Why do you call me "Sensei! Sensei!" but do not do what I say?

That's what I'd like to ask some of my students, especially the 2nd graders.

Something I've learned from teaching is the importance of obedience. Of course, a teacher doesn't deserve the kind of complete obedience that one owes to God, but with a few exceptions, teachers do deserve some. I am amazed at the number of ways students find to evade doing what they're told. My students have the obvious advantage of communication troubles. If I speak to them in English, it's all too easy for them to shrug it off with a "wakaranai" (I don't understand). So I generally speak Japanese when I need to "offer instruction." Even so, if I don't know the proper word, if I stutter, if I mispronounce or mis-conjugate something, I have decent odds of being either laughed off or put off with a several-minutes-long huddled discussion with all available peers--ostensibly to interpret my meaning, though I have a sneaking suspicion they're often just trying to figure out a way to get rid of me. Sometimes I'll ask students something (like who is supposed to clean a particular part of the school), and they'll pretend not to know the answer--when I know perfectly well they DO know. I've even had students run away from me while trying to tell them something. Albeit I'm faster than the lot of them, but I just don't generally have time to go chasing the little punks across the school. ("Generally," I say: I've done it before.)

So these and other techniques--some devilishly clever--are the means by which students try to get out of doing what I tell them. I usually win in the end, but quite often they delay things at least a minute or two. And more than time is lost: At the end of a long day of disciplining students, I feel it. I'm worn. And I see less of it than most teachers, because my responsibilities are less. (They obviously have to use different tactics on Japanese teachers, but often the principles carry over, I've noticed.) These little tactics, little ploys that put off obedience, stack up over the course of a day. They make for tired teachers.

So I think I understand a little better how God must've felt when leading the Israelites out of Eqypt. "I'm trying to help you!" I often want to tell my kids. "You're gonna have to do it in the end, so why not just do it now?" But kids are kids, and discipline is as inevitable and necessary as puberty. So it seems to me.

Conclusions? I'm going to try to be less of a finally-made-to-do-it-after-a-lot-of-arguing-and-dissembling Christian, and more of a whatever-you-say-Lord kind of Christian. And the next time I reread Exodus, I hope I'll have a new appreciation for the God's patience, His longsuffering.

Finally, I love my kids, and only a select bunch of them employ the devious tactics I've harped on today. And I'm neither a perfect nor an always-reasonable disciplarian, and sometimes my Japanese is unintelligible.