If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills and go in search of the stray?

This teaching of Jesus of abandoning 99 good sheep in search of the 1 who strayed away seems like such a radical teaching. In the business world, employers will not hesitate to just fire the errand employee.

After I started teaching in school, it was difficult to reach out to each and every student yet each and everyone of them are equally important. It was easy to just focus on the good ones and forget about those who are not interested. That’s when I realised that it might not be possible to do this in a classroom setting. In fact it seems like a bad thing to do because the rest of the class will be affected. I’ve been trying to reconcile this with the teaching of Jesus.

After some observations, I’ve come up with a conclusion. There are two ways to go about it. One is that the teacher just leaves them to their own devices and hope that they buck up. Two is that the teacher will have to put in extra effort and this translates to having to stay back after school hours to tend to the weaker students.

I see most of the teachers actually taking the second approach, which seems to reconcile the need to take care of the stray without affecting the rest of the class.

If after reading this post and you have any recommendations to make, please leave a comment below. Thanks!

Prayer for the day: Lord, help me to remember that each and every student is important.