Seating Plan Required

Before unleashing one of his sermons at church, my husband is likely to gaze out into the congregation and notice that people are in their usual pews.  Of course there are slight variations from Sunday to Sunday, and often one or more newcomers who don’t have a favorite location yet, but there is also quite a high degree of sameness to the configuration.  Certain people like to be right up front on the left, say, and others prefer the back right – close to the door.  Unlike in the old days when little plaques with family names would identify who gets to sit where (kind of like in ball parks) nowadays it’s kind of a free-for-all.  My husband’s eye gets accustomed to the layout, but it’s one thing he doesn’t need to be concerned about:  let the people sit where they will.   They may not stay completely rapt during each sermon (oh those toddlers!) but –for the most part—they do choose to be there, listening and participating in all other parts of the service.

If you ask me, now that I teach five classes of ninth graders every weekday, he has it pretty easy in some ways.

For my students, a mostly pleasant and cooperative bunch of 14-15 year olds, a classroom might as well be a place with live wires strung across the room.  They are tossing sparks constantly, playing off each others’ words and gestures, reveling in their togetherness.   Poor me, largely ignorant of all of the multi-layer relationships that they bring with them when they walk through the door.  I offer some books, ask them to write, to concentrate even— but they are like bumper cars, eager to crash into each other any way they can amidst gales of laughter.  If I were not firm about certain seating rules, it would be disaster on a daily basis.

The thing is, though, a significant number of students really do exert enough self-control to stay “on task” through a class; they block out distractions, follow instructions, and seem to understand that they need to focus on gaining skills.  Especially during designated times of independent work, many of these students have become accustomed to watching their teachers try to cajole chatterboxes to pipe down and get to work.  Sometimes the stark contrasts among individuals in the same room are breathtaking… really breathtaking when you also consider actual reading ability levels, which are sometimes masked by behavior.

When I was a just-out-of-college teacher, I didn’t have eyes for this kind of thing; I was so focused on the material – a Hawthorne short story, say – that I hardly paid attention to the spectrum of different ways in which my clients, the students, were receiving what I was dishing out to them.   This time around in my teaching life, that’s what seems all-important.  My job really is to teach, to find ways of teaching, each and every person in the room.  One thing doesn’t work, I try something else.

There’s no other way to do it.  And, even though some students may insist every day that they really can work well near their friends, I know that the whole enterprise can come tumbling down sometimes through sheer proximity.

In a way, the idea of climbing the pulpit to preach to an attentive crowd seems pretty appealing right about now; on the other hand, I get to mix it up and get schooled on a regular basis.  So there are blessings all through the week in this clergy family.