Called to the classroom?

More and more the 21st-century church is striving to reach into the local community. Scan the job pages in the Christian press and you will find advertisements for youth workers and community workers abounding. Look carefully at the job descriptions and you will uncover a real desire among Christians to get out to where people are on a day-to-day basis: shopping centres, hospitals, schools, youth centres, sports clubs…

Pastoral workers and lay people alike are being encouraged to join the visiting teams of local hospitals and hospices, to set up after school clubs, to get involved in crches in large shopping centres. This is all about the local church reaching out.

It would be hard to criticise such a strategy, as Christ certainly went to where the people were, often to what were seen as the ‘wrong kind of people.’ And of course, the more Christians are able to bring gospel values into places where there are large numbers of people the better, but is the church as an institution always aware that the salt and light are already out there?

Living out the gospel

Every weekday during term time Christian teachers spend the day with children and young people, most of whom have no understanding of Christianity and little concept of faith. The Christian teacher may not be seen in the same category as the church youth leader working late into the night with drug-addicted, knife-carrying street kids, nor the overseas missionary battling to bring Christ to a different people using a half-learned language in unfamiliar surrounding. Teachers as a rule don’t face such tabloid-friendly dangers. But perhaps these are just silly distinctions.

Nitty gritty

Take Mrs. Jones in a school near you teaching 18-year-olds the beauties of pure Mathematics while Mr. Fields in the classroom next door valiantly tries to enthuse a group of 12-year-olds with the humour of Shakespeare. Or how about Miss Richards helping little Renu to remember to sit quietly in Circle Time so that all the children can have the opportunity to share something special to them? These people are all living out the gospel in the schools where they work.

Unlike many missionaries, pastors, youth workers, worship leaders and specific ‘Christian’ workers, most teachers have not had a commissioning service at their local church; they do not receive extra prayer support and they do not give out newsletters. However, they do strongly believe they are following their calling.

A recent survey commissioned by the Times Educational Supplement, which polled 500 teachers in state and private schools in England and Wales, found that 80% of teachers see teaching as a vocation. Despite bad press, paperwork and the fact that many of them could earn more elsewhere, teachers value the chance to influence and nurture the next generation. Scratch any teacher below the surface and you will find a heart of compassion and in most a dedication rarely surpassed.

Adult most seen

Take the primary or junior schoolteacher these days. Experts in Science, Literacy and Numeracy, not to mention History, Geography, Art, Music, Citizenship, PE, RE, ICT and PHSE, they spend a whole academic year building relationships with a group of children whose strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes they get to know. For most of the children this is the adult they see most outside the family home, and many see their teacher for more hours than they see their dad.

‘With young children it is so important to give them good foundations to build on’, says Ruth, a primary school teacher in South London, ‘Showing the children love and truth is a way of role-modelling how people can relate to each other. It’s so important that whatever their home circumstances, they feel valued for who they are.’

Secondary school

The life of secondary schoolteachers is a bit different. They often teach up to 200 pupils over a week ranging from nervous 11-year-olds straight from small junior schools through to young adults of 18 on the verge of leaving home. Christian teachers have a real impact on shaping beliefs and attitudes in particular. Derek Richmond, Head Teacher at St. Edward’s School in Poole acknowledges the vital role played by teachers in shaping the way pupils think and behave for the rest of their lives.

As someone educated in a school run by a Christian order, he was challenged as a young stockbroker to use his skills to take up a career as a teacher. He has based his whole working life on the guiding philosophy of John Baptist de la Salle whose faith led him to set up free schools for the poor in Reims 400 years ago. Derek speaks passionately of Christ as the best teacher of all and as the perfect role model for all those forming relationships with young people. ‘I have seen teaching always as a part of my service to God as a Christian,’ he told me recently.

But, of course, Christian teachers don’t only work in the state sector. Many are called to private schools, and to private boarding schools where the care of pupils is a 24-hour-day job. Many see this as an even more important step for the Christian teacher because teachers in boarding schools are standing in for parents on a day-to-day basis. Indeed, many of the boarding schools in this country were set up by Christians and some still see themselves as important Christian communities in the 21st century.

The call of the teacher in a Christian boarding school can be particularly life-fulfilling. Rachel Glasgow is a teacher and houseparent at Monkton Coombe School near Bath. Together with her husband, she is responsible for a boarding house in the school. ‘I definitely see my job as part of my Christian calling’, she says. ‘It is pretty full on, but very, very rewarding.’

Christian boarding school

Another Christian boarding school is Kingham Hill School near Oxford. This school started life as a Children’s Home. Its dedicated Christian founder, Charles Baring Young, wanted to give disadvantaged children the chance to escape poverty and receive education and opportunities they would not otherwise have received.

Set in idyllic Cotswold countryside, Kingham Hill looks like the kind of place that only the privileged can attend. However, like many boarding schools, Kingham Hill takes a proportion of children who are supported by grants and charities. Many children come from Armed Forces families and families where the parents’ work requires them to travel extensively. Kingham Hill believes strongly in its Christian mission to provide a haven of stability and a place where pupils can feel loved and appreciated. This includes opening its doors to children who for one reason or another cannot receive adequate or suitable education in the state sector. These children are sometimes disadvantaged and have a learning difficulty, such as dyslexia, which Kingham Hill, with its specialist teachers and small classes, can cater for.

As the current Head of Kingham Hill says, ‘Working at Kingham Hill is not just a job; it is about being part of a community with a shared Christian vision. It is a huge privilege to be able to serve the Lord here, working alongside fellow Christians and with young people, many of whom are eager to learn and to develop their burgeoning faith.’

Value your teachers

Teacher and houseparent at Kingham Hill, Graham Lane, concurs: ‘The enormous advantage of working in a boarding school is that one can develop a far stronger relationship with one’s pupils, drawing out a huge range of giftings and helping them grow in self respect. My wife and I definitely feel called to the task, and very fulfilled!’

Everyone agrees that education is important: it seems to get into the news most days, one way or another. And if it’s not schools and exams and teachers on our TVs, then it’s young people or children or students.

So perhaps the call to the classroom should be valued alongside the call to the pulpit or the mission field. Teachers have a heart for shaping and guiding the adults of tomorrow and for helping them learn to think and make good choices about things that really matter. This is what the call to the classroom is all about. Nurturing this call in ourselves or in others is all part and parcel of living out the life of Christ in our world.

Reporting from the Blackboard Jungle

Living out the gospel

Nitty gritty

Adult most seen

Secondary school

Christian boarding school

Value your teachers

Steve King

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