by Jane E. Vennard
SkyLight Paths, Woodstock, Vt. 160 pages
REVIEWED BY DEBORAH A. MCKINLEY
Jane Vennard has written a wonderful book for teachers: public/private school teachers, trainers, Sunday school teachers, college professors — anyone who teaches. It’s a book designed for self-reflection and discussion. The introduction says that this book “is an invitation to look inward to your own motivations, the choices you have in the situation where you find yourself, and your desire to bring the exciting process of teaching and learning to the students you face each day.” She wants to reconnect teachers with their passion for the sacred art of teaching. And she does.
She first explores teaching as vocation, not simply profession. David Brooks, in his most recent book, “The Road to Character,” describes the pursuit of vocation as experiencing the “deep satisfaction of craftsmanship [in which one] ends up serving the community more richly than [one] could have consciously planned.” This squares beautifully with what Vennard writes. Vocation fits both the person being called (his or her gifts, skills, interests and life experience) and the situation to which that person is being called. One can’t help think of Frederick Buechner’s words, “Where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” Vennard wants teachers to bring their full selves to their craft, and one cannot do that unless one is called, unless one is pursuing a vocation. She goes on to talk about how the teaching vocation also pushes us beyond ourselves, creating something greater than the sum of the parts. It’s a beautiful thing when that happens in the teaching/learning enterprise.
I appreciate her emphasis on trusting the students’ own experiences and wisdom to join in the teaching/learning endeavor. It’s not all about the teaching! It’s about the learning and the growing and the living. Teaching and learning addresses the whole person and the whole of their life — both the student’s and the teacher’s.
Vennard weaves stories of teachers throughout the book, stories that reveal all the ups and down, victories and disappointments, insights and dead ends involved in the teaching vocation. The stories help bring ideas and theories to the light of day — how are these ideas and theories really lived out? Teaching involves careful planning, a certain requisite knowledge of the subject and improvisation demanded by the encounter of the plans with particular students and a particular context. The stories she shares of teachers and situations is helpful. When I see how others improvise, it encourages and inspires me to push into improvisation as well.
Each chapter ends with a set of reflection questions. These questions help Vennard achieve her goal of helping teachers to look inside themselves and roam around there a bit. I can see using this book as a resource in a congregation for an adult education class designed for teachers. I could also see a congregation hosting a discussion group for school teachers from the community, helping them to reflect individually and together upon the teaching endeavor. While Vennard is a Christian, and there are plenty of Christian and other spiritual references throughout the book, I believe it can also be a useful resource for people of many different spiritual perspectives and credos.
DEBORAH A. MCKINLEY is a teaching elder in National Capital Presbytery.
