The Outcome I Want for My Students — John Kuhns — Ep. 139

Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. I'm here today at Faith Builders Christian School with John Mark Coons. John Mark, thanks for joining us. You're welcome. Good to be here. Uh, today we want to talk about, uh, learning and, uh, you've been here as a teacher for a number of years now. Uh, before we get started, can you just tell us, our audience probably doesn't really know anything about you, can you just tell us a little bit about, uh, yourself and, um, just a brief introduction of your life before we get started here? Yeah, definitely.

I was born in Illinois as an Amish boy. Um, my family left the Amish when we were, when I was very young. Um, and we moved around in various, to various places. Um, went to Faith Mission Home for a couple of years and then landed in Ohio, and that's where I grew up in Middlefield, Ohio. I, um, became interested in medicine and decided to go to college for that. So after I graduated from high school, I went to Hiram College, which was a local school, a little private school, I think a thousand students total or something, and graduated from there. Um, and I, I felt myself kind of falling away from the faith and decided I didn't, I didn't want that.

So I, I took a gap year between college and med school, and a gap year grew into multiple years and I've never gone back. Um, so I fell into teaching then. Uh, I think my second year out of college, I started teaching at a little school in Colorado, taught there for two years, moved here to teach here at Faith Builders, and, um, have been here now for, this is my 12th year. So can you tell us a bit about your teaching experience here and your work? What, what sort of things are you passionate about, do you care about? You're obviously making a career of it. Um, so yeah, what, what gets you up in the morning?

What type of things do you really care about here in the classroom? I care about whatever the latest thing is that I care about. Um, it's, uh, I, I have a wide range of interests and, um, so my, I, I have hobbies that just kind of go across the range.

Uh, but what gets me up in the morning, uh, during the school year is the, is my students. Um, I just, I love being with students. I have, I teach ninth and tenth grade and they're at, at just the right age where they're old enough to be thinking about their, their lives, um, after school, but they haven't gotten close enough yet to where they've given up on school. So they're, they're just that perfect age. And so it, it gives me tremendous energy to see them walking through the doors every morning, just get to interact with them. Mm-hmm. Really, you're, you're starting to see the in, the individual, the adult in them start to wake up and start to become its own, its own form and come to its own.

Yeah, but they still have enough of that natural curiosity that children have, um, that they, they can get into things. You're energized by it, but it also is, is a very demanding sort of job and you're, you're just giving constantly. As you have, have spent time in the classroom and as you, uh, maybe come to the end of the day and, and look back on, on the day or at the end of the school year, reflecting on the past year, how do you define success in the classroom? Because there's, there's so many hard to quantify things about, about teaching. I mean, you have, you have grades, but you care about impacting them as a person, helping them develop as an individual.

So in what ways can success as a teacher be defined? How do you go about quantifying that? You know, that, that's actually a question that gets harder and easier to answer over, over time. Um, I think it was in my third year of teaching, I, I was talking with somebody and he asked me why I teach. And I said that when I explain a concept and a student gets it and the, the, the light comes on in their eyes, they got it. I said, that's the best feeling in the world. It's, you can't replace that feeling.

And he just looked at me and he said, well, what happens when they stop doing that? I didn't, I didn't know because, because that, I was, that was the thrill that was, that was keeping me going. Uh, I think it was the next year. I had one of my worst years ever, um, and didn't get that. It was, it was a full year of giving as deeply as I knew how to give and getting nothing in return. Um, it was, it was, it was a really awful year. But I came to the end of the year and I realized that I have a better answer now for what, why I teach. And it's not because of those, those individual moments of success.

You do get those and, and they're great. It's still, you can't replace that feeling, but it's actually, it's, it's more than that. My passion is that my students change in several ways. Um, obviously most, uh, primary would be that they become more like Jesus.

And, but, but what that means is, uh, that's not as easy to quantify, right? I, I wonder sometimes what would happen if in my classroom they just replaced me with somebody who just a random warm body they pulled off the street.

And, and I think one of the differences would be hopefully that they become, they're, they're not as much like Jesus as, as what I'm able to, to influence them in. And the way I try to do that is not by preaching more because students don't react well to preaching.

Um, it has to be something that, that comes out of my own life. And I have to, I have to recognize that my own, um, life in Christ is the only way that they're going to be inspired to, to, to seek it themselves. So when you ask what is success in a student or in teaching, one is that over time students become more like Jesus. That's kind of the, the, uh, short version of the, of that long answer. On a more academic side, um, one of the things that I look for in my students is that over time they become better thinkers. And again, that's not a very well-defined term. Just like, what does it mean to be like Jesus isn't well-defined?

What does it mean to be a better thinker? That's also not that well-defined. I, I can, I can know when it's not happening. Uh, students get taken in by, uh, conspiracy theories. They get, uh, waylaid by people, uh, selling fake products. Um, they, they fall into a lot of traps, a lot of intellectual traps.

And I, I, I want my students to have that, that sense of, huh, what, like, are you, that doesn't quite make sense. You know, if, if, uh, I think I heard one recently that, um, the people in Hollywood are, are harvesting children and, uh, you know, taking something out of their blood, like killing them, taking something out of their blood and taking it as a pill to, to stay young. Um, like it's, it's wild, okay? But people believe this and, um, they probably wouldn't if, if they would just stop and think a little bit. That actually doesn't make sense. Um, and so I want my students to, to have that, uh, when they, when they hear something outrageous or, or extraordinary that they ask for the evidence and they ask for why you would believe this.

It's almost cultivating a constructive, uh, criticism or, or critical thinking is what you'd call it. Yeah. And, and it's not just a rejection of everything either, right? Because, because our world is full of really, really remarkable things and they ought to believe those remarkable things, but they understand what kind of support would be required for a remarkable claim. Um, and too often, not just students, adults take shortcuts and believe things because somebody we trust believes it or we believe things because we want to believe it. Or, I mean, there's, there's a whole range of reasons why we believe things that aren't so. I have to recognize too that, that in myself, I have those tendencies.

And so I want my students to, to, to recognize that in themselves, um, and grow over time. Mm-hmm. This is a bit of a side tangent, but something I was just thinking about as you were talking about developing that skill of, of discernment really is, and, and maybe I'm just speaking for myself, but I tend to find that when I'm online and I look something up, I tend to believe that maybe a bit quicker than what I would if I just asked somebody in person. And I don't know if you find that true or not, or if you have any thoughts on why that might be the case. Why do we tend to trust the computer, the internet more than we would another human telling us something in, you know, face to face?

It's been said that an expert is somebody who comes more than 150 miles to say what they have to say. Um, and, and that I think that we have that effect that if, if we hear somebody say something with a lot of confidence, where they're, they, um, demonstrate confidence and we know nothing else about them, we tend to take those social cues that confidence breeds confidence in us. So something that's in a book, we generally tend to believe, um, because it's gone through an editorial process. It's gone, we hope, uh, and most books have been vetted, you know, by, by somebody. It's not just somebody saying whatever they feel like saying.

And a lot of us take that same believingness, uh, if I can coin a word, to our online things, the stuff we read. In real life, we have context for the other person. Like, oh, okay, you're a teacher. So if you're giving techniques about, about teaching, well, I know you've taught for, you know, over a decade and I can probably trust that what you've, what you're saying has been battle tested. But then maybe I know that you've never picked up a hammer in your life. And if you start telling me how to build a house, you're right. We have that in-person context to, to give weight and that's really part of the judgment process, right, of determining truth in a matter.

And I think you're right. I think there's a tendency to give the same weight to text that's in a book as what some random person published on their blog. Yeah. And when we, when we phrase it that way, we, we say that's, that's nonsense. Like we shouldn't do that. But I think that is a subconscious thing we tend to do.

Yeah. There's, uh, I, I read a book recently, um, entitled How We Know What Isn't So. And the author goes through a number of, um, psychological reasons why we think, why we believe things that just simply aren't the case. And it includes things like the confirmation bias. I go online looking for, well, I say I'm going to do my own research, right? But what I'm really doing is I'm looking for any kind of, um, uh, confirmation of what I already believe or what I want to believe. And so there are a number of others as well.

And when we go online, we can find somebody to defend pretty much any point we want. I mean, you can, you can pick a bizarre point, uh, and you can find somebody to defend it or, or, or agree with you. So let's, let's circle back a little bit more to the classroom again. And another question I have with teaching and with students, you talk about that light bulb moment for the student. And that's rewarding to you. And I, I think a student feels rewarded in those moments too. This, this work that I'm putting in is paying off.

Can you speak to how you instill a love of learning into somebody? Because some people don't seem, at least immediately, to be energized by those light bulb moments. So they don't, don't tend to care about those. And I'm sure you have different students with different levels of, of that. And that can be affected by personality and, and just ease of learning. But how do you, how do you rub off on them and just give them this, this fascination and curiosity and, and wanting to learn, this desire to learn? Ultimately, I can't.

When it comes down to it, it's the student has to decide, uh, what, how they're going to approach things. And there are a lot of factors, again, that go into how a student approaches the learning process. Part of it can be their home environment. If, if learning is valued at home, then the student is more likely to value it at school.

Um, and you know, there are other, other factors outside of, outside of my control that play into how a student approaches learning. What I try to do is make the learning process enjoyable. Um, so that calls me to teach as well as I can, as clearly and as, um, winsomely as, as I can.

I try to give them opportunities as well to explore areas of interest in their, on their own. So in my earth science course, for example, my students always get the opportunity to independently research some issue with the earth's environment. So then they, they pick a whole range of things. You know, it might be extinction. It might be, uh, the great garbage patches in the, in the oceans. It could be glaciers melting, any number of, of issues that they, they pick from, but they get to pick something that's interesting to them. And then I try to offer, you know, good support for that so that they don't get frustrated in the process. I'm still learning on this one.

Um, I thought when I started that if I just love learning enough, the students will, will kind of pick it up naturally. And I'm learning that that's not actually the case. It, it helps if, if I love learning and if I can just be, you know, um, bleeding, uh, or, or hemorrhaging, uh, with a love of, of learning.

Um, hopefully they'll bleed a little bit then. But, um, but I actually do need to, to work specifically at that problem, uh, because a lot of times students will put out minimal effort. I mean, humans do that. We, you know, given, given the opportunity, we slouch in our chairs. We, we, uh, we, we put out the least effort possible for whatever, whatever task is set before us. And the same thing can be true of students that, that, um, they're going to, they see education, they see the school as giving them a set of tasks. They do the tasks and as a reward, they get the grade. It's just like, you know, you go to a construction site and you get a set of tasks.

You build this wall, you put the wall up and, and, and then at the end you get a payment. You know, like it's, it's a, uh, very transactional. Yeah. Right. Students can see school, if they see school that way, uh, just strictly as a transactional interaction, then they're not going to start picking it up on the, on their own. Um, and on a job site, you want an employee who, who really cares about how this house is built, who's, who's thinking ahead, who's, who's taking on the project themselves. They see it as more than just, I'm doing this job so that I get my paycheck. That doesn't happen naturally on a job site. Um, and it also doesn't happen naturally in school.

Uh, you have to work at it specifically as either the boss or, or as a teacher. Mm-hmm. You've helped quantify some of the, the success that, that you feel you have in the classroom. How do you see that translating into a community or, or families or churches? How is success in the classroom impacting those areas?

It's not always as obvious as you wish. Um, I think that the school is an arm of the church, that, that we, we exist to serve the church. We actually see ourselves as part of a three-part team. We have the parents, the church, and us working together to grow these students up into mature adults.

I don't think that it's always directly measurable, the impact that we have. There are some obvious ways. So we teach our students how to lead singing and that translates directly into a church environment. Uh, we give them, or they, they take a, uh, public speaking class and that translates directly into something that benefits the church. And both of those get recognized by the local churches. They say, hey, your students are doing really well with their presentations at church. More broadly though, if, if our students walk out of here and are not able to serve their church, that they are selfish and, um, shortsighted and unable to, to really plug into church, we see that as a failure.

Even if they go off and have highly successful careers, but are unable to give themselves fully to serving the kingdom, that's a failure. Again, it's that character side that you can't measure with a, with a test. And it's, it's that can actually be really frustrating, honestly, um, because we'll have students who can give all the right answers on a test, but then when they go home, they don't live it.

So I guess the short answer again is that they live the faith that we try to teach. It takes a long time before you can actually see whether, whether you, you were successful or not. And of course, even then, there are so many things outside of school that impact where a student ends up. You know, I had a student that was headed in a very, very bad direction, um, actually that really bad year that I referenced. We had multiple students who, who were just headed in terrible directions and we were trying to stop them. And, um, of those, several turned out very well. They're, they're doing very, very well.

Others continued in their decline for a long time, um, and are coming back now, but we can't get any of the credit for that. And I don't think we should. Success as a teacher is not as easy to measure as success as a builder, right?

Um, but it's, you can kind of get a sense for how you're doing over time. One other aspect of teaching in a community is that we, as I said earlier, we exist to serve the church. If we truly believe that, then when the church wants us to go a specific direction, we have to go that direction. Um, and there are times when we would rather do something different, but the, the church leaders say, no, we really want you to, to go this specific direction. And we, we can't be the tail wagging the dog. We obey. Can you, can you just clarify that a little bit when you, when you say going this direction, are you speaking to, uh, the church saying, hey, we need more of this type of learning or are you speaking in academic ways or, or?

Well, kind of. So just as one example, um, the King James Version is a translation that's been around for, you know, 400 years. And it's, it uses language that is hard for young children to understand. We have Bible memory here.

And I think that if we just took a poll among the teachers, we would memorize the new King James or, or a translation that uses more modern language. But our churches aren't there. They want the King James. And so that's what we memorize is the King James. So that's just an example of the type of thing that I'm talking about. Sure. But in, in various ways, realizing that you are, you are together, you're, you're helping to build people, Mm - hmm and develop people. And, and there is a, a back and forth relationship there. They're tied together in some way and need to be sensitive to each other. That's great.

Um, okay. Thank you for all the, the thoughts and, and insights. It's been thought provoking. Uh, I'd like to just ask in closing if you have any stories that you'd like to share from your decade plus of being here. I'm, I'm sure, uh, with that many years of teaching, you have many stories you could share, but are there any specifically that you would like to, to give today? When I think back about my career, I actually think a lot about the mistakes that I've made along the way and the ways that I've learned from those mistakes. Um, as a young teacher, I, I was, well, I made many, many mistakes. Um, so maybe I'll just tell you about one of the mistakes I made.

I was, uh, I went into the classroom my first year and I, um, thought that if, if I treat my students as adults, that they'll act like adults. I had sixth through eighth grade, so three kind of middle school grades.

And I thought one of the, one of the things that I thought about was that they, uh, might want to pass notes. And I didn't really care about passing notes. I, I thought that, you know, if they're adults, that they'll, they'll manage this just fine. I made the mistake of announcing that I didn't care if they passed notes. It's one thing to not actually care. It's another thing to announce it to students because then they started passing notes and it's like giving permission. Yeah, right. And, um, so I would see one slip a note to another one and I'd say, hey, you're gonna have to be sneakier than that, you know, kind of make a joke about it.

Well, one day I was cleaning the classroom after school and I found a note from one of the boys to one of the girls saying, I'm looking at you or something like that. And, uh, she had written back something like, ha ha. Um, so they were flirting with each other. Well, that, that was not okay with me. So I announced the next day, I said, all right, guys, no more passing notes. And, uh, if you pass notes, if somebody passes you a note, then you have to turn it in because you're an accomplice to the crime if you keep it. Like you need to turn your friends in. Big, big mistake.

Uh, they, they didn't rebel openly. They were good kids, you know. Um, but that night when I was cleaning the classroom, I found another note that said, friends will never rat on friends. And I realized, oops, you know, so it multiple mistakes at once. Um, you never announce that students have permission to do things that you really don't want them to do, but you're just not going to police it. And then secondly, if you make a switch, you have to go about it very carefully and never, ever try to turn students on each other because that doesn't work. They'll turn against you in a heartbeat. Um, I was there for two years. They still all are in the same community.

You know, like it's, it doesn't, they are logical enough to know that when it comes down to it, their friendships are more with each other are more important than a friendship with a teacher. Mm - hmm We live and we learn and it's a, it's a process. We really all are students of life. And I think that's what you really are trying to instill in people is a love of learning and a curiosity and equipping them for a lifetime of learning. It doesn't stop after they graduate or, uh, leave your classroom, but you're wanting to equip them to, to continue pursuing knowledge and, and wisdom and, and excellence in many ways as they seek to serve, serve God and his kingdom where he's called them.

Well, thank you very much for sharing your thoughts today and appreciate your time. And thank you to each one for tuning in and we'll look forward to seeing you in the next episode.