By Dr. Joan Schrysen
What tools do you carry in your teaching toolbox? The Teacher’s Guide? Reference books? Placement test scores? Teaching Strategies? Like skilled workmen and artisans of all ages, each teacher has favorite tools which enable him to do his job well. However, just as hammers and saws don’t show in a finished house, so a teacher’s tools often are out of sight once the lesson is in progress. Still without them, the lesson, like the house, would be incredibly crude it not impossible.
One valuable teaching tool we don’t hear much about is religious music, such as hymns and praise songs. Does it surprise you that this can be a teaching tool? What role could religious music possibly play in a teacher’s work? Let me share a few examples.
An elementary teacher, a widow raising four daughters, used praise songs daily. After a busy early morning, she started her drive to school by rolling up the windows of her car in order to sing aloud “Praise Him, Praise Him, All Ye Little Children,” “Hallelujah! What a Savior!” or “Praise Him in the Morning.” One song led to another. Whatever came into her heart, her voice sang out. Interspersed with the songs were snippets of Scripture. “Sing unto the Lord a new song!” (Psalms 96:1) So she made up new songs, uniquely her own praise. By the time she drove into the schoolyard, she was fortified spiritually for the rest of the day ahead. The calm, loving expertise she brought to her class day after day testified to her effective use of the tool of religious music.
Another teacher uses the hymn “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind” as her sustaining hymn. Over the years in times of great stress it steadied her nerves and put events in perspective. For instance, one day the dirtiest boy in her class, a poor child who lived deep in the national forest, had a crisis. His tattered shoes let go, and he couldn’t walk because of the flapping soles. Out of her desk came the ever-handy gray tape, but as the teacher approached the boy, waves of nauseating filthy foot odor, liberated by the open soles, assaulted her. Determined to fix the problem without hurting the boy’s feelings, she hummed her sustaining hymn imperceptibly while inhaling as little as possible. Eventually both shoes were securely taped, and class continued. Although this happened over 25 years ago, the teacher vividly remembers how much she needed her secret fortifying teaching tool that day.
If you carry religious music in your teaching toolbox, no doubt you have your own stories to tell. If you haven’t added this special music to your tools, I urge you to give it a try. Whether you use a hymn as part of your daily Quiet Time, sing your way to school (or home), or simply pull out a song as needed, you will find that religious music consoles, encourages, strengthens, and inspires you. It will bring you strength for each day and nurture in you the peace of God which passes all understanding.