There's a saying in the innovative education space: the one doing the most talking is the one doing the most learning.
It’s meant to challenge the conventional sit-and-get models many of us grew up with. Very simply, it asks teachers to provoke, to prompt, and then be quiet. Be quiet long enough for the learning to unfold.
A principal said it to me the first time I heard it, and it changed how I taught, how I listened, and how I approached my work for the rest of my life. When I taught middle school, I'd set a timer for 12 minutes after I started instruction. Why 12? Well I’d read somewhere that human attention declines sharply at 12-15 minutes. So when the timer went off, we moved to small group discussion and practice, whether I'd finished my lesson or not.
This simple system made my students confident ambassadors of their own learning…because they actually had the space to learn. Eventually, I started to see pushing past 12 minutes as not only ineffective but downright selfish; a service to my own sense of accomplishment rather than to the young people in front of me who were seconds from checking out.
Since launching this devotional, though, I've been grappling with the possibility of another side to that lesson. How much learning has happened since I started talking.
And boy, have I been talking. In therapy, to you, to colleagues, to friends. And I've been learning a hell of a lot.
Sometimes I don't know what I believe until I hear myself say it. Sometimes a story I've told six times sounds different when I finally stop rushing past the part that hurt the most. That's uncomfortable to admit. But now that I've said it, I have something to work with.
Proverbs 18:21 tells us death and life are in the power of the tongue. We often reach for that verse when we're talking about speaking something into existence or claiming something (even if we haven’t done anything to get it). It’s often used like the biblical magic 8-ball. But there's something practical here we sometimes miss.
The spoken word moves things. Words initiate action and influence what happens next. And, as the second part of the scripture points out, eventually, we live inside what our speech produces. The words we repeatedly say about ourselves start organizing our lives too.
Our words don't have to possess magical power to have real consequences. They shape what we do, what we avoid, what we allow. Over time, those choices become the conditions we live in.
That makes me think differently about what I'm doing here.
Each week, I keep talking. I keep sharing. I keep exposing parts of myself, my past, my testimony, with one hope: that you never mistake a painful chapter for the end. That you never accept someone else’s limited view of you as the truth of you.
That your takeaway is never that I'm that special, but that God is that good.
But words also put you on the hook. If I tell you it isn't too late, I have to examine where I've already given up. If I say God is still working, I have to make room for Him to challenge the conclusions I've grown comfortable with.
In my classroom, the timer reminded me to stop talking and make room for discovery. Here, I'm learning that discovery sometimes begins when I finally say the thing out loud. Once it's spoken, I can bring it to God honestly. I can ask for help. I can share with vulnerability.
The spoken word moves things.
I wonder…
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In what space or place, physical or emotional, did you learn the most? How old were you? Why was there so much growth there?
What have you learned recently, not by listening, but by finally saying it out loud?
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What has God provoked in you and then gone quiet on, leaving you to find the rest yourself?
I love you.
Coi Marie
Affirmation
I say the true thing before I've fully healed from it, and I trust that saying it is how the growth starts.
If you know someone who may appreciate this perspective, please share this link with them. See you on Sunday.
