Over the course of my 20+ years of teaching, I ran the gamut when it came to how to run a classroom. My first year, I had a list of about 15 rules that I expected the students to follow and obey. Most of them were "thou shalt not" types of rules. Not only did it end up pitting the students against me as they tried to see how far they could push the envelope, but it kept me on my toes continually watching out for infringements and then having to remember to be consistent in punishment for each student. The next year, I reduced the number of rules to about 10. That seemed to ease the load a bit, but there was still the spirit of "thou shalt not" pervasive in my classroom, no matter how much I tried to build positive, life-giving relationships with my students.
Finally, and I don't remember what year this was, I heard a seasoned teacher say that she had one guideline in her classroom: "No one has the right to keep the teacher from teaching or other students from learning." Now some may say that this still sounds like a "thou shalt not", so let's reword it one more time: "The teacher shall be given the privilege of teaching and the students shall be given the privilege of learning." When I adopted this one guideline in my classroom, both teaching and learning sky-rocketed. At any time a student "mis-behaved", the only thing I had to say was, "Do you want to allow me to teach, please?" or "Would you please give Tommy the opportunity to learn?"
My rules and guidelines early on in my classrooms were correct and true. But they set up an atmosphere of mistrust and pressure to 'perform' on everyone's part. Once I adopted and implemented the 'one-rule' guideline in my classroom, everyone could get down to the business at hand: teaching and learning.
I wonder if in some ways, when Jesus said that the two greatest commandments are "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets rest on these two commands," that He was implementing a way to live out the new Covenant, bought with His blood. The Pharisees tried to regulate morality and their understanding of spirituality. Jesus turned it all upside down, but because there tends to be a bit of "pharisee" in each of us, we like to return to that which is comfortable and that which we can control. Instead of living by the Spirit, because where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom, we fall into a new kind of law-giving way of functioning, which ultimately stems from an orphan spirit.
I tried all day long to justify my classroom rules, reminding the students that the spirit behind them was love and care and concern for them; really, though, I was afraid of losing control of the classroom, and the rules were a way to shroud that fear that not even I was aware of at the time.
Don't we do this to each other in the Body of Christ? We place a lot of "thou shalt nots" on one another, stating that the 'spirit behind them' is love, but in reality, there is an orphan grasping for some sort of boundaries within which to work. Jesus Himself knew that the only boundaries we needed were the two greatest commandments: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself." Love is at the heartbeat of God for His children, and calling them forth into their full identities in the Father and into their sonship and daughtership in the Holy Spirit.
So often in my classrooms over the years, with my one guideline in place, I was able to say very quickly and concisely to a student who was misbehaving, "Susie, I'm not able to teach right now," and immediately, Susie knew and did not feel condemned or embarrassed because I didn't point out this that or the other in her, but rather what I needed. Similarly, I would state, "Eric, is John able to learn right now?" Again, almost immediately, without me having to state the negative, both Eric and John would come back to 'center' and we could proceed in moving forward toward the goal.
"Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." "It's for freedom that Christ has set us free." My goal in my classrooms was to create life-long learners; is it our goal in the church to create life-long lovers of God? Then let's allow Holy Spirit to lead and guide and do what He wants to do in our midst to bring revelation of the Father and the Son and create passionate lovers of God and lovers of each other in the family. My goal as a follower of Jesus is to help people walk in freedom in the Spirit by pointing them and connecting them to Jesus.
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