Fr. Paul

Doing is his love language

He carries and has carried many titles. As for many of my friends and me, he's simply Fr. Paul to us. I spent an hour with him in this historic office suite in Bkerke. He wanted to dedicate our time to the issue closest to his heart — education.

"Tea?" he asked. "Sure."

He took a few steps to the kitchenette that linked his office to his bedroom and turned on the hot water kettle. Carefully, he reached for two mugs, made sure I liked the one he picked for me, and gave me a choice from the assortment of teabags. He handles people and things with care and respect.

His room is modest, rich with books, paintings, positivity, and the lightness of the Virgin Mary's presence. Many a decision are and have been made there. Lives have been enriched. Issues were discretely resolved.

Fr. Paul’s love language is by doing.

Strive for inner peace

Educators have a huge role to play in shaping the future. While you may be able to teach, you may need to be better equipped to educate. Knowing what you know and what you don't know is essential. Understanding personalities and what impacts them makes you an influencer of minds and hearts. It makes you an educator.

A good teacher is, first of all, a good human being with a loving heart who knows things and methods and can communicate them. Secondly, you don't forget a good teacher. You may forget what they taught you. But you always remember how they touched your life.

"They become part of you as you carry a part of them with you all your life."

The best are the ones who are reconciled with themselves. They know what they want from life, constantly self-develop, and always seek inner peace. As they continuously do so, they inspire learning minds. They touch souls who, in turn, build the future. So, teaching is a fantastic vocation and an honorable mission of clearing the way for learners to self-express and actualize.

On education systems

Some systems are designed to earn the highest scores on criteria that they have chosen or have been imposed on them by others. For example, some strive for the highest grades at any cost, including systematically eliminating non-achieving or creative and non-conforming students. As a result, some students are made casualties or 'failures' of the system. Such an experience will affect them until they discover that a system that caters to the masses can not serve everybody, including some of the best.

"If you only keep the so-called cream of the crop, then it's not the system who did it. It's the cream."

Despite a system's shortcomings, an educator works with all kinds of students to help them become self-fulfilled humans, as people are gifted in different ways. An educator's job is to work the system to help learners discover their strong traits and develop the weaker ones. To do that, you allow learners to be themselves. Love them. Give them a sense of security. Protect and don't judge. Allow them to contradict and disagree with you; in doing so, they will be bound to discover themselves.

What is a failing student anyway? In a school, academic success is never the student's sole responsibility. It's sometimes defined as the inability to reach an objective by the student and the system. Failure could be a misjudgment where the system becomes more important than the individual. Even geniuses can slip through the system without anyone noticing.

It takes one

Photo by Ron Dauphin on Unsplash

How would someone who always wanted to sail boats fit into a classical education system? As a little boy, most adults would put him with the rest of the kids who want to become firefighters, soldiers, construction workers, or the nation's president. "It'll pass," they'd tell themselves. As for him, it's in his innermost fabric. He was born to sail. It's his way of becoming the whole human being that he should be. For him, becoming a sailor is the most impactful way to self-fulfill and to positively influence everyone he touches.

And yet, as he's growing up, has anyone helped him link history and geography classes to sailing the world? Did his science teacher associate geometry, angles, speed, velocity, and the weather with sailing?

It takes a champion to see the dream in any person's life. When challenged and feeling rejected, only a true champion reminds him that his dream is real. He'd make sure that he recognizes the small victories on his journey. He'd nurture the boy's little steps as a gardener tends to a small Cedar tree shrub that would one day tower over all other trees.

It takes one person to make the whole difference. Someone hopeful, encouraging, and reassuring.

“Encouragement goes a very long way in everyone’s life.”

Same for educators

They also need a champion, for their challenge is enormous. As they deal with kids entrusted to them by their parents, they still have their own personal challenges to handle. This is especially true when they constantly worry about making ends meet and earning enough to sustain their own families. Societies, in general, do not give education systems their rightful respect and commensurate treatment. Consequently, educators are often made to pay a heavy price for that.

Educators need as much intellectual freedom as anyone else. A non-conformist and creative teacher should have enough room to maneuver within the system.

And parents

Education is a global effort. The education system is designed to support the parent in rearing their child. The system complements what a student experiences at home, in the classroom, and in society.

To schools, parents are a great asset if one engages them. If you allow them to work with you, you're transparent with them. What they invest in is much more important than what schools invest in. After all, they are investing in what is most precious to them — their children. So, allowing them the freedom to bring in their input can be of enormous value to the administration, the teachers, and, ultimately, the students. A natural all-around winning situation is created with enough engagement from willing and capable parents toward the education enterprise.

Rooted with God and soft on you

Fr. Paul adopts four fundamental dimensions to a balanced life: a sane and deep relationship with God, oneself, others, and the environment. The environment is a critical dimension to the extent that it impacts everybody. It's God's creation. If you don't look after it, it will eventually backfire.

God, unfortunately, doesn't always have the right place in many societies. As a result, people spend lifetimes looking for meaning without finding it because they are looking in the wrong direction.

“God is right there. Some don’t even know what they’re missing.”

He is a man of the cloth and never pushes anything, anyone, or any doctrine on you. Instead, with all humility, he just does. He invites people in and is just himself with them—a master leader by doing.

His life’s blessings

He considers that he's been blessed to have the opportunity to do the things he wanted to do in life. He's been interested in people and has worked with and for people all his life. He's helped many find their way through guidance and counseling. He trusted people to do the right thing. They trust him.

He remembers and is grateful to the people who trusted him growing up. They'd given him important tasks. Maybe greater than his abilities or his maturity at the time. Growing up, he was challenged to live up to high expectations.

He feels warmest when former students remind him of the little things he did for them, which he has forgotten about. For example, "Remember the time when I missed the school bus and you drove me home?"

“It’s good to know that you did not waste your time kind of thing.”

The trail Maker

His life is an ongoing labor of love. Nurturing it by the day.

The only constant is change. Education is the most impactful change agent. Falling is part of life, and so is success. Keep learning as you grow. Keep growing as you learn. Invest in yourself as you do in others. Ultimately, be honest with yourself, be open to change, listen, do your best, accept what comes out, and keep going. Educate for tomorrow and allow people the freedom to be themselves as they grow. Change is an integral part of life. In fact, to live is to change, and stagnation is another form of death.

Have you walked with him? This steadfast hiker knows his trails. Forget GPS. Just follow him. His side mission in life is to clean up the mountain surrounding Bkerke, reviving its trails and waterway. He never ceases to amaze me. He knows every detail of that mountain. Way better than I know my computer folders!