Starting Your Teaching Day With What Really Matters

In today’s episode it’s time to dig deep into some great wisdom from St. Benedict of Nursia as well as how one woman’s refusal to take no for an answer can help us in our daily teaching work. Catholic teaching is a supernatural event. Why spend another day trying to do it with only human resources? Learn these simple daily strategies that can gradually change your experience of teaching and help you reach more young people with the life-changing hope only found in Jesus.

Author

Jonathan Doyle is an international speaker, author, businessman and executive coach who has spoken around the world to more than 400,000 people on topics related to personal development, peak performance, leadership, Catholic school evangelisation, relationships and much more.

His recent keynote addresses include the NCEA National Convention in St. Louis Missouri to 10,000 delegates and he is a frequent keynote speaker in the US, Asia and Europe.

He is also the founder of an influential education and media business that delivers training content to hundreds of organisations and thousands of individuals around the world on a weekly basis.

Jonathan holds an undergraduate degree in education from the University of Canberra, a Masters Degree in Leadership and Management from the University of Newcastle and has also undertaken post-graduate study in philosophical anthropology.

He is the author of numerous books on relationships and peak performance and each day shares these same ideas with a large global audience via The Daily Podcast with Jonathan Doyle.

Make sure you grab a copy of my new book Finishing Strong. Just click the book image on the left and it will take you straight there.

Finishing Strong is a loud and clear call for every young person to make the very best of their final years of school. Based on hundreds of seminars around the world to a huge number of students Jonathan Doyle offers powerful, practical advice that can make a major difference.

Each chapter offers inspiring stories, clear principles and actionable steps for identifying and moving forward in study, life, friendships and each key area of life.

Jonathan also includes journal questions and guided reflections at the end of each chapter to maximise learning and ensure the ideas and principles can be made real, personal and achievable.

If you want to help your child or students make the very best of their final years of high school then it;s time to help them finish strong!

TRANSCRIPT

Catholic Daily Feb 11 2021

Starting Your Teaching Day With What Really Matters

📍 Hey everybody, Jonathan Doyle with you. Once again, welcome back to the Catholic teacher daily podcast. You’d be aware that I’ve been on a bit of a break, but really happy to be back it’s a chance to just share some daily encouragement. And I hope it’s a real blessing to you. Catholic teaching is a challenging vocation and there’s so much turmoil and change in our world at the moment.

So I really felt that I just wanted to try and bring some daily encouragement and just be a blessing to you in your. Crucial work. Our three kids have gone back to school. A daughter is 13. We’ve got my son’s about gosh, 11 or 12, I should know. And a younger daughter as well. And it’s been really great to see them settling back into school and they’re really positive school environment.

So we’re really grateful for these Christian and Catholic teachers that are making such a difference in their lives. Yesterday, my daughter and I were driving and she was. Telling me a story about a maths teacher at her school, who she saw dealing with one of the more challenging students. And my daughter just relayed this story of how this particularly this particular student’s very difficult, probably the most difficult student in the school.

And when they were working on a difficult mathematics problem, this student threw in the towel and had a mini tantrum. And this teacher just. They started first by just standing up to them and saying, this is not appropriate and setting a strong boundary in place. And then they got alongside that student and really went to work with them and help them to understand the concept now in the great scheme of human history, is that an important thing?

I think it is. Yes. I think it actually is. I think it’s a simple story about the amazing things that teachers like you do every single day, seeking out the lost sheep, working with students when things are difficult, it can really change the direction of a life. The trajectory of a life can be changed dramatically by what you do each day.

Now I want to share with you a couple of things per posting, the daily encouragement email again. And yesterday his quote was from St. Benedict of nursery. It’s a really good quote. Listen to this. He says, whenever you begin any good work, you should. First of all, make a most pressing appeal to Christ our Lord to bring it to perfection.

I really liked that. He’s reminding us that whenever we start something, whether it’s a lesson or new school day, or maybe it’s a big initiative, maybe you’re in leadership in a Catholic school. And it’s a major thing for us as Catholic teachers, everything should begin everything that’s significant should begin by asking Christ to bless it, to prosper it, to grow it.

Because if we don’t do that, then really we’re back to that endless cycle of relying on human energy. And human excellence. And the reason I love the fact that this quotes from some Benedict. It’s been a native nursery and basically rebuilt Western Catholicism in the sixth century. After the prolonged collapse of the Roman empire, Bennett, X monastic, foundations really rebuilt and short up the Western Christian tradition.

So here’s somebody that has a seismic role in both global history and church history. Who’s telling us clearly. That the way he operates is by bringing every new endeavor to Christ and asking him to bless it. So let’s be people that do that. Let’s just make this a regular thing, whether you’re driving into the school each morning and it’s that simple prayer, Jesus, I offer you this day.

I ask you to be present this day. My day begins. Everyday by 4:00 AM. That’s just me. I’m not suggesting other people do it, but I’ve always been an early riser. I pray the divine office. I pray the rosary. I have time with scripture. I’ve got a young family. I’ve got really complex life like you do as well.

But our make time for placing Christ at the center of the day, every single day. And when I did that this morning, I was going through the daily readings and today’s gospel readings from Mark chapter seven, verse 24 to 30. And it’s the story you’re probably familiar with. It’s the great story of the Syrophoenician woman, the woman who sasses Jesus, basically, because, she’s desperate for Jesus to bring a healing to her daughter.

Who’s suffering with some maybe it’s a mental illness or some other major affliction. And Jesus of course says to her, it’s not right to take the food, the bread for the children and give it to the children’s dogs. That’s a, that’s translated from the Aramaic, right? So the Aramaic stuff can be really direct.

So Jesus is basically saying, listen, I’m hearing ya, but really I’m here for the lost children of the house, of the tribe of Israel. And she, of course beautifully says, yes, Lord. But even the dogs get the scraps that fall from the children’s table. I love that line. She’s just she’s come back. She didn’t slink away.

She needed something, she needed a breakthrough and rather than just slink off and just hope that things might change. She said, Lord, basically, what’s she really saying? She’s going to look. I hear you. You here for the Israelites, but I tell you what I reckon you’ve got some extra bandwidth. I reckon if you wanted to, you can do anything.

So really what this beautiful passage is about. Of course, Jesus says your faith, is amazing. He said, you can go and what you want will be done. She will be healed. And this beautiful, finishes down in verse 30, where the woman returns home and she found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.

So this is a beautiful. You know a story about faith and why does it matter? Because again, as Catholic teachers, we need faith because the problems are so intractable. That’s why I think the more you look at human problems and know the more you look at the challenges of the education system and money and finance and educational standards and all the extra stuff you’re expected to do day after day, I think in a human capacity, it’s getting impossible.

So I believe that if we’re called to do something, what we need is great faith. And as Hebrews reminds us, that’s just, faith is just the hope. And what’s not yet seen. Faith is a task. It’s a, it’s an effort. It’s an exertion of the will. It’s a decision to see something that is not already there because you have a perfect father in heaven.

You have Jesus as your brother and Lord who is going to be present if you cry out to him. So I think this matters because. I think to be a great Catholic teacher, you have to see the reality before it happens. You have to go into that difficult classroom going, Jesus, I can’t meet the needs here, but I’m going to have faith that you’re real and that you’re going to give me your Holy spirit and that Holy spirit is going to give me insight, creativity, energy capacity.

And I’m going to bring about the purposes that you have for me. So friends, I want to encourage you today. If you’re facing difficulty, choose. Faith now, I didn’t say feel faith. I didn’t say, just wait for this magical feeling to happen, where everything’s there and happening. I truly believe as I get older and as I live more of life that we need to see the reality before it happens and we need to see that reality.

Faith and move into it in faith. And we can do that with confidence because we know that what Jesus wants is the salvation of every young person. He wants intimate friendship with every young person. So we know if that’s what he wants, if he wants the best for them, then we can claim that in faith because we know that it’s true.

All right, friends. Be encouraged, bring all your new endeavors to Christ as St. Benedict of nurse. He reminds us and go into your day with faith, even in the most intractable circumstances, I can tell you, I’ve seen people’s lives turned around even in the last, year. 📍 We can never limit what God can do.

So think about that most difficult student, the game is not up yet. It is not over. All right. Do me a favor. Check out the website, a one Catholic teacher.com and please make sure you’ve subscribed. Hit the subscribe button and Share this with as many Catholic teachers, as you cannot love, you could post this on Twitter, post this on Facebook for me, and let’s get the word out there so that more and more Catholic teachers get this daily encouragement.

God bless your friends. My name’s Jonathan Doyle. This has been the Catholic teacher daily podcast. And I’ll have another message for you tomorrow.