The Trajectory

There is a question every teacher eventually faces, whether they name it or not: what is this actually for?

Students often ask "will I ever need this?" and we respond by pointing to the now — connecting content to their current lives, making it feel timely and immediate. Sometimes we know why it matters today. The harder question is why it matters for the next twenty years. Current relevance is an important point. A starting point. The problem is when it becomes the only point.

Teaching is more than the relevance of a subject at the moment. It is about the trajectory of where the content takes students and what it is meant to develop in them. A lesson can be relevant and still be small. A unit can be engaging and still leave students no more capable of thinking, analyzing, questioning, or persevering than when they arrived.

Trajectory asks a harder question: twenty years from now, what will this have done in them?

I believe stories change people. I also believe teachers change the conditions under which stories and lessons can land. That conviction shapes every lesson I design, every text I select, every question I ask. When I plan instruction, I think not only about what students need to know, but why it should matter to them and how to build the kind of engagement that leads to real retention and growth.

This requires understanding more than content. It requires understanding people: how the brain develops, how students regulate emotionally and physically, when to push and when to pull back. Strong classroom systems are not about control. They are about creating the conditions for genuine growth, releasing responsibility to students rather than accumulating it with the teacher. The goal is always a student who is more capable, more curious, and more confident at the end of the year than at the beginning.

None of this happens quickly. Teaching toward trajectory means accepting that the most important growth is often not visible yet. We plant things in students that will not flower for years. We set trajectories we will never personally observe reaching their destination.

Scripture frames this honestly: we plant, we water, and God gives the growth. Freedom exists in that understanding. The teacher's job is faithfulness to the work, not control of the outcome. Plant well. Water consistently. Trust the growth to the One who tends what He values.

This is the conviction beneath the curriculum, the classroom, the book, and the blog. Teaching is a long game, and the long game is worth playing well.