Lessons from Les Miserables: Teaching with Reckless Grace

Along with everyone else, I recently watched Les Miserables. Sadly, this was my first exposure to the famed musical, I had never read Victor Hugo's masterpiece, though I think I would like the book much more. The movie went too fast and too slow at the same time for me. The plot would make leaps forward and then rest in moments of long drawn out songs, leaving me no time to get to know the characters. That is not to say I wasn't inspired by the story, and it is still something we can learn from as people, and especially as teachers.
As I sat and watched the film, I thought about how I react to an absence of moral fortitutude in my students. Do I take personal offense, or do I use the moment to teach, to redirect with grace and patience, like the Bishop Myriel does in the church with the still unredeemed Jean Valjean? When I catch a student lying, cheating, or being disrespectful, am I able to put away my own ego and see the good that still lies within, giving the student the chance to do the right thing, or do I condemn, punish, and put myself on a moral highground? We are teachers, not constables, and I hope that we can take these moments where students lose grip on the integrity that they are just now learning to develop as the teachable moments they are and teach with a reckless grace.
Now on the striaght and narrow, Jean Valjean uses his position of wealth and stature to rescue a woman and her daughter from the cycles of poverty and desperation that are all too familiar to our society today. He does more than donate to a cause or write a Senator. He inconveniences himself mightily and takes on the burden of the least of these, much as 1st cerntury carpenter calls his flock to do. How often have I had the chance to reach out to a student, to connect to a student, to pull myself out of the whirring of the everyday duties of the school day to do something extraordinary for the students I claim to care so much about? I am judged by my superiors through test scores and pedagogy, but if I am to be the teacher that in my head I think I should be, it will require something more. It will require a moment away from the class and away from teaching testable standards. I hope that I can be sensitive to these moments when they arrive. Jean Valjean didn't seek to force himself into being a hero, but when the moment called, he did not back down. I hope I can teach with the same reckless grace.
Lastly, what should we do with THAT student? We all have them. For Valjean it was Inspector Javert. Those students that seem to irk us the most, get under our skin, and leave our sighs longer and heavier each night as we get home are the ones who may need us the most. Being a good teacher to ALL students and really loving our enemies is not easy to do. It was not easy for Valjean to set Javert free, he knew it might be the end of him. But he knew it was the right thing to do. Luckily, our students are not grown men like Javert, who had been living in his set ways for decades, and was unable to respond positively to this act of reckless grace.  Our students are learning and developing, and ideally our patience, love, and guidance will be an example for them to follow. It should bewilder, confuse, but also light the path of what loving and teaching students in the classroom can look like.