Why I Teach At Ad Fontes
Mr. Dave Mathwin
Upper School History teacher
I have taught at AFA for ten years, and I will be back for an eleventh. Every year in the spring I declare my intent to return without a moment's hesitation. I love the job, but until asked to write about what teaching at AFA entails, I had never really thought seriously about exactly why I keep coming back or why so many of my colleagues do the same.
I suppose that most would expect me to say something about how teachers 'touch the future' or take an active part in transforming lives. May God preserve me from such thoughts, and taking myself any more seriously than I, unfortunately, already do, Yes, students do grow, and yes, that is exciting, but credit goes to the students themselves and ultimately to God Himself. The romantic view of teachers promulgated by so many Hollywood productions does not hold water.
Or perhaps it is the curriculum. Here I think we are closer to the truth, for while God certainly can accomplish His good purpose in a variety of ways and locales, a classical curriculum gives teachers a powerful tool to challenge students minds as well as their own. The classical model combined with a Christian foundation and purpose can bless all who breathe its air. But we have not yet hit the real reason why teaching here rewards so many of us so richly.
All of us who teach here have convictions, some stronger than others, on a variety of topics. While we all affirm the crucial distinctives of the Christian faith, we all bring much more to the table. But the key to good teaching is to not be bound by those secondary convictions. When teachers don't do this and use themselves as the basis for their instruction, they will only be able to take their students so far. We are all desperately finite. None of us are interesting enough people to hold any student's interest for very long. But here at AFA this problem is minimized. Teachers are encouraged to confront their students with the world in love, to go beyond themselves by letting the world speak for itself. How does this happen?
Students here need to make their own decisions. In class I can give the students the full force of Plato's critique of democracy on one hand, and then turn the tables and present a case that he was nothing more than an elitist prig. Mrs. Moore can argue that Jane Austen was a deistic Neo-Classical on one day, and a Christian Romantic on the other. She has an opinion, but she won't tell you what it is. Walk into Mr. Carey's physics class and the various mysteries of the universe are on display. Maybe Thales was right, and everything is water, or maybe the certainties of science itself need to be rethought. And on and on it goes.
We realize that this could scare and confuse students. Sometimes it does. Teachers encourage patience, knowing that if the students could get a bird's eye view of themselves they would not see convictions disappearing, but rather convictions more fully owned and more fully their own.
When I think of teaching with this approach, I am reminded of a quote from C.S. Lewis about literature, in which he writes Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality. . . .in reading great literature I become a thousand men, and yet remain myself. . . .I transcend myself , and am never more myself than when I do.
Teachers may never know what impact they have on students, and that's just as well, for as I stated earlier, it's not a teacher's job to try and change anyone. What they can know, however, is how much they have been changed by teaching their subjects with charity, curiousity and wonder, and encouraging their students to do the same.
Now we are getting quite near the reason for why teachers come here to teach, but we still have not arrived. What I just stated is true, but too high flown and abstract to think about very often. The real truth is simpler.
Do you like to destroy things? I know that I always have, whether it was shooting a BB gun at old light bulbs as a kid with my grandfather, or more recently with my own kids, taking a bat to a printer of mine that had botched its last document. Old light bulbs and bad printers need destroying.
'Education is violence.' So said G.K. Chesterton. What I think he meant by this is that teachers need to challenge what students think they know, by addition, subtraction, or some other means. Teachers get to take existing structures of knowledge and make them a shambles. The students then have to rebuild. But the teachers get to do the best part. They get to destroy.
So - there you have it - the real reason I come back to teach every year. When all is said and done, the answer is: It's fun, and I'll continue to come back as long that remains the case.