God IS in Public Schools

Last Friday, our nation was rocked by the most horrific school shooting in our history. I don’t think anyone who lived through this will forget the pain and sorrow we felt for the lives lost and the families and friends affected by this tragedy.

Already there have been a plethora of posts on various social media sites about gun control, God in school, mental health care, etc, etc… I don’t know what the answer is, and I’m not going to throw around ideas because quite frankly, I am still in shock and having a hard time wrapping my head around everything.

What I do want to offer is hope. I have been very impacted by the comments regarding God being kicked out of schools. God may not be embraced by the public school system, but as a Christian teacher, I can say that he’s not absent. As a Christian, I feel it is my duty to try to be a good person and set a positive example for my students. While I may not preach to them, I nevertheless attempt to demonstrate Christ’s love through my actions. I am not perfect, but I feel that my job goes beyond teaching Spanish. My job is to help shape people. As a result, character development is something I intentionally incorporate as much as possible. As I’ve mentioned before, I start each class period with a Spanish idiom that typically is advice for being a good person or some sort of life lesson. I often take a full 5-minutes to relate it to either the students’ or my life. That’s 25 minutes a week on building character, and it’s worth so much more than the half a class period I dedicate to it each week. I recently learned that a colleague of mine scheduled 8 days throughout the school year that are 100% dedicated to character development. I plan to do the same next year.

So don’t worry, God is very present in schools. Besides, anyone of faith knows that you can ignore Him all you want, but he will never leave you nor forsake you (Deuteronomy 31:6). He is ever present with each and every one of us undeserving people.