Orthodoxy and Education in a Faithless, Post-Christian World – Mr. John Heitzenrater

From the Headmaster’s Desk-Reflections on Classical Education

Create in Me a Clean Heart, O God, and Renew a Right Spirit Within Me.

Orthodoxy and Education in a Faithless, Post-Christian World

Good morning. I would like to thank Fr. Stephen David and St. John of Kronstadt Academy for the invitation to speak with you this morning. It is truly an honor to be with you today. If you had told me that I would be flying around the world to discuss education when I first entered the classroom, I may have rolled my eyes or laughed in your face. I have learned, however, in nearly 23 years of teaching and 10 years of school leadership, that there is a lot to say about education. Surely, it’s not just reading good books, having robust conversations about those books, and learning fundamentals that make a school. There are many more things necessary to create the ethos and proper environment for true education to flourish. When I started teaching, it was a given that children were coming to school having already read, or having been read to, giving them the basic skills to thrive in a traditional classroom.

Yet it was not long after my career began that things began to change, and I soon found myself at a watershed moment in education. Long gone were the days of simply teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic. Colleagues in the classroom had different ideas about the purpose and mission of education and how best to serve students. Many of them were coming from Schools of Education that form each generation of teachers differently than the ones before, employing the newest fads, the newest psychology, the newest trends. The worst of all, though, were discussions of the role of technology in the classroom; the diversity of opinions posited could make one’s head spin. They will argue that technology is essential. They would say things like, “children must be prepared for the 21st century.” “They won’t be able to function in society unless we teach them how to use these things.” Even my own children know more about computers than I could ever have dreamed simply because their generation is inundated with technology. When one can type a question into one’s phone and get an answer in a split second, the pain and suffering that many of us experienced learning how to use books and do research, thereby giving us the tools not only to read well but also to think critically, are replaced by what an algorithm dictates. In just a few short years, our awareness and ability to wrestle with difficult topics has declined, and our ability to contemplate and reason through situations and ideas has stagnated.

1. An Improper Ethos in Education

But what exactly has happened? In preparing for this talk, I spent many weeks thinking about my own journey in teaching and how we really are in a fight to retain a proper ethos in education. I will present here today six philosophical revolutions that have occurred as a result of changes to educational theory since the late 19th century and offer an outline for reclaiming a proper ethos in education. For those who may be unfamiliar with the educational landscape over the last 150 years, this is my attempt to get everyone onto the same philosophical page and then, provide reasonable solutions to reimagining teaching in your classrooms.

The separation of information from knowledge.
The view of teaching as a job and not a vocation.
The rejection of the premise that there is a common body of wisdom all humans, regardless of socio-economic status, should possess.
The abandonment of honoring the three-fold nature of man as body, mind, and soul.
The fear of stressing virtue in the classroom as essential to the formation of the human being.
The rejection that Christ is the center and ultimate goal of all knowledge and wisdom.

2. Information not Knowledge

Beginning with modern man’s emphasis on his own rationality, I think, therefore I am, the pursuit of information has trumped the development of knowledge. What I mean by this is that information is simply that, nuggets of stuff which can be stringed together in whatever manner we as humans see fit. One can, for instance, have information about how to build a plane, but be clueless about how or why the plane flies. Likewise, one can have information about a number of different topics of which he or she may be able to speak eloquently, yet have no insight beyond the content gleaned from a book. Schools today spend vast amounts of resources on doing just that. We place a textbook in front of a child, have them read that textbook, ask them questions about what they read, and then move onto the next glob of information. Ask that child questions about the topics covered two weeks prior, and he or she will oftentimes falter.

Knowledge, however, requires more than mere pieces of information. It demands that the gatherer of information properly understand how that information works together, why it is necessary, and whether or not it should be accepted or rejected. Thus knowledge, properly speaking, must be preceded by experience. It requires a love affair with Truth that forms, speaks into, and ultimately makes it permanent in the mind of the human.

Unfortunately, since the 19th century, experience has bit by bit been eliminated in our schools. The driving force of education today consists of dumping information, regurgitating that information, and moving on to more information. This assembly-line approach to learning has natural consequences.

Children are left wondering why they are learning this or that thing and, ultimately, what it all means.
Wonder and imagination, which are so necessary to learning, and which are in fact the initial sparks of light in the mind of the child, are supplanted and replaced by topics deemed “essential” by “experts” in education which have no connection to universal wisdom.
The utility of the content they are learning is deemed more important that the experience of that content. “What does this content ‘do for me’,” rather than, “how can this content make me a better human being?”
These in turn lead to children rejecting the learning of certain things as not necessary or essential to their lives.
They will begin to think of themselves as mechanic automatons to be wound up and filled with information; the love and joy of learning is lost.

3. Teaching is a Job, Not a Vocation

The idea that one cannot change the world unless he or she can pay the rent is a modern phenomenon. Ask anyone whether they like their jobs, and many will respond that they do what they do as a necessary evil; to be endured so they can enjoy life. Afterall, jobs make living possible, give us money to function, and give many of us a creative outlet to our natural abilities. But teaching is more than a job, it is first and foremost a calling. Those who see teaching as a job will not survive in the long term. In fact, teacher burnout is cited as one of the major reasons teachers leave to pursue other things, sometimes after only a few years of work. The seismic shift from understanding teaching as vocation or a calling to it being “ just another job” is sadly another casualty of modern education. I have worked with thousands of teachers during my tenure in education, and more than three quarters of those lament where they were in their careers. What attracted them to teaching was the ability to move mountains, to take raw clay and mold into to something great. After just a few short years, however, their love had become cynical. Shackled to requirements established at the state or national level, their love for learning and teaching students was replaced by checklists and org-charts. Their abilities and competency as teachers were viewed only in terms of test scores and college acceptance metrics. What started out as a calling to serve students in the pursuit of wisdom and love of learning, quickly became a mechanical exercise of checking off boxes of essential skills and information. We are told by departments of education that we MUST differentiate instruction, but then turn around and standardize tests. The job replaces the calling. It becomes something to be tolerated rather than shared. Just as students are tunred into automotons, so are teachers.

A vocation, however, is a calling. It is the determination and understanding that he or she is simultaneously a sage on the stage and also a student themselves. It can recognize that children are not all the same, that some need different things to spark their wonder and imagination. It does not become disgruntled when some children learn slower than others. It is motivated by love which is patient and kind and understands that the value and worth of a child is more than test scores and marks on a report card.

When teachers embrace the calling to teach, they understand the whole picture of what education is really about.

They recognize that formation begins internally in their own mind, heart, and will. We cannot expect our children to love learning if we, ourselves, do not also love learning.
They recognize that education is as much about wrestling with difficult topics as it is about relishing the world around them.
They know instinctively that their own actions have a direct effect on their children and thus scrupulously strive to live a life of virtue.
They recognize their own limits and educational deficiencies and work tirelessly to improve their craft.
They praise progress in their students’ journey, regardless of how little that progress may actually be.
They demand accountability, not only of their students, but also of themselves.

4. The Rejection Of The Premise That There Is A Common Body Of Wisdom All Humans, Regardless Of Socio-economic Status, Ought To Pursue And Understand.

Is there a common body of wisdom that all human beings should possess? This is where things get a little dicey in educational history. The superiority of what is commonly called the “western tradition” has been the backbone of schools in the west for millennia. These schools can be seen in the Americas, Europe, both eastern and western, Australia; in short in all places in which either through conquest, colonization, or invitation, the western canon found a home. Yet, even in the far East, where missionaries and others brought learning in their travels, there was no absence of the western liberal arts.

The liberal arts, however, have as much to do with content as with procedures. One becomes proficient in reading and writing by understanding how sounds become words, how words become sentences, and how sentences become ideas. One learns how to speak well by experiencing good, engaging speeches. One learns numeracy by understanding how numbers work and how they are related, not just to the problem on a page, but to the universe as a whole. One learns about the heart of a people by reading their literature. One learns about their trials, struggles, and victories by reading about their history. Also important to note, knowledge is cross-curricular. One can learn about the planets by understanding how music works. One can study geometry by studying beautiful pieces of art, or by looking at plants and trees in the forest. These things, and others, are universally true.

Since the late 19th century, one’s experiencing a broad knowledge base has been slowly replaced by specialization. While all would agree that children need to learn how to read and need to understand how numbers work, there is disagreement about what should occur once they have these tools. Too often, there is a tendency to look at a child and allow them to choose what they will or will not study. This is not necessarily the case in grammar schools or even middle schools, but is becoming more and more prevalent in high schools and certainly in most modern day colleges. What will I concentrate on in school? What major will I take in college. Core content has been replaced by focuses in STEM and STEAM in which students can focus exclusively on those subjects which interest them. This has been aided in part by the increase of science and technology jobs and the demand that our are children are ready to succeed in the world market.

The problem that has occurred, though, is that children are graduating from schools and going to college with only a fraction of content they should have. Let me be clear, subjects like math, science, technology, and engineering are very important. Other learning, however, should not be sacrificed or neglected in favor of specialization. Core content is essential to our overall human formation. Specialization can occur later, once foundational knowledge and experience is firmly rooted in the child.

5. The Abandonment Of Honoring The Three-fold Nature Of Man As Body, Mind, And Soul.

Education is more than just molding the mind of a child. Of the many trends affecting how children are taught, this one is perhaps the most pernicious. I say that because it strikes at the heart of what we have been discussing up to this point. We are more than rational animals and have developmental needs beyond that of the mind. Classically, one might even say spiritually, the balance between the body, mind, and soul is like a dance, wherein each supplied what was necessary to the other to keep the others true to their purpose. Educate only the body while neglecting the mind and soul and you produce the brute. Educate only the mind while neglecting the body and soul, and you produce the egotist. As educators we have a duty to educate all three aspects of the human being, not just one, otherwise an imbalance occurs and that harmony of life, the harmony which makes one more fully human is lost.

Unfortunately, modern educational theory tends to focus on one or two of these, but never all three. Of these, the nurturing of the soul is often the most neglected. As spiritual beings, cultivation of the soul MUST be at the forefront of any type of education. You cannot arbitrarily separate these three components from one another and expect to have any real type of formative impact on the child. Children instinctively understand when there is an imbalance in their formation, even if they are unable to verbalize it. And when they sense this imbalance, their response is to rebel.

The rejection this tri-part nature of man has other consequences.

It places overemphasis on rationality which in turn causes unhealthy skepticism. Some skepticism is healthy, but modern education tends to hardwire students to question everything. Some things are mysterious by their nature and hence cannot be reduced to mere rational principles. It forces students to only think in terms of truth as that which they themselves can prove, and everything else can, and should be, rejected, reducing truth to fact.
It causes unnecessary conflict within children when all aspects of their nature are not being formed. Children, by nature, are full of wonder and imagination, components which are, I argue, necessary to a life well understood and lived. Children will seek out the divine when they realize there are things greater than their own thoughts and which must be pursued for their own good.
It attacks the inherent dignity of the human being and leads him on a path toward mere utility. “I study these things because they are useful, not because they are good and necessary to my soul.” Education becomes transactional. Its purpose is to make me a productive and one-dimensional citizen in the world without any thought or consideration to the truth that we are created for more than this world.

6. The Fear Of Stressing Virtue In The Classroom As Essential To The Formation Of The Human Being.

You can see how the progression of these errors has snowballed education. The preceding revolutions caused the removal of virtue in the classroom. Think about it. If information is not soul-forming, and teaching is just a series of steps we go through to move students from childhood to adulthood, why do we need virtue? I do not know when the idea of virtue was replaced by the term “value” but there is a marked difference between the two. Virtues are those characteristics which a well-formed human being will exhibit in his or her personal as well as public life because to act contrary to right or moral behavior would not be living up to their highest excellence. I am, of course, appealing here to objective standards of right and wrong as those things that are natural and befitting of the human person. It is more excellent to be courageous in the face of fear rather than cowardly in the face of opposition. Each part of our nature has congruent virtues associated with them; and each works together to bring cohesion to the mind, heart, and will of man. A mother once asked a general how she could raise her son to be a virtuous and heroic man and was told, “teach him to deny himself, and make him read the Iliad.”

There is a hierarchy to virtue as experienced by the human as he or she grows in wisdom. Thus, being courageous on the battlefield would start by conquering one’s fear of the dark as a child. Integrity in one’s actions would start by owning one’s actions as a young adult. The more that virtue is sought after, the more and greater the virtues that will be produced by the human. Take, for example, the 4th Century Lenten Prayer of St. Ephriam the Syrian,

O Lord and master of my life, grant not the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk. But give rather the spirit chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant. Yeah O Lord and King, grant me to see my own transgressions and not to judge my brother, for blessed art Thou unto the ages of ages.

Prior to the 19th century, children learned about virtuous things by reading fables, tall tales, and good literature. They learned from the example of those around them and they were encouraged to pursue the Good, the Beautiful, and the True in all of their personal actions. By these, I mean the objective standards of goodness, beauty, and truth which transcend the realm of opinion and conjecture. The Good is that which is the most excellent of thing, the Beautiful, that which is aesthetically superior to others below it and which draws one back to a transcendent reality, and the True, the 2nd person of the Holy Trinity, Jesus Christ Incarnate. All Good, Beautiful, and True things will naturally arrive at these, even if they fall short of them because of exterior constraints. They did not have to have someone beating them over the head telling them to tell the truth because they had learned that one’s word was one’s bond. Lose that, and your credibility is hard to reclaim.

Today, stories and examples of virtue have been replaced by platitudes and motivational posters. Words like achieve, greatness, happiness, effort, and winners, have replaced actual virtues like fortitude, charity, integrity, and wisdom. Virtue finds its home in the garden of our souls. From here, with proper cultivation, beautiful fruits can be produced. Yet, there is a fear on the part of teachers to stress virtue because it may contradict someone else’s values.

Values, by their nature are personal and situational. They are not universal. One can often spot an appeal to values by the words, “for me….” The meaning is clear. For me this is true, but you may have some other truth, and that’s okay. By their own existence, they are transitory and can change if time or circumstances require them to be changed.

Virtues, on the other hand, are universal. Justice, temperance, patience, fortitude, faith, hope, and charity, will always transcend time and circumstance. They cannot be changed by our own whim. They can only be adapted, sometimes more perfectly, sometimes less; but they will always reflect back to that part of our souls which converses with the divine.

7. The Rejection That Christ Is Telos Of All Knowledge And Wisdom.

Perhaps the most egregious of all the foregoing revolutions is the rejection that Christ is the Alpha and the Omega of all knowledge and wisdom. In many schools, the mention of Christ is discouraged. Even in private Christian schools, Christ has been dethroned in favor of science, modernity, or heresy. The consequences of this are palpable.

Since so much of what is essential to education involves the spiritual components of our nature, not bringing students to the mystery of the Incarnation robs them of the fullness of truth.
By secularizing the pursuit of knowledge, children are placed into a box outside of which nothing is true and therefore not useful.
What then becomes the reason for learning, if it is not to have a love affair and an encounter with the Bridegroom? Mystery and wonder are lost to the child and his purpose, really his entire ethos, becomes jaded.
History ceases to be explained in terms of the unfolding of God’s Revelation to Creation and is replaced by the idea that it marches on to human or natural forces only.
All standards of morality, virtue, and holiness become arbitrary, non-essential, and, as we can see today, branded as hate.

Reimagining Education

7. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life

Christ must be at the center of all education. The systematic replacing of our blessed Lord cannot be tolerated any more. If we desire children that are lovers of the good, the beautiful, and the true, tenants that were at the heart of education in the past, we should be deliberate in leading them on a journey toward a relationship with Christ. Unfortunately, this is impossible for those whose calling is in public schools. In those instances, observe the following principles.

Pray for your students by name, every day.
Learn and establish objective standards goodness, truth, and beauty in your classrooms by referencing images, stories, and experiences as examples.
Ask open ended questions to your students and let them come to logical and natural conclusions.
Ask Christ to illuminate the mind, body, and soul of your students, families, and administrators.
Bring joy and love into your classrooms. Sometimes, the only Gospel people encounter is the one written on our hearts. If you show kindness, patience, love, faith, hope and paternal/maternal care for your students, they will encounter Christ through your example.

6. Create in me a clean heart of God and renew a right spirit within me.

Love your students and love your craft. Of all the things discussed thus far, the easiest to implement is virtue. As humans, we can instinctively understand when something is right or wrong. Thus, we must be deliberate in pointing out virtues and their opposites to our children. In order to effectively do this, we too must be seeking and doing virtuous things. Children can smell hypocrisy from a mile away. They know when we are engaged with them, whether or not we care for them, and whether our lives are moved by the lives we are encouraging them to pursue.

It is not enough to know what is right but to not do it.
We must actively seek out examples of goodness, beauty, and truth and understand why these things deserve to be grouped in their respective categories.
We should read good literature to our children. Good books give the ideas and images our children crave a poetic foundation.
Hold our children to a standard that is befitting their human nature and ability. We should not expect things out of children that we ourselves do not understand and cannot model for them.
Avoid cutesy slogans and childish tools when discussing and teaching the virtues. Slogans and such diminish the importance of the virtue. Hold the virtues in honor and children will want to achieve them.

5. I am sick, O Lord. Do Thou Heal Me

We must read about and come to understand our human nature. As a tri-part being of mind, body, and soul, what each component does must be understood by the teacher in forming his or her children. The body is visible while the mind and the soul are invisible. The following principles should guide our understanding.

Human beings are fallen and as such have a diminished understanding of knowledge. Some knowledge is content, some is experiential. True knowledge and wisdom recognize the importance of both.
Education is more than just academics and physical activity. It also includes instruction in proper behavior and virtue.
Reject the modern push to focus only on the mind and the body at the expense of the soul. A full formation requires all three.
Do not panic when children come to us and have an underdeveloped formation in one of these areas. Instead identify the sickness and apply the prescription.
We should not be materialists, but we should recognize that our bodies were created to do good deeds in union with the mind and the soul.

4. All things which are unto Truth, these also do we claim as our own.

There are things in the world which are better than others. This in no way diminishes something that is a lesser good, outside of the fact that it is lesser, but some things by their nature are superior. We should desire that our that our children only read the best things. In order to facilitate this, teachers must discriminate between texts. We are still reading the Iliad 2500 years later. Why? Because this epic poem transcends both time and culture. Why is Dante’s Inferno still relevant today? Because it gives us a glimpse into the medieval mind, which in turn tells us something about ourselves.

Do not settle for lesser goods when the tradition gives us so much to choose from.
Seek out texts which honor objective standards of truth, beauty, and goodness.
Everything that is true is ours. Thus, one should readily recognize truth, even in those places where it is not so readily apparent. An example of this is reading the Epic of Gilgamesh. It is a pagan account which confirms the veracity of accounts in Genesis.
A core curriculum is superior to that which is just strung together in that all disciplines are connected, either in their images and forms, or in their telos. Math is good because the universe is made up of equations which in turn reveal the mind of God.
If Christ is the source of all wisdom, it only makes sense that all wisdom has a beginning and a fulfillment, an Alpha and an Omega.

3. Teach me O Lord, Thy Statutes—Teaching is an opportunity to participate with the Divine.

Teaching is not only a job, but also a sacred calling. The untaught person is like an unplanted garden and teachers are charged by planting seeds that can grow into nourishing food. Like a farmer, the teacher must cultivate, reap, and sow in order to keep the garden healthy. There is a sacramental aspect to that knowledge which allows one to become whole. One cannot just throw seeds on the ground and expect them to germinate. The right seeds must be planted in the properly prepared soil, and then diligently observed to keep weeds, disease, and predators at bay. Whenever one deals with the human being, he or she is always working within a sacred space.

Jobs have duties which must be managed and completed. They have checklists and deadlines that must be completed. A job’s telos is located in the here and now. But, teaching begins in the here and now and finds its summation in the eternal. While teaching has elements of a job, it is much, much more. A teacher’s life seeks the cultivation of the mind, heart, and will of the student. There is no checklist for human nature, wherein if you do x, y, and z and get result ab. Thus, much more is required from the teacher in order to fulfill his or her role with the child.

A teacher must be a student, who seeks wisdom with humility and patience.
A teacher must pray daily for his or her students.
A teacher must never sacrifice the good for the perfect. There is a danger in thinking that a child’s inability to understand or engage a particular piece of knowledge should be met with sternness and severity, when it should be approached with kindness and humility.
A teacher must live a life of faith. It is a huge responsibility that is handed to us and requires engagement of all of our faculties. One cannot feed ones children without being healthy himself.
We should recognize a core body knowledge that is necessary for our children to engage. All children should learn phonics, numeracy, and read good literature. There are many types of literature that transcend borders and cultures which are good to read and discuss.
Be careful of new fads and methods of teaching which can diminish the joy and wonder of teaching. Good teaching is good teaching. It is engaging, ennobling, joyful.
Focus on content that is appropriate to the understanding of the child. It is feckless to introduce topics which are too advanced for children too soon.
The teacher should first ask themselves what is it that first inspired them to become a teacher. Often times, it was the example of another teacher and their love for their calling that movitvated a student to say, “I want to do what Mrs. So-and-so does.”
Burnout is real and becomes more prevalent the further away one gets from the core fundamentals of teaching. Teachers must put up barriers to ensure they stay true to their calling.

2. Know that the Lord is God. It is He who made us, and we are His!

Reclaiming education should begin and end in the love of God and the pursuit of wisdom. It should not be about only acquiring vast amounts of information. In one’s classroom, knowledge is the goal, not information, and content should be structured as follows:

What are the particular facts, stories, solutions we are trying to get students to understand?
What is the relationship between one particular fact, story, solution, etc. and another?
What universal questions could be asked to move beyond the initial, or foundational content, to an understand greater objective truths?
What personal experiences can be referenced to bring more clarity to a given topic?
Once the more universal ideas are understood, what virtues might one infer in another similar situation.

Here is an example to help illustrate this. Helen Keller was born June 27, 1880 in Alabama. She lost her sight and hearing after an illness when she was only 19 months old. She communicated using hand signals until the age of 7 when Anne Sullivan took over her formal teaching, including reading and writing. She attended Radcliff College at Harvard where she became the first deaf-blind person to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Many teachers would end here. It has some pretty decent content which children can learn, answer questions about, and remember.

Particular facts and their relationship to the whole: How does Anne Sullivan’s position as teacher help Helen and how does she take Helen from only using hand signals to reading and writing as a blind person? What did this relationship look like. Was it stern, strict, and severe? Was it something else? How does Helen’s disability contribute to her struggles and successes.

Universal questions: Does Anne love and care about Helen? Do Helen Keller’s parents love her? Does correcting someone who is blameless (Helen’s blindness and deafness was not her fault), go against the nature of love? Is it true that true love and charity is loving someone enough to correct them when they are wrong and don’t want to be helped? Why teach someone who many not, or may never, understand something.

Personal experience: Students, why do teachers and parents correct us when we make mistakes? Does this mean they do not love us, or is this true love. Have you ever been told something you did or thought was wrong, but rather than try to correct it, made excuses why you should be left to your own ignorance.

Inference: If we ever became disabled, would we have the courage and fortitude to act like Helen and seek excellence in spite of our own weaknesses? If we had a child who needed rehabilitation, would we have the justice and prudence to hold them accountable so they could get better?

Compare this process to the way you may teach now. It takes a little longer to do a deep dive, but the results are more robust. One can arrive at universal truths by moving beyond mere facts and pieces of information.

Conclusion—Reclaiming a proper ethos in education.

What does Orthodoxy have to do with reclaiming a proper ethos in education. For Orthodox Christians, union with God is the raison d’etre of our existence. When we understand that education is more than just teaching a child, but is also about forming their mind, body and soul in a unified whole which is created to have union with God, education becomes more than just an assembly line of checking off skills and information. In order to achieve this union, we must cultivate it in ourselves so that we can give it to those who are under our charge. We are not fully formed human beings, because we are not fully as Christ wishes us to be. Our goal in life is to achieve Theosis with God and as such we must strive in all we do to gain union with Him. The call today is to reclaim the proper ethos of education in a faded post-Christian, post-Modern world, to bring together both a humane and divine approach to educating our children. We can all,

Seek knowledge rather than information. This honors the mind, heart, and body of the human being.
Embrace the sacred nature of our calling to be teachers. We are not clinicians, know-it-all pagans, or agnostic facilitators. We are teachers who have charge over that most amazing and delicate of God’s creation, children.
Bring timeless, beautiful literature to our children and create a world in which Beauty triumphs over the ugly.
Honor and form the three-fold nature of the child in front of us by understanding that all three elements need attention, love, and correction.
Seek out the virtues and live a life that is worthy of emulation. We must live a godly Christian life, one which places Christ at the center of history.
Put Christ firmly back at the center of education, and seek a real, substantive, and robust relationship with Him, both in and out of the classroom.

In the end, when we are weary from these labors of love on earth we can stand before the Master together with our students, praising Him together in harmony. God willing, we shall then hear those most coveted and blessed words, “well done, good and faithful servants.” Thank you.