The Practitioner

Earlier this summer I was at a conference to review and dig into the Literacy Essentials - a statewide response to improve reading proficiency in the State of Michigan. I attended wonderful break out sessions and had the opportunity to collaborate with knowledgeable and gifted literacy coaches, teachers, and other administrators. Many ideas were discussed, but it is one word now months later that continues to resonate in me.

Practitioner.

This word was used throughout the seminar by all of the speakers and hosts. The word silently replaced “teacher” and “educator” like an unspoken protest to a profession that deserves the respect and dignity of others.

Practitioner.

A simple google search brings up the following definition:

“…a person actively engaged in an art, discipline, or profession, especially medicine.”

Many in the field of education have fought hard for the cultural shift of the art of teaching to receive the same prestige as engineering and medicine. We certainly have similar student loans to attest to years of preparatory education and internships.

Those who have never spent a day in a school or have a loved one in the field, might think of teaching as glorified babysitting with summers off - such a painful insult to so many who embody the word “practitioner.” The teachers I know are knowledgeable and educated professionals carefully and diagnostically managing 25 - 30 cases at once, instead of the reserved luxury of one on one attention that other occupations might have in meeting professional targets.

I do believe parenting, especially stay at homes moms (a beautiful and honorable vocation) and those who home school, must too embrace the depth of this calling, to see themselves as engaged practitioners in forming young people - body, mind, and spirit.

With that said, I am in awe of elementary teachers who somehow manage to choreograph folders, lunch boxes, notes from parents, who is eating what and going home with whom - all while artfully assessing, diagnosing, and planning instruction for four to five reading groups, the same for math, and compassionately addressing physical and emotional needs of their children.

We are practitioners.

Sure - there is a general script and diagnostic procedure, like a doctor might have for 90% of the children she sees who come in with a scratchy throat and fever. But what happens when the typical antidote isn’t working? Or, new symptoms unexpectedly arise? The doctor does not continue with the same prescription, but digs deeper, runs more tests,  and looks for patterns and relationships that lead to answers.

Is that not what a teacher does each day - simultaneously managing 25 or more “patients” at once? They adapt instruction to reach that child who is not making gains or needs to be challenged, or to identify much more significant primordial needs that need to be addressed before benchmarks can be reached - security, food, and safety.

Teachers are not just practitioners, they are saints.

They have a blessed advantage with a myriad of opportunities daily to grow in virtue and be filled with the fruits of the Spirit (patience, courage, perseverance…). But don’t we all?

The word practitioner got me thinking about how I approach my life as a disciple and my own journey to sainthood. Am I, “actively engaged in the art, discipline, or profession,” of sainthood.

In some ways…Yes. I go into each day with that 90% umbrella of holiness. I read the daily readings, reflect on the life of a saint, and I never walk through the doors of my school without saying the Litany of Humility and the Surrender Novena. I set goals to accomplish both at work and at home. I actively plan opportunities for balance in my day, being sure to respond first to my vocation as wife and mother in doing God’s will.

Yet…what happens when we approach unexpected or overwhelming obstacles? How does my holiness hold up? Do I truly surrender? Do I allow the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love (charity) reign in their unlimited grace? 

Do I take time to be  a practitioner of the cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance) and those that extend from them? Do I turn to God at the end of the day and evaluate my choices with the virtues at the center of my reflection?

My goal this week is to approach sainthood the same way that I do my blessed profession - as a practitioner engaged in the art and discipline of become a saint.