I offered this prayer in 2011 when I was still doing targeted instruction. One could say that it was answered in 2016, when I made the switch to non-targeted instruction, because I was able to relax a lot more when that happened:
Dear God:
Please help me to go to my job with compassion for my students in my heart and remind me about compassion this week. Remind me that my students, as kids just trying to figure out how they fit into this world, will undoubtedly have very good reasons to not be particularly focused on my subject this week, as they try to think their way through this.
Oh God, my Friend, show me, while I am teaching them, how to open my heart to that strange indifference that many of them often display in class. It so frustrates me because, as you have known about me for some time, I am a high achiever and I think that everyone should learn French really fast, like I did.
Let me instead be ever more aware in my classroom of what my kids really need (something more than expertise in the French language) – namely to feel good about themselves, and that they have value and importance in this world. Help them feel happy today, oh Lord, by your grace.
Dear God, my best Friend, please help me to simply get out of the way on this teaching thing – this big jag I am now on about how teaching languages can really actually work. Thank you for TPRS, and thank you for letting me learn about it, but maybe also let me lay all that technique stuff aside as, instead, I work on this one skill of being kind to my students.
Let my students feel your mercy and kindness when I try to teach them, oh God, so that they feel capable and confident in each moment of my instruction, even if they look bored as hell. Help me remember that they are not bored, that they are just trying to figure it all out.
Help me remember that their lack of participation is not an indictment of me as a teacher, but, rather, is just their group response to the world right now. Help me stop making it all about me, dear God.
Help me also this week to go slower and to be more clear than I ever have in the classroom. Teach me patience in my instruction, oh God. Let the hard veneer that I had to put up earlier this year, to make sure that the discipline was there, soften. Help me smile more and applaud each success that they have as they learn to soften up themselves (learn to trust me) a bit. Help us remember that it is when the instruction is natural and easy and happy that languages are best acquired.
As you well know, being a firm disciplinarian and being kind and soft and natural are not exactly things that are easy to do at the same time. I know that in your time you will show me how to best reach them in that invisible way you have, so please help me be kind to my students in each moment of this week. I’m depending on you, dear Lord.
That’s all I ask from you for this week, oh God – just the ability to be kinder than I normally am to these kids and, in those weird moments of teaching, such strange moments that only language teachers can know, please somehow convey to the kids your kindness. I can’t even begin to think about doing it without your help.
Just a minute fraction of your unlimted kindness can go such a long way to make a lesson better! Make me an instrument of your peace, not just for them, but for me as well. I ask these things in your holy name. Oh Lord, hear my prayer.