GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 4:33
Model Teacher
Somewhere in one of my teacher education classes, I remember a professor saying, “A teacher has not taught until a student has learned.” I recently overheard a conversation where someone was asked about the most important class he had. That question set me reflecting on my own educational experience, and I realized that I remembered more teachers than the lessons they taught. Because of my combination of two college majors and two minors, I had one professor for ten classes. I remember his sense of humor, some of his jokes, and his habit of writing on the blackboard—that’s how long ago it was. When he began to write on one end of the blackboard, he would often proceed to write to the other end of the blackboard and continue writing on the wall, as if he were lost in his subject. My doctoral director was patient and kind—a tenured professor who never, in all my classes with him and personal interactions, gave off the air of being full of himself. I took every class he offered. One of my philosophy professors would take abstract but important concepts and begin the class by writing on one end of the board and and would continue writing until he reached the other end and the close of the class. By that time, I thought I understood his lesson. I tried to practice in my own career the educational methods these competent, patient, and kind men and women displayed, as well as the lessons they taught.
In an insightful, revealing glimpse into Jesus as a teacher, St. Mark said, “And with many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear.” (4:33) In this brief glimpse into Jesus’ pedagogical method, he took a difficult concept and illustrated it by using everyday, familiar items—seeds, for example, in this instance. There is no virtue in talking over the head of an audience. Someone said, “The fact that a man shoots above the target only proves that he is a bad shot.”
In this revealing glimpse, Jesus also suited his instruction to the ability of those who were listening to him to understand: “as they were able to hear.” This brief phrase is often rendered as, “According to their ability to understand,” or “To the extent that they could understand,” which captures the meaning of these words. That is the first essential element in wise teaching. A speaker who displays his own erudition to the point that he becomes so obscure and elaborate that the hearer cannot understand him misses the mark as a teacher. No, Jesus provides the example of a model teacher.
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