• Courage to demand accountability from students when the culture around them empowers excuses and entitlement.
• Courage to love students, parents, colleagues, and administrators when they are not kind or reasonable in return, even in the face of rejection.   
• Courage to remain as an ambassador for Christ in a public school as the hostility to our faith grows. 
• Courage to protect the innocence of children by questioning or redirecting age-inappropriate or immoral content and curriculum. 
• Courage to build genuine relationships with parents in a culture that constantly divides and pushes people into competing teams. 
• Courage to champion the truth when our students are being taught that their feelings trump reality.
• Courage to abide in Christ and maintain a tender, open heart as those around us grow more fearful and cynical
• Courage to teach and lead in often unsafe environments, where the emotional and even physical safety of educators is not prioritized.
• Courage to persist in working to reach distracted, traumatized, apathetic, or even hostile students, even in the face of apparent failures.
• Courage to pursue self-control and integrity, even in our stumbling, so that the life we model shines the light of the Gospel we carry. 

As you turn (or click or scroll) the pages in this edition of Teachers of Vision, you can’t miss the overall message: courage is the necessary ingredient of every true transformation in our classrooms and schools. Of course, with certain professional callings, like being a police officer or firefighter, courage is a well-known prerequisite. But do we think about teaching like that? While we don’t pursue criminals (well, not typically) or put out fires (at least not the smoking kind), God’s call to have courage is universal—echoed by Paul in 1 Corinthians 16:13: “Be on your guard, stand firm in the faith, be courageous, be strong.” 

The need has never been so great for courageous educators like you to walk boldly and confidently as sons and daughters of our King in our public schools. I encourage you to keep giving Him your “yes,” even in the face of difficulty. And remember, He is faithful!