For 25 years, I have taught English to Italian students at the University of Florence. For 18 months, since March of 2020, we have taught remotely rather than in person. I did not embrace this change gladly.
Last fall, I attended a virtual A Common Call conference hosted by Faculty Commons. Dr. Heather Holleman talked about praying blessings over her students’ desks in her classroom before the semester begins. But how could I do that when their faces were barely a couple of inches wide and high on my screen?
After the conference was over, I joined a small group of other Christian professors who met virtually bi-weekly to discuss Dr. Holleman’s book Sent: Living a Life that Invites Others to Jesus. This group was a godsend to me. We shared common frustrations and fears, and encouraged one another to make progress in our walks with God. We developed our “signature stories”—of the ways God has worked in each of our lives—so that we could share them with others.
I learned to care for my students in a different way. I noticed that being behind a screen meant we were perhaps less guarded, and the breakout rooms surprisingly allowed for more one-to-one connection.
My style of teaching became much more focused on actually listening and sympathizing. I started my three-hour teaching sessions with a “welcome time,” simply asking my students how they were, taking notes in case I needed to follow-up the next time.
Through these online classes, God gave me an incredible gift. January is a time when I feel particularly nostalgic as it marks the loss of my mother when I was only six-years-old. In January 2021, one of my older students, Emanuela, recognized my name. Emanuela told me that she knew me when I was six years old, the summer before my mother died, as we were next-door neighbors in a town south of Rome.
As soon as COVID restrictions eased in Italy, I traveled to that town to visit Emanuela’s mother Giuliana, now 89 years old, and told her my “signature story” of how God has worked in my life since she knew me as a child.
But the best was yet to come.
Emanuela remembered that my family had some friends staying with us all that summer of 1974, a woman named Christine with her husband and children. This information led me to search for and reconnect with Christine, who is now 83 years old.
On my birthday this summer, I received a package from Christine. She sent me seven years’ worth of letters my mother had written to her, from the time when she was pregnant with me until just before she died. What joy it was for me, as I read them, to hear my mother’s voice from the lines and to see her handwriting!
In the past, I had inevitably felt that life had been unfair because of losing my mother when I could barely look after myself. Through the gift of these letters, God’s kindness has turned some of the loneliness into great JOY, giving me the means to use it as testimony of his great care for each one of us.
My tiny effort to bless my students resulted in God blessing me extravagantly, in ways that went way beyond my wildest dreams.
Nathalie Adams
University of Florence