jungle, they were instantly under fire from untouched machine-gun positions. Marlantes knew it would only take a few minutes before the enemy rockets and mortars found his troops. The entire mission ground to a halt as the U.S. soldiers ducked behind downed trees and huddled in shell holes.

Marlantes knew what he had to do next. He writes:

If I didn't get up and lead, we'd get wiped out …. I did a lot of things that day … but the one I'm most proud of is that I simply stood up, in the middle of that flying metal, and started up the hill …. I simply ran forward up the steep hill, zigzagging for the bunker, all by myself, hoping [my own soldiers] wouldn't hit me in the back. It's hard to zigzag while running uphill loaded down with ammunition and grenades.

But then in the midst of his solo charge up the hill to take out the enemy, Marlantes suddenly saw some movement in his peripheral vision:

It was a marine! He was about 15 meters below me, zigzagging, falling, up and running again. Immediately behind him a long ragged line of Marines came moving and weaving up the hill behind me. Behind the line were spots of crumpled bodies, lying where they'd been hit. They'd all come with me …. Everyone was intermingled, weaving, rushing and covering, taking on each hole and bunker one at a time in groups …. We, the group, just rushed forward all at once. We couldn't be stopped. Just individuals among us were stopped … but we couldn't be …. I was we, no longer me.

Werner Herzog, one of Germany's greatest filmmakers and screenwriters, said in a 2011 interview: "Movies do not change anything … [that's] an exaggerated view." Then he continued by stating what does change the world:

It is … the great orators. They are the ones that capture the imagination of an entire population. They change things ….

Many Christians only see bits and pieces of the Bible, lacking a big picture of how the Scriptures hold together. Theology and doctrine provide that larger vision of the entire Bible. In his book The Social Animal, David Brooks illustrates the need for a big picture by using an illustration from the game of chess:

A series of highly skilled players and a series of nonplayers were shown a series of chessboards [with chess pieces] for about five to ten seconds each …. [Later], the grandmasters could remember every piece on every board. The average players could only remember about four or five pieces per board.

Why did the chess grandmasters have such an amazing ability to remember the pieces? They did not have superior IQ's or better memories. Instead, Brooks explains:

The real reason the grandmasters could remember the game boards so well is that after so many years of study, they saw the boards in a different way. When average players saw the boards, they saw a group of individual pieces. When the masters saw the boards, they saw formations. Instead of seeing a bunch of letters on a page, they saw words, paragraphs, and stories …. Expertise is about forming internal connections so that the little pieces of information turn into bigger networked chunks of information. Learning is not merely about accumulating facts. It is internalizing the relationship between pieces of information.

For Christians, theology and doctrine are essential because they provide the big picture so we can read Scripture and see not just "individual pieces" of information. Doctrine also enables us to see "the relationship between the pieces of information."