In the busyness and challenge of each day it’s understandable that we can come to see difficult students or colleagues as a source of our suffering or unhappiness.
However, what if, all this time, we may have been fighting the wrong enemy?
In this episode I want to suggest that your challenging students or colleagues are not the ones we need to overcome. There is a much greater enemy you need to be aware of.
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Transcript
Well, Hey everybody, Jonathan Doyle with you.
Speaker:Once again, welcome back to the Catholic teacher podcast, almost daily as daily
Speaker:as I can make it, but I just wanted to reach out and just keep the content
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Speaker:Friends.
Speaker:I want to talk to you about something.
Speaker:I was on a call the other day.
Speaker:To a school in, uh, in north America.
Speaker:And I'm doing some work with these guys and we were talking about their
Speaker:experience coming back from COVID and.
Speaker:A lot of fatigue in the school system.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:A lot of fatigue in the kids, a lot of social disconnections taking
Speaker:place over the last couple of years.
Speaker:And I was talking to the principal there and he was telling me, he was
Speaker:sort of saying, look, we're struggling.
Speaker:He said, there's just, um, there's tension.
Speaker:There's a lot of fatigue.
Speaker:There's.
Speaker:We're just finding it's, it's really difficult between sometimes
Speaker:between staff and staff and staff and students, what do we do?
Speaker:And what I did is I went and ran a half marathon to think about it.
Speaker:I do in many of, you know, I'm going to, um, exercise, I guess, fanatic the word.
Speaker:I just love it.
Speaker:I just went out and, um, and ran a half marathon the other day on my own.
Speaker:And I was thinking about the question.
Speaker:And often when I do these long runs, Uh, I sort of get these ideas.
Speaker:I'm hoping it's the holy spirit and not just the pain.
Speaker:And, um, And I'm thinking about it and I'm thinking, you
Speaker:know, what's interesting about.
Speaker:Behavior management.
Speaker:Conflict between students and teachers.
Speaker:Do you know, what's interesting about it is I think we're probably pretty
Speaker:consistently fighting the Roan.
Speaker:Enemy.
Speaker:I was thinking about it.
Speaker:I was thinking.
Speaker:As an educator, how easy is it?
Speaker:And we've all been there over the years.
Speaker:Think of a particularly difficult student.
Speaker:Or particularly difficult colleague.
Speaker:Often when I do that live on stage people sort of laugh nervously.
Speaker:You know, they're like, oh, I love everybody.
Speaker:I don't have any problems with the people I work with.
Speaker:But we all have them, right?
Speaker:We all have these people that, uh, or students that really ring
Speaker:our bell and it can get bad.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:I can get, you can have kids that are just really, really hard work.
Speaker:And we can fall into the trap.
Speaker:At least I can remember.
Speaker:I used to where you can actually think that there's, there's a
Speaker:deep intent that the kid wakes up each day going, you know what?
Speaker:I can't wait to get to school.
Speaker:Because I'm going to make my teacher's life miserable.
Speaker:And we can, we can fall into that trap, right.
Speaker:I think, uh, at different times, different seasons because at different times in the
Speaker:teaching journey, You know, we can have.
Speaker:You know, issues going on in our private lives, we can have health issues.
Speaker:We can, our energy levels can be at different points.
Speaker:So sometimes it's gonna be on top of our game sometimes not.
Speaker:And then we're dealing with difficult people, difficult circumstances.
Speaker:What do we do?
Speaker:I think we're fighting the wrong enemy.
Speaker:I think what we tend to do is we look at this particular colleague or particular
Speaker:student and they become the enemy.
Speaker:We think about how we need to manage them, how we need to
Speaker:deal with them, how we need to.
Speaker:Control or stop them from doing X behavior.
Speaker:Now, of course we need discipline.
Speaker:We need structure in our education spaces and our classrooms so that we can.
Speaker:Actually impart and teach.
Speaker:And shape character.
Speaker:But I think that the enemy is not the one you think it is.
Speaker:So you're going to Jonathan, what's the big reveal.
Speaker:Who's the enemy.
Speaker:I think it's the devil.
Speaker:I think it's Satan.
Speaker:I think it's basically that what Satan wants to do.
Speaker:Well, we know what he wants to do.
Speaker:It's very clear.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Throughout scripture, he.
Speaker:Theologically Satan can never win any ultimate battle.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And there's a couple of points here.
Speaker:One is that we often think that.
Speaker:You know, God is in this cosmic death match with Satan and
Speaker:we hope the good guys win.
Speaker:It's nothing to do with that.
Speaker:One of those things that actually helped me years ago was the realization that
Speaker:Satan is not God's equal or rival.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:You've really got to get this deeply.
Speaker:It's not as if there's God, and then over on the other side of the
Speaker:dividing line, there's Satan and they're going at it against each other.
Speaker:You have to remember that Satan was only an angel, a fallen angel.
Speaker:And he was literally thrown out of heaven by some Michael Wright.
Speaker:So Satan might be problematic and he is, and he's real, but he got, you know,
Speaker:He got his butt handed to him by St.
Speaker:Michael.
Speaker:I won't be flipping, I don't want to be in delicate, but he just did.
Speaker:Jesus himself said, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.
Speaker:Well, why did he fall like lightning?
Speaker:He didn't trip friends.
Speaker:It wasn't like he was, you know, up on the balcony in heaven and accidentally
Speaker:slipped on the, you know, on site.
Speaker:Someone had spilled a daiquiri.
Speaker:He was removed.
Speaker:He was thrown out by Michael and it's beautiful because
Speaker:Michael Mick L Michelle McCamish.
Speaker:Michelle means who is like, God.
Speaker:I always loved that.
Speaker:Always used to preach on that a bit because you know, when there
Speaker:was war in heaven, Michael's battle cry was who is like, God, he was so
Speaker:utterly incensed and disk, you know, basically could Michael feel disgusted?
Speaker:I don't know, but he was so incensed that, that another angelic being
Speaker:could presume to be like, God,
Speaker:And that's where the name Michael comes from.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:Satan cannot win any ultimate battle.
Speaker:He is not God's rival.
Speaker:So what is the game?
Speaker:Well, the only game is.
Speaker:If you think of the, you know, tons of in your life when you've
Speaker:encountered really bitter people, What they want to do is damage, right.
Speaker:Really bitter, resentful, twisted.
Speaker:People want to damage other people.
Speaker:They don't want to, they don't really want to win.
Speaker:They don't want it to stop.
Speaker:They just want to cause harm.
Speaker:And what Satan's plan simply is, is to separate every individual
Speaker:human soul from God, for eternity, he's in the deprivation game.
Speaker:He wants to deprive God of souls.
Speaker:So what happens in the human journey and for our purposes today, the
Speaker:journey of Catholic education.
Speaker:Is that the enemy comes in.
Speaker:Remember the gospel story about the weeds and the wheat and the enemy comes
Speaker:in and sows weeds throughout the week.
Speaker:The enemy comes in.
Speaker:To convince us that the student is the enemy or the colleague is the
Speaker:enemy, because if the enemy is.
Speaker:If Satan can do that, then we start to go at each other.
Speaker:We start to hate each other.
Speaker:We start to attack each other.
Speaker:We start to tear each other down.
Speaker:And that leads to a damage in the Christian community, in the
Speaker:Catholic education community, in your school community.
Speaker:And please remember that your school is a unique discreet.
Speaker:Uh, community in and of itself.
Speaker:So the more discord, the more weeds that the enemy can.
Speaker:So in that place, the better for him.
Speaker:So, what I want you to do is not to discount people's difficult behavior.
Speaker:Not to discount toxic behaviors.
Speaker:You've got to deal with things in the real world, right?
Speaker:So you don't cop abuse.
Speaker:You don't put up with.
Speaker:Really toxic behavior use the behavior management systems, but I'm talking
Speaker:about is a conceptual behavioral shift.
Speaker:Uh, x-ray conceptual shift that leads to behavioral change.
Speaker:The conceptual shift is to go, no matter how difficult this student
Speaker:is, no matter how awful this, uh, colleague may be, they are not my enemy.
Speaker:They are not my enemy.
Speaker:I will be like Christ to them.
Speaker:And trust me, friends.
Speaker:It's so hard.
Speaker:That's why we have sacraments.
Speaker:That's why we have prayer.
Speaker:Because, because on our own.
Speaker:Uh, you know, what have we got?
Speaker:We've got humanism, right?
Speaker:We've got, let's do the right thing.
Speaker:Let's try and be nice to each other.
Speaker:That's humanism.
Speaker:We're not trying to do that.
Speaker:We're trying to do something else.
Speaker:So the challenge we face is simply.
Speaker:Realizing that the enemy is not the enemy.
Speaker:There's a different enemy in play.
Speaker:So as you go through your day-to-day.
Speaker:Start to notice that colleague that drives you in sane.
Speaker:Start to notice that student who rings your bell and just start to
Speaker:say to yourself, Jesus helped me.
Speaker:I know that this person is not my enemy.
Speaker:I know that the devil is my enemy.
Speaker:The devil has a plan for this student.
Speaker:The devil has a plan for my colleague.
Speaker:The devil has a plan for me, help me not to participate in it, help me to love
Speaker:because you know, if you resist the devil, a scripture says he will flee from you.
Speaker:And he doesn't like love when, when he realizes that he's been seen.
Speaker:When he realizes that you recognize what he's doing.
Speaker:You know, the scripture says, stand up to him, firm in the faith, resist
Speaker:the devil, and he will flee from you.
Speaker:How do you resist him while you noticed him first, you notice his plan and
Speaker:then you pray into it and you move always in the opposite direction.
Speaker:If you feel contempt for a student, try the opposite direction.
Speaker:Try respect and courtesy and be solicitous of them.
Speaker:How they going?
Speaker:And they will look at you like, are you crazy?
Speaker:Why are you doing this?
Speaker:Why are you being nice to me?
Speaker:This is very freaky and it will confuse them.
Speaker:It's the Jedi mind trick.
Speaker:So friends move in the opposite direction, seek the grace of the sacraments,
Speaker:seek prayer, seek the heart of Christ.
Speaker:It's hard.
Speaker:It's hard.
Speaker:It's hard.
Speaker:That's why so many things in CA in Catholic life or Sacramento,
Speaker:it's why in family and marriage life it's sacramental because we
Speaker:can't love each other perfectly.
Speaker:Without those things, we just don't do it.
Speaker:You know, depending on our backgrounds and our individual psychology, some
Speaker:of us do it better than others.
Speaker:This is endless need for grace.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:That's the message for today.
Speaker:Fight the right enemy friends.
Speaker:Fight the right enemy.
Speaker:All right, God, bless everybody.
Speaker:Please make sure to subscribe, share this with some teachers, go and check out
Speaker:these show notes and I'll try and put a link across to the YouTube channel here.
Speaker:So you can see the YouTube version of this.
Speaker:But god bless you everybody thank you for what you're doing my name's jonathan doyle
Speaker:this is the catholic teacher podcast and i'll have another message for you tomorrow
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