If You're Stressed and You Know It ...

A teacher’s worst nightmare is when the class finishes their homework five minutes before the end of the day … on a Friday. After 38 years of teaching experience it doesn’t seem probable that I would allow that to happen, but it did. The only excuse I can offer is that I have never taught a health class before, and I have never taught in a Christian school in the Dominican Republic before. So here I am facing 20 ninth graders with five minutes left of unstructured time.


Ironically the subject of the day was how to manage stress. The secular health book that we are using gave the normal information about how there could be good stress and bad stress and how a person reacts to stress. Being a bit uncomfortable with how it treated the subject I told them to add a new section to their notes called “Stress … a Biblical Perspective.” I told them the story of Jeremiah in the Old Testament and read the New Testament verses in James about how we should count it all joy when we encounter various trials. It seemed to be a new thought to most of them that stress can be a good thing and that attitude is what makes it good or bad.


Ninth graders love a story so I told them the story of how God used stress in my life before I became a Christian. When I was roughly their age I fell off a truck and damaged my back in such a way that I had to be in a back brace for two years. As a result I couldn’t play my beloved sports and felt that my life would certainly come to an end. This was the time when I began to re-think the things that are important in life. I joined a Bible study and eventually heard the gospel and gave my life to the Lord. If God had not allowed that two-year-long stressful event in my life I may not have considered my eternal destiny as early as I did. Then I summarized by saying that God allows stress in our lives for a purpose … to point us to Him … whether or not we are Christians.


They heard me and understood quite clearly. I know this because during those last five minutes of class they broke into singing “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.” The second verse was even more creative, “If you’re stressed and you know it, stomp your feet.” The funny thing about this is I couldn’t pinpoint what rule they were breaking so I let them sing until the bell rang. I only wonder what the rest of the school was thinking as they heard the lyrical pandemonium emanating from my room. This culture is a lively one … that’s for sure.


At least one student stayed afterwards to talk. His problem is that he is 14 and he can’t get a certain girl out of his mind. She is pretty and doesn’t know he exists. How do you answer a question like, “How do you get a girl like that out of your mind, Mister?” (By the way, all students refer to their male teachers as “Mister” here at this school. I have been used to being referred to as “Mr. Dale” but never as simply “Mister”. One teacher who is starting his third year teaching at this school tried to change this when he first came to teach, but after a year he had given up and submitted to this cultural oddity.) With my whole heart I wanted to help this boy but I mostly listened. Because of his personality his particular need surfaced to my attention but I know that similar thoughts and problems are lurking just below the surface of many of my students.


These mostly Dominican children have their unique cultural differences but they are still kids. My biggest challenge in this school remains the same as it was when I taught in the public schools for 38 years … discipline. Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child and until they are trained to pay attention when I speak, be ready with their homework when I am ready to start class, and remain seated as they focus on their work, education is going to be interrupted. I’ve learned from experience that it usually takes about three months for them to be “trained” in proper classroom behavior. So I am in that difficult transition right now and it is never easy.


The work load is still quite demanding. With eight classes to teach and six different subjects it seems like my only life is preparing for the next day’s classes. This was a particularly rough week for various reasons … such as getting a cold. My sincere goal is to practice what I preached to my class today … to let these hardships turn me to the Lord to receive strength when I don’t feel like it. The Lord gave me some comfort as I read in Ezekiel this week … a similar comfort that the Lord was graciously giving to Israel during the time that He was disciplining them:


“For, behold, I am for you, and I will turn unto you, and ye shall be
tilled and sown …” Eze 36:9

I certainly feel like I’ve been “tilled and sown” and I sincerely and practically want to remember that God adds, “I am for you.” So I am diligently plodding away each night hoping that endurance will eventually free up a little bit more of my time. Praise God for a faithful wife who has become by necessity a teacher’s aide to me for the first time in our married life.


Our apartment remains still relatively empty of furniture and normal household belongings so it echoes when we talk. Consequently when we sing a duet out of the hymn book after supper each evening it sounds like we are singing in the shower. How we love to hear ourselves sing! Tonight we tried a hymn we have never heard of … “I Want a Principle Within” by Charles Wesley. The first verse says:


I want a principle within of watchful, godly fear,
A sensibility of sin, a pain to feel it near.
Help me the first approach to feel of pride or wrong desire,
To catch the wand’ring of my will and quench the kindling fire.

As the students reminded me today during an awkward teaching moment, “when you are stressed and you know it, say Amen”, I truly want to say “Amen” to God as I endure his tilling and sowing of my life these next few months. Pray with me that God would give me a principle within to be faithful to walk in the Spirit during this time.