The past few months, I have started a placement for my teaching degree that has challenged me in more ways than one.

I have been able to talk with my placement teacher and just tell her that I want to do the things that challenge me, not just the things I am most comfortable with, like reading a chapter of a book to the students. So where did we land on in my lesson planning and teaching times?

Science and math.

Genuinely my worst subjects in school growing up. And 5th grade? That was when school truly began to become hard for me. These were subjects that I still, to this day, am not fully sure of. Which seems a bit silly and embarrassing for me, considering I’m a college student and that I want to be a teacher.

Though this past week, I have been teaching states of matter and the properties of matter. So in doing this, I was getting the students to make charts, I was pre-making these charts and lessons and felt more confident than I had in the past about teaching these topics. I wish I could say that the first time I started feeling somewhat confident in my teaching abilities, that my lesson went smoothly and was flawless.

But no, it actually was far from it. I actually wrote three different things on the chart wrong, the kids were questioning me, I somehow managed to confuse the students and myself within the first 0 minutes of that lesson.

Flustered with embarrassment, I felt tears form in my eyes but I knew I couldn’t let the students tell. I began to try to remake the chart as we went on through the video lesson. It got to the point where I kept making so many mistakes that I could tell the students even felt bad for me. I mean, how many times do you think someone has heard a 5th grade boy say, “Aw, she’s trying, just be patient,” to his classmates. A 5th grade boy?? Seriously, that tells you how pitiful my lesson was going. And as you’re teaching the lesson, with each mistake you make, you hear the students behind you say, “Aww, it’s okay.” I never actually cried, but I sure was near it.

At that moment, I was incredibly embarrassed. They knew I had failed, my placement teacher knew she shouldn’t step in and she just allowed me to figure it out as I went. Which I appreciate, even if at the moment it was hard. My brain immediately told me that I was failing in the calling I thought the Lord has called me to. I felt incompetent and I was being caught in it.

I think this sparked more than just feeling incompetent in that lesson, it sparked it into so many other aspects of my life. I landed in a place of fear that I was out of God’s will for my life, even though I know what He has spoken to me, I know that I wouldn’t be at such an amazing placement without His knowing and doing. I just needed to be reminded that He is still refining, rebuilding and guiding me through this place where I know I am not meant to stay, but He is using it for so much more than I can even imagine.

Yes, the students realizing I was absolutely butchering my lesson made me so incredibly embarrassed. Hearing their “Awws” of pity for me, made me so upset in the moment. But then I was reminded of how they normally ended those comments, “It’s okay” and “she’s trying, just be patient.” The students were giving me grace.

I now see that those moments where I felt terrible for the pity the students had on me, I see how my Father in Heaven was speaking through them. I saw His grace through them. And I mean, who else could it have been speaking? The Lord had to have been speaking through those 5th graders, that is not a normal thing for children to say, especially to a teacher.

He sees me trying, He knows every move and every intention I have. He just wanted to remind me not to leave Him behind and forget that He is where my true strength comes from. Apart from Him, I am insufficient.

“Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God.”

2 Corinthians 3:5

It is incredibly unlikely for me to ever have a “perfect” lesson, but I know that if I invite the Lord into every aspect of that lesson, the likelihood of that happening becomes increasingly more.

I don’t feel led to teach 5th grade, but I do see the fruit coming from being in a place that is uncomfortable. He’s making me see how much I need Him to be able to love these students well and the same for my future in teaching. I need Him to be able to love and teach well. Teaching is a form of love; He is refining the ways I go about that and still giving me grace as I learn.