Teaching as Delight

I got my first assignment as a teacher when I graduated from high school at sixteen years old and was asked by my pastor to prepare a ten-year old girl for her first communion. I was scheduled to enter St. Charles Seminary as a college freshman that fall. Maybe this was in some way a “suitability test,”

of a sort which I have found common throughout my life so far. I tend
to be frightened that I won’t do things right, but I have greater
confidence in myself than other people have in me. I trust people to
make good use of what I am able to give them. This may also help
explain why I have always been uncomfortable in giving grades. None of
us can do better than our best; our best is what we all expect from
ourselves. Did you get it? Hurrah for you! Do you seem to have missed
it? I did not teach it the right way for you. Either way, we both
got something out of it, and it is into us enough to give us more.

6/07/2010