You Play Like You Practice
Mr. Hettick lovingly shepherds the TRA boys on and off the field.
In the past seven years of teaching at The River, I have enjoyed many heart-to-heart talks with our junior & senior young men. As you might guess, these conversations are often created by moments of personal crisis, and therefore end up cutting deeper than curriculum questions to broader life and character struggles…and aims. These are the conversations that start with something like “Mr. Hettick, why do I have a failing grade in class?” (Did you finish the assignment? “Yes.” On time? “Almost.” Did you turn it in? “I think soooooo…Wait! Shoot!”) But before long our talk turns to: “Mr. Hettick, I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to do with my life.”
I’ve learned to try to take these opportunities to shift from a task focus to a training focus. What am I going to do with my life? (i.e. Get a business degree? Become a firefighter?) I tell them: great question! But it’s not the main question, not the best question. The better question is: What sort of man am I going to be in this world? We can cut even closer than that. What sort of man am I - right now - practicing to be in this world? You see, the first question aims at vocation, the second at virtue.
“What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but forfeit his soul?”
TRA is blessed to have men willing to be real with their students and speak lovingly into their lives.
As Mrs. Hysom wrote about earlier this month, education should ultimately be a project of virtue cultivation more than knowledge or skill accumulation.
But here is where your average 14-year old boy checks in with his two default difficulties:
1.) Trouble seeing the relevance of the ‘school things’ being asked of him to the ‘real’ manhood things he wants to pursue.
2.) Thinking the virtue cultivation of Becoming A Man is a crossroads for his future self someday, rather than a crucible for his current self today.
It was in this spirit that the other male teachers and I called a mandatory meeting on manhood and manners last November. We talked about how everything we do here in this building can and should work toward our overall training as men - from the way we come into Psalm sing in the morning to the way we exit the building in the afternoon. We remembered together that each piece of our school day is a tiny component part of our overall training to be good men in this world. (And that it’s awfully difficult to be a good man in this world!) We remembered that this is practice, the rest of our lives - Gametime. And you play like you practice, right?
“If I can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge…but have not love, I am nothing.”
Good role models point to Jesus in all things.
I told our boys that this wasn’t a rebuke, but a reset, a refresh and a recruitment to try to walk these halls now like the sort of men we want to be later. After all, we can’t just expect tectonic transformations in punctuality and diligence and hygiene and organization and reliability and integrity and self-control and courage and compassion to just magically ‘happen’ - like flicking a switch - one day in the future when it’s time to get our act together. Doesn’t work that way. No, we are right now today cultivating the sort of virtues that will define our manhood tomorrow.
Of course, we are not meant (or able!) to walk this training path alone. So we finished our man meeting together praying for the grace and strength and presence of Christ as he patiently molds and makes us into men.
-Nathan Hettick, TRA Chaplain
TRA’s male faculty model leadership and service to the younger minds and hearts of their students.