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For more commentary on this week's readings, see the Reflections on the Lectionary page. For full-text access to all articles, subscribe to the Century.
What characteristics make for a good teacher? While the answer varies somewhat based on the subject matter and the age of the students, there are some qualities that empower someone to teach others effectively in whatever setting:
- Good communication skills. A good teacher needs to be able to express the knowledge or skills in question in a manner that helps the learners to connect with them. Their words and demonstrations should be clear, understandable, and relatable.
- Emotional intelligence. Teaching is an interactive task, not a solitary one. A good teacher needs to be able to read the room and adjust their approach if the lesson is not connecting, and they need the skills to assess barriers that are interfering with learning for any given student and to work with them on removing those barriers.
- Ability to generate interest. People learn best when they are interested in what they are learning. An effective teacher will not only express their own passion for the topic but also incorporate a variety of teaching approaches in order to accommodate different learning styles.
- Subject matter knowledge. Of course, you can only teach a subject that you actually know yourself.
This last skill area seems to be what Jesus is questioning in this gospel passage when he asks Nicodemus, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?” It is a rhetorical question, but it’s a harsh one. Nicodemus has come to Jesus with questions, and then Jesus apparently rebukes him for not already understanding the answers. Looking at the list above, it would seem that Jesus is the one coming up short on the qualities of a good teacher.
But is it possible that Jesus is actually trying to push Nicodemus toward a final characteristic that makes for a good teacher? In my experience, the best teachers are those who are committed to never stop learning. They never assume that their understanding is infallible, and they are eager to engage with questions that make them re-evaluate, because such questions are a chance to learn more or to dig deeper into the topic that they love.
In Jesus’ follow-up to his challenge, he reveals that it is Nicodemus’s unwillingness to learn that Jesus is truly pushing back on: “We speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen, yet you do not receive our testimony.” If Nicodemus wants to be a “teacher of Israel,” he needs to let go of his need to have all the answers—and he must be willing to learn. Good teachers are not gatekeepers of their subject; they are learners a bit farther down the road.
This is an important challenge for readers of the gospel, because in many ways we are in Nicodemus’s position. We have come to the story with a presumed desire to learn from Jesus, but we also bear the responsibility to tell the story, as commanded by the Great Commission. This responsibility can push us into the false assumption that we need to be gatekeepers of Jesus’ story and to defend it against any questions (including our own). But questions are often where the best learning happens. When we do not understand what Jesus is saying or doing, that is a chance to get curious and lean into learning.
