The first day of a new school year, more than any other day after it, always brings the most unique feeling. A lot of energy combined with a little bit of fear. Everything feels different, and that’s exciting but uncertain. Students’ emotions turn up, but their voices turn down. Well, at least once students arrive in my rhetoric classroom; they seem to quiet down as soon as they walk in. Because I only teach sophomores at CCA, my classroom is always new terrain, which also means I am a total stranger. So for the time being at least, all those feelings will remain internal and unexpressed.
To help students feel more at home in my classroom, I like to give them a questionnaire on the first day of school. This little assignment is kind of like an interview, one that’s designed to be a little silly but also a little serious. I call it their “About Me” page. It’s one of my favorite things to do the entire year, yet it also risks being forgotten once a routine settles over the year. For this reason, I like to include a few personal questions on it as well as a few questions about the future.
One of those questions is this: “Before you die, what would you like God to do for you?” Today I got my questionnaires back from my sophomores, and I wanted to share a few with you. I have omitted their names, but these are all actual answers from current sophomore students at CCA. They wrote them themselves, and I have not doctored them, except for a few grammatical corrections. (This English teacher couldn’t help himself!) Anyway, here is what your sophomores want from God:
“To make me a rock-star.”
“Help me graduate.”
“To have a good last meal.”
As you can see, the kids I get to teach are pretty funny and full of personality. It’s one of the reasons why I love teaching this age. They get their license the same year they have me, and as soon as they do, it’s amazing how quickly their shoes seem to get big! Others wrote down practical yet noble goals:
“Allow me to become a published author.”
“Let me travel around His world.”
Those answers may not sound sexy or ambitious (How many kids, for example, would put “To Change the WORLD!”). But there is modesty and maturity in both of those requests. It is noble to desire to see the beautiful world our Creator has made; and it is awesome to want to spend a life working in words—especially for kids who worship the Word Made Flesh.
Though many kids mentioned their desire for a good job, none of them just put down “make me rich” or “make me famous.” Their desire was to provide, so they could have a family. Even more encouragingly, almost none of my students left the needs of others out of their hopes from the future:
“Get married and have a family.”
“To make my friends and parents proud of me.”
“Heal my mom’s back.”
"To make them proud."
That’s incredible. What parent wouldn’t want their kid to say exactly that! But what surprised me most, was that so many of my new students, probably as many as half of their responses, involved God in their hopes for the future:
“Help me to please him and seek him the rest of my life.”
“To let me go to heaven.”
“To help me pray more in public.”
“To shape me into what he wants me to be.”
These are my students. They have only been in my class for three days, yet I feel like I know their hearts already. We hear so much these days about how social media is corrupting our kids and degrading our culture. We hear those sentiments so frequently that we can believe it is true of all teenagers. Today, I humbly submit these answers as proof to the contrary. Social media may be having a negative effect, and our culture is certainly sick, but these kids are warriors. They bring positivity and healing to the fight, because their faith is in the Almighty God. What a noble calling, and what a good job, sophomore parents. I hope you are proud. I sure am.
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