Let Their Wonder Flourish.

Steps walked: 3,902.

Furthest point travelled to: 0.

Face to face non-household interactions: 0.

Track of the day: ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’ – Keith Jarrett.

              Learning to be a teacher has been one of the rare pleasures of this time of isolation. To begin with I tried, fairly faithfully, to follow the material that the school had sent, but it was difficult. Regularly being pulled in all sorts of different directions, I wasn’t able to keep ‘on top’ of the work that the school was sending me, which meant that I consistently failed to offer the boys an even moderately coherent pattern to their learning.

              However, the more time we spent together, the more it became apparent where they were very able (James is in the middle of writing his first (I believe) novel; Barnaby devours and retains information at a remarkable rate) and where they could do with a bit more encouragement and focus. So, through a process of trial and error, we’ve come to a place where their structured learning time is largely devoted to those areas where they most need a bit of help. Its not been an entirely painless process, but together we’ve been getting there. Maths with one of the boys has gone from seeing him stare silently out of the window with tear-filled while I sat opposite him adrift in my own sense of failure, to watching him literally jump and skip on the spot as he answers questions.

              We’ve also been working on their transferable skills. Some days I’ll give them reams of information on a subject they’ve chosen (modern piracy, white tigers, and rather worryingly, poisonous plants of the UK), and their job is to prepare a short, interesting presentation on the topic; that has been a lot of fun. Yesterday I thought we might take a little look at algebra; it helped that the teaching was disguised as code-breaking, which was bound to pique the interest of two boys fascinated by spies, secret agents, and hidden treasure. The day ended with them grumbling that I wasn’t producing new puzzles fast enough for them.

 

              One of the things I’m called to be as a parish priest is a teacher. On reflection, I realise it’s one of the areas of my calling which I’ve particularly enjoyed, and one where I’ve had a lot to learn over the years. Way back when, I decided to start writing our Lent Courses for All Saints. Copying the format of the books we’d tended to use in the past, they took the model of 5 minutes of this, followed by 15 minutes of that, and then 10 minutes for the next thing, and so on. Year by year I’ve written less and less, and the structure has become simpler and ever simpler. People have so much within them already, its just about offering them opportunities to let their wonder flourish.