Today the small private school in Virginia where I work turned itself upside down and we teachers began instructing students online. This happened in less than the space of a week, as the United States and the world met the invisible coronavirus. One day last week I taught my students in a regular classroom, with tables, chairs, and a Smartboard. Today is the first in my career of thirty-eight years that I’m teaching all my eighty-seven students online. I have five preparations, though our school only expects me to “meet” them twice a week, which will help we teachers build into this new era.

I’ve taught an online class for almost ten years, and I’ve learned that to teach online, and to do it well, actually takes more time than teaching in a conventional manner. I’m prepared, however. A few years ago, I earned a Masters in Library and Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh. The program was entirely online. With that experience and the tools I’ve collected to teach a high school class online, I feel prepared.

This morning I uploaded my first three teaching videos to our school YouTube Channel. I’ve had many views of those videos, as I think parents, tutors, and administrators are looking at my work, as they should. I’ve answered many emails from students today, getting them up and running. Everything has changed for my students. I think some will thrive in the new learning environment, while others will not. I’m organized and like working in my home study, while others work best being around people, and may get frustrated working in cyberspace.

Everything has changed in education in my community and the United States. It’s time to see where this goes, how it changes education, and whether I can effectively teach in this new modality. I am optimistic that it can happen, and I eagerly look forward to the new challenges that lie ahead. My classroom has long been my center for instruction, meeting students, music, and prayer. Now, my study, with computers, software, and a learning management system, is my new classroom. When I graduated from college I did not have a personal computer, cell phone, or email address. In the space of four decades, the changes have been mostly for the good, though we shall see where this new era takes us in education.

Once in a while, my students get it. I had a moment of joy when my 9th grade Bible class made a justice connection between two events–it’s part of what keeps me teaching.

On a Friday afternoon (October 25, 2019), I took my 14-year-old students downtown Harrisonburg to visit a newly established coffee shop, which is raising money to help people reenter society successfully after being released from prison. The pastors in charge of the coffee shop stood on the sidewalk, with the Court House and jail visible, and explained their vision of restorative justice. They were raising money to help people who come out of incarceration to get a second chance, to help them more successfully integrate back into society. It was one of those moments that made all the logistics work of setting up a field trip worth the time and effort. My students learned about restorative justice on the street, with United Methodist pastors putting shoe leather to their theological beliefs.

In the very next class period, on Monday, Caleb Schrock-Hurst, twenty-three, and recently returned from MCC service in Vietnam, challenged my students to consider serving others. Caleb came onto our campus for two days, under a lecture series we have at the school. He returns to serve with MCC in Vietnam in early November. Caleb is doing academic editing work in Hanoi, helping MCC recognize 65 years of working in the Southeast Asian country.

One bright ninth-grade student asked Caleb if he had heard the voice of God, directing him to serve in Vietnam. No, Caleb replied, he had received counsel to sign up with MCC, he had grown up serving with his family in a Philippines MCC assignment, and his sister and her family served the poor in Indonesia. For Caleb, he explained, service was a way of life. There had been no audible voice of God that he heard.

At our school, we have a culture of restorative justice. It’s woven into the educational methods of how we work with students on both the micro and macro levels. Last year, I helped with a large circle process to work through difficulties in one of the classes.

So at the end of the class period, after Caleb answered a host of questions about Vietnam, I showed the class a photo of us standing on the street corner the previous Friday, talking about restorative justice. “What’s the connection,” I asked, “between selling coffee and tea to help folks getting out of jail, and what Caleb is doing in Vietnam?” Immediately they piped up and made the analysis. “Caleb is working at restorative justice issues in Vietnam, like the pastors in Harrisonburg are with their coffee shop,” one student articulated.

It’s those moments that make all the prep work, all the planning, all the everyday work of teaching worth it. My students made the connection between a justice ministry in Harrisonburg to Hanoi, Vietnam, where an MCCer is going for another year of service. I hope my students never forget this lesson, and I pray that one or more of those students will one day join MCC and serve in an international setting.