Way back when I was just a wee college student trying to decide what I was going to do with my life (aka five whole years ago), I was in the heart of four years of intense Young Life ministry. Seeing how much I loved working with high school students, I felt like being a teacher was the perfect way to combine my love of languages with my desire to impact high schoolers. I knew I would walk into a high school and immediately have meaningful, deep relationships and conversations with every student I met each and every day (this is the part where all the veteran teachers laugh).
But as I started teaching, I started to realize that teaching is quite a bit different than leading student ministry. For starters, I saw 160 students every day, with as many as 30 students in my room at one time. I traveled between two schools every day, so I often wasn’t there for those before, after, and in between moments that help build relationships. I had a handful of good conversations and got to see students’ hearts in tiny glimpses, but for the most part, my days were consumed with the daily realities of lesson planning, classroom management, and keeping rowdy 8th graders from driving me and each other crazy while still teaching them a thing or two about Spanish.
