On Saturday my family drove to Austin, Texas to attend the funeral of one of my high school teachers. I only had one class with Mr. Moss, but I valued his words and knew he cared about me. I received a letter from him before my high school graduation, and I’ve held on to it all these years.
In this letter Mr. Moss says, “My prayer for you is that you will be a steadfast seeker of truth; so that your life may be blessed by Him, who is the author of all truth.” I appreciated the thought then, and today as a parent and educator I understand his prayers for me on an entirely new level. It’s a blessing to know that he wanted such good things for me, and looking back, these hopes and prayers from my teachers were influences that molded me into the man, husband, father, and educator that I am today.
My hope and prayer for the educators of OCA is that our students will know that we want what is best for them, and that we will be able to build meaningful relationships with them.
I recently asked our faculty what they wanted people to say about OCA out in the community. If someone was talking about OCA in the grocery store what would you want them to say? I assume, as would you, that our math teachers would want people to talk about a wonderful math department, our other teachers would desire the same for their departments, our elementary teachers may want people to talk about their great classes, our coaches would want people to talk about how great their programs are, some might want people to talk about our technology, or our teaching strategies, our fine arts directors would want people to talk about their programs, and the list could go on.
Honestly, my hope is for all of these things plus some. I want people to think programmatically we have top-notch options for your children. However, as I told the faculty, I want these things because it’s what we do not because it’s who we are. What we do is teach, direct, guide, coach, lead because we are experts in education. We went to school and were trained to be experts in this field. We have a passion to be excellent because it’s simple what we do.
Now, who we are is a little different. We are people who desire to _(fill in the blank)____________.
love students
lead them to love God
be advocates for students
assist families in raising their children
Who we are is the most important thing to me and we started off this semester talking about these things. We are not perfect but we desperately desire for all of our students to feel loved and appreciated. Our elementary teachers have their class of students that they can intentionally care for and show love.
This semester we are starting a new program with our middle and high school students. We’re initiating mentor groups that will be led by the faculty and staff. We will meet formally once a month during chapel in small groups and have other meeting times throughout the semester.
I know how deeply our faculty and staff care for our students. The mentor program will give another place and time for relationships to develop and deepen between our staff and students, and I hope this will help them see just how deeply we do care. I hope that each of our students leaves our campus with a letter filled with wisdom from a teacher or administrator, and I hope it’s a letter they can look back on years later to draw from.
Building leaders takes time and commitment. We're ready for both.
