Editor's note: Today, on Teacher Appreciation Day, we're celebrating all our wonderful educators! Enjoy today's devotion from 50 Devos for Teachers.
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A cheerful disposition is good for your health; gloom and doom leave you bone-tired. — Proverbs 17:22 The Message
Jacilyn and Brian were teaching in Maryland when they decided it was time for a change. Friends in Tennessee just so happened to know of a small Christian school in need of teachers and put them in touch with the administrator, who was excited to welcome them aboard.
Jacilyn would transition from teaching high school math and science to teaching the same subjects in the seventh grade. Brian agreed to teach fifth and sixth grade, a great fit for him. The couple signed their contracts, packed up a moving truck, and set off to begin their new lives with their two small daughters.
But a surprise awaited them at their new school. The administrator didn’t have positions for them to teach the grades he promised them. Instead, he offered them jobs co-teaching a preschool class of thirty-six students.
The couple was stunned, but they felt they had no choice but to take the co-teaching positions. After all, they had already moved, and it would be difficult to find other teaching positions so close to the beginning of the school year.
Jacilyn and Brian did their best, but every day teetered on the brink of chaos. (How could it be anything else with thirty-six preschool-aged children in one room?) One day, in the middle of the lesson “A Is for Apple,” tiny Matthew toddled out of the room to go to the bathroom. When the little boy didn’t come back right away, Jacilyn went to look for him. She found him in the bathroom, where he was repeatedly flushing the urinal so that he could drink out of it.
Matthew was thirsty, and since he couldn’t reach the water fountain, he had improvised. He was having the time of his life.
“That was the day we made a new rule,” Jacilyn recalls. “No drinking out of the urinal.”
Today, seventeen years later, little Matthew is all grown up, but the laughter he left behind with two brand-new preschool teachers has never faded. Jacilyn still dissolves in hysterics each time she tells the story.
Laughter will save you in teaching.
It eases the tension in the classroom and lifts your spirits as you commiserate with your fellow teachers from the side of the playground.
Laughter reminds us that things aren’t quite as dire as they first seem, and that even when they are, they can’t possibly stay that way forever. So, today, let your heart ring out with the cry of the psalmist. He writes,
But let me run loose and free, celebrating GOD’s great work, every bone in my body laughing, singing, ‘GOD, there’s no one like You’. — Psalm 35:9 The Message
My God,
There is none like You! I am so thankful for the gift of laughter. How amazing it is to think that You are the One who created it. Does Your own booming laughter rattle the walls of Your throne room? Does it echo off the streets of gold? Lift my eyes from difficult days to the joy that children bring. Let my laughter fill my classroom. Let it echo down the hallways. Make me more like You.
Amen.
Excerpted with permission from 50 Devos for Teachers, copyright DaySpring Cards, Inc.
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Your Turn
To all our educators: Happy Teacher Appreciation Day! We are grateful for you and we pray for you! Let’s join together today and thank the teachers in our lives and our kids’ lives and commit to praying for them as they round out the school year. ~ Devotionals Daily