It finally happened.
For a number of years I have had students in my classes who are the children of students I had in class over the years. I remember how the first time I had a second-generation student I felt like I had been at this teaching thing for a long time. This week I hit another milestone. Or is it a millstone?
As I was talking with one of my students during my virtual office hours, she mentioned that previously I had taught her parents (which I knew), but more frighteningly, that I had taught her grandfather in a course a long time ago! I wasn't prepared for this. I guess that occasionally I had thought that if I kept teaching long enough I might teach a third generation of students from the same family. But not yet!
In my defense (if defense is at all necessary), both her parents and her grandfather were adults when I taught them---not recent high school grads. So, it's not as though I have been at this for 60 years! But on the other hand, this is my 40th year of teaching full-time. And if I add the four years that I was a teaching assistant before I came to Booth, that means that I am getting close to 45 years of teaching.
Wow! Where did the time go? And why does teaching today seem just as fresh to me as it did when I first started? Of course, there are days when I am not really up for teaching and I seem to be going through the motions...rattling on about something. But those days still are uncommon for me. I love the drama of the classroom. Every engagement with students is an adventure. And now, having been teaching almost exclusively on Zoom for the past 18 months, it's a whole new experience.
But even more than the thrill of the classroom itself is what I teach. I still love what I teach---mostly the Bible...mostly the Old Testament...but with enough other topics to expand my horizons. I really do love some of my courses. Every fall I get to teach an Old Testament survey course and to walk through the Pentateuch with another class of students; and every winter I introduce students to the prophets and their passion. Each year I teach an Introduction to Christianity course that I still haven't figured out completely. I get to talk about holiness, justice, God and community; about what it means to be human; about sin and salvation. I journey from Egypt to the Promised Land and then through the story of Israel until thecatastrophic destruction of Jerusalem and Judah in the 586 BCE. I traverse the landscape of Christian history and of Christian thought.
However, when I think about my experience over the past decades, what I really love about teaching is my students. I love my interactions with them. They keep me younger than I would be without them. They teach me something every class. They make it worthwhile. I can only hope that something I said or something I did showed them the extent to which I care about them as people--about their learning, about their lives, about their future, and about their faith.
Sometimes we tend to think about vocation only with regard to clergy. While ordained ministry is, no doubt, a calling, I think that this understanding of vocation is too narrow, too constricted. I've met many people who view their work as a vocation given to them from God.
I think that a vocation to scholarship and teaching is a holy calling. It is not always appreciated, especially in Christian traditions where learning and scholarship are viewed with suspicion. But my reading about the history of Christianity has taught me that many of the Christians who had the greatest enduring impact upon our faith were scholars: Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Barth, Bonhoeffer and many more. They may have had other roles and responsibilities, but they also were scholars who thought deeply about the world and our shared faith.
So, while it finally happened, I plan to carry on---fulfilling my vocation to teach and learn. God help me...and my students!
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