Compelled by the pandemic to switch to online teaching, many educators and students scrambled to survive. Sensing that students were stressed and anxious (I knew some struggled with mental health issues), I committed to showing grace to them.
Of course, it’s always nice when they appreciate it.
Unfortunately, a student demeaned my grace. In the last week of the Fall 2020 semester, this student popped into my zoom class and demanded I read her email and respond immediately. Essentially, her demand was I would pass her.
Mind you, I hadn’t seen her in six weeks. Not only had she missed classes, assignments, and multiple opportunities to rectify the situation, she failed her peers’ evaluations on their group projects.
What transpired next stunned me. After I submitted final grades, my Department Chair emailed me to inquire about the email she had received (from this student) accusing me of racism. The student had copied every high-level administrator, including the university president. I was shocked and petrified that I would lose my job.
I didn’t know how to walk through the pain. It grieved me as I knew this student from a previous class; we had a relationship and rapport. When she confided that she was re-taking the class (as she had failed it the first time under a different instructor), I welcomed her.
After the initial shock, I sank into despair. What was I to do?
Christmas arrived, and my favorite present was a prayer journal with scriptures on each page. When I opened that journal, the Lord nudged me to write this student’s name in it. I flat-out refused. I didn’t want to desecrate this beautiful treasure with her name in it as my first journal entry.
I fought this for ten days, and I continued to spiral. Each day that I looked at the journal, I had nothing to write because I was avoiding what the Lord kept encouraging me to enter – the student’s name.
One day in spring 2021, I yielded (maybe because my deepening sorrow affected my sleep and my health) and wrote her name in my prayer journal. Learning to lean on the Lord was likely what softened me. Psalms 142:2-3 assured me, “I pour out before him my complaint; before him I tell my trouble. When my spirit grows faint within me, it is you who watch over my way.”
The instant I wrote her name – in full – in my journal, God revived my body, mind, and spirit. I continued to write her name in my journal daily, getting more specific with my prayers for her as I entrusted the situation to the Lord.
This situation eventually resolved (nothing more came from it). What I learned is that by refusing to pray for this student, I was in some ways being just like the student – demanding that God bless me while I was in rebellion.
God wanted to soften MY heart before I could pray that he would soften the student’s. He had shown me grace.
Of course, it’s always nice when I appreciate it.
Katie Fletcher
University of Florida