Yesterday, we focused on new superintendent Joey Bartz’s plan to reduce screen time in Vernon Parish classrooms, arguing that fewer electronic go-betweens would give teachers and students a better chance to interact directly with each other. Reducing the spectacle of the screen, then, immediately places greater emphasis on the soundness of the teacher and his or her ability to not just manage a classroom, but make it thrive.

Bartz’s second major initiative addresses that need.

In the new vision, every Vernon Parish teacher in the first three years of his career will be assigned a mentor with experience and, presumably, real success in making their own classrooms thrive.

“If you are a new teacher in your first three years, either year one, year two, or year three, you will be assigned a mentor,” Bartz explained.

The two initiatives are a married couple. As screens diminish once more to a more balanced place, seasoned human wisdom can return to its rightful place. The teacher can give the students greater personal attention, while the mentor will give the young teacher direction invaluable to success and longevity, not to mention their sleep at night.

The emphasis also makes sense within Bartz’s own biography. He previously served as the Vernon Parish School Board’s director of personnel after leading South Beauregard and Rosepine high schools as principal. Moreover, his years as an Army combat veteran and coach placed him in other environments where defined responsibility, right order, and life-chiseling experience instilled obvious virtue. I don’t know, of course, how consciously those experiences shaped this particular initiative from Bartz, but a lifetime spent navigating such varied structures certainly makes his vision unsurprising.

As though I needed the bio to know, given my personal experience with the man.

The Tradition of Teaching

By coupling new teachers with classroom veterans, Bartz is professing that good teaching cannot be acquired entirely through certification programs or even a university degree program. Many of the tricky nuances of the profession are learned through observation and correction, preserving the institutional culture that otherwise disappears whenever an experienced teacher retires, particularly one who has been at one school for a long time and has sort of “become” that school.

Mentorship is an adjacent expression of tradition: Someone receives knowledge under another person’s care and eventually assumes responsibility for handing it to the next—guarded and preserved. A district that cultivates that continuity is investing in more than employee retention—it is preserving the habits through which a school develops and maintains its character and culture.

That isn’t to say new ideas and fresh blood from the outside are bad things, but the soul of a school is, well, the soul of the school.

We can see that Bartz is moving inside the spirit of Scripture, particularly here where Saint Paul charges Timothy: “The things which thou hast heard of me by many witnesses, the same commend to faithful men, who shall be fit to teach others also” (2 Tim 2:2).

The importance of generational integrity—and tradition—is spotlighted here. Saint Paul teaches Timothy, Timothy will entrust that teaching to listeners of faith, and those faithful in turn will prepare to teach others whom they haven’t even met yet.

The passage concerns the preservation of apostolic doctrine, and clearly a public-school mentoring program should never be inflated to such a degree. Still, the comparison is useful. It is the human pattern that matters, especially when that human pattern is rightly ordered, because whether such spiritual intention is there or not, those involved are doing things the right way and therefore leaving room for God’s grace.

Ecclesiasticus bolsters the same pattern with a more practical voice: “Despise not the discourse of them that are ancient and wise, but acquaint thyself with their proverbs” (Eccl 8:9).

Such elders provide wisdom because they learned from their fathers before them. The elder has something worth absorbing because he received it before the younger soul perhaps even knew he existed. The accumulation of years alone doesn’t make his every opinion correct, no, but what it has done is expose him to consequences the novice has encountered only in theory, and in many, many instances, not at all.

An organization with the right vision doesn’t waste that wealth of wisdom.

Commenting on Saint Paul’s words to Timothy, the great early Church Father Saint John Chrysostom hovers over the word commit:

Nor does he say, Tell, but commit, as a treasure committed is deposited in safety. Again he alarms his disciple, both from things above and things below. But he says not only commit to faithful men; for of what advantage is it that one is faithful, if he is not able to convey his doctrine to others? When he does not indeed betray the faith; but does not render others faithful? The teacher therefore ought to have two qualities, to be both faithful, and apt to teach; wherefore he says, who shall be able to teach others also.

It is my own extension of Bartz’s vision, sure, but one that can be considered as intrinsic nonetheless. Fidelity alone is not enough for the teaching office (then it is certainly not even just about talent or knowledge, as so many think). No, beyond talent, beyond fidelity, the recipient of wisdom must also possess the ability to help form the next teacher.

The mentor therefore holds two obligations at once: He must preserve what experience has taught him, and communicate it clearly enough that a younger teacher can put it to work.

And that twofold call comes only after an earlier, tougher one: having the humility to be taught by a predecessor himself.

The Virtue of Hierarchy

Such an arrangement will also teach the students who observe it—because remember, whether we realize it or not, young people are always watching. A young teacher receiving counsel from a veteran demonstrates that knowledge isn’t just something to hoard; it has a sort of physics to it, possessing an order—a movement—from the top down. Hierarchy then becomes visible in its proper form, assigning greater responsibility to the veteran while requiring him to serve the person who is still learning.

This is what servant-leadership looks like. How fortunate we would be if this could be a virtue modeled in schools.

Moreover, Christ describes the governing principle more precisely than the familiar management phrase “servant leadership” ever could: “Whosoever will be the greater among you, let him be your minister: And he that will be first among you, shall be your servant” (Matt 20:26–27). Rank remains, but the man holding it is bound more tightly to duty.

Unfortunately, “hierarchy” has become one of those terms destroyed by a culture intent on removing God from everything. For too many, the term implies a contest—a rivalry—for power. It’s become a “power trip,” in a word.

But therein lies a great lie and a great deception of the enemy, for proper hierarchy is inherently virtuous, indeed biblical. It binds the person above more tightly to his duty. The mentor isn’t owed anything but a humble ear; it is the mentor that owes the novice his time and honest counsel, because someone else long ago did the same with him. Neither role competes with the other, and neither person can make the physics of the virtue work by themselves.

Up thus becomes up again. And down returns to down.

A mentor assignment in Vernon Parish is smaller than a biblical interaction and the timeless wisdom of a Church Father, certainly. But it is smaller only in that it is subservient to that which came above, just as Chrysostom’s teaching is subservient to Paul’s. Thus, even in comparing the modern-day classroom to two great saints, we find the rightness in order. It is humble, and it is true. Those who came before hold special rank, not as tyranny, but as guardianship.

For the student watching, as knowledge moves from one generation to the next, they learn that their own advancement should follow a similar formation pattern, and that properly exercised authority carries duties in both directions.

Frankly, now that I’m writing this, I believe that’s one big reason my own classroom was a success. The gold is found in servant leadership. If a teacher can somehow strike the balance between commanding the respect he deserves as an elder and yet be humble enough to want to pass on the tradition to those “under” him, that teacher will experience something in the classroom that only God can grant. That may be the most effective way to get God back into public schools: being “wise as serpents and simple as doves,” to use Christ’s own words in the Gospel (Matt 10:16).

Follow the physics of the interactions of souls in Scripture in places where we can no longer openly preach the Word.

Final Thoughts

Public schools won’t ever replace the family or the Church in the formation of a child. But within the current jurisdiction granted to them, inside a society that increasingly diminishes God by the year, they can in fact respect young people as human beings who learn through relationships and who require adults willing to follow their own set of rules in handing down knowledge. Technology should remain subordinate to human judgment, while teachers should possess both the authority and support necessary to answer their call. Not to mention the humility.

As I’ve mentioned once or twice, and I want to make this clear, I don’t write any of the last two days’ words as a distant observer. I personally know Joey Bartz, having worked for him. My confidence in his leadership comes from that experience, which included the very physics of the principal-teacher dynamic I spoke on today. I have always had the utmost respect for him, still do, and yet Joey is the type of soul that always allows you to feel as though you are in charge of whatever situation you are discussing. He always had that knack—to be the boss, but not feel like a boss in the moment.

He is truly a friend.

And if anyone from Vernon Parish is reading this, I invite you to believe in his vision. You are in good hands—that is a promise—and if you are willing to take his lead, you’ll find a most refreshing feeling of somehow being in control the entire time.

And then you can hand on that good feeling to someone else.

Thank you for reading The Hayride!