Teacher Spotlight: John Jenkins

John is a publisher, author and conference speaker who has been teaching homeschoolers for 21 years and at CHESS since its inception. John’s classes include effective writing for high school and college, critical reading and thinking skills, fiction writing, literature, mock trial, business and technical writing, and Microsoft Office skills. His writing credits include nine short stories for Focus on the Family, including “If One Falls” which took the Higher Goals first place award for fiction in the 2000 EPA publisher’s competition for Breakaway magazine. John’s most recent books are I Love Baseball and Ghost Pirates, which are part of his Young Heroes series. John is married and a proud father of two adult sons, four lovely granddaughters, a grandson and a great granddaughter. John has lived in No. Va. all of his life. A Christian since 1970, John teaches Sunday school at Clear River Community Church. All of John’s books are available on Amazon by going to StoryShopUSA.com.

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What brought you to teaching?

I’ve been a Sunday school teacher all my life. Deep down I’ve always enjoyed communicating with young people, I had done this for many years before I ever taught. Teaching is one of the two things I have really felt called to do in my life. It’s one of two different times in my life where I would say I felt the lord speak to me. When I was 18 years old and about to get married, the Lord said to me “you’re going to teach many” – but this was the “Jesus movement” days and I thought this meant I would be a pastor or an apostle teaching Christians someday. It wasn’t until many years later, after I had been teaching homeschoolers for five years that one day I suddenly remembered that [statement] and I froze –I realized “wow, I am teaching many!” I had no clue what God meant when I was 18 years old. And as I said at a recent CHESS meeting, I have now graded over 8500 student essays. That puts it into perspective. I’ve been teaching in some form for 21 years. This calling is I think the real reason I’m teaching. I’ve always had an inclination to share things that would improve people’s lives.  

How did you end up teaching writing and literature? 

This is the second thing that God spoke to me about, the second time in my life I really felt God speak to me.  I knew I wanted to write when I was thirty, I had gone back to school but I had two kids and a wife and I also needed to support my family. About this point God interrupted my thoughts during a time when I was trying to decide what church I should be in for my kids. I was interrupted in my thoughts one night and God told me “prepare to write.”  I remember distinctly thinking “that’s not the answer to my question,” because I wanted to know what church I should be in! But I felt this response back from God which was “I don’t really care what church you go to.” Suddenly, I was freed up, and I knew what I was supposed to do. At the age of about 35, I suddenly had a new sense of purpose, and that’s when I got into writing. 

I was interrupted in my thoughts one night and God told me “prepare to write.”

It was through writing [books] that I ended up at a homeschool conference selling my books and had two homeschool moms come up to me and beg me for help teaching their kids how to write. But I was just selling books! It was a strange experience—after that, I thought maybe teaching was something I should consider. And that’s where it first started. I never had a teaching degree, so the books I had written then became my credentials. 

Writing and teaching were interrelated in terms of being two unique times where I really felt God interrupted me and spoke to me about something. 

I also had a love for history and investigating. I’ve always loved to research and learn. One reason why I love to teach is that I love to learn. If you’re not wanting to learn as a teacher then it’s merely an income producer so you can do other things. But I love learning. I think that’s at the heart of why I like to teach. 

How did you get into the homeschooling community? 

When I first wrote a book it was for an adult audience—I didn’t have anything in mind specifically about homeschooling. While I was selling the books for the adult audience, I also realized that selling books is really hard. We [my team] decided to shift our interest to the youth market which was less competitive at the time. It was during this time that we realized what we were writing was great for a homeschool audience, so I started traveling to homeschool conferences selling books. There we got asked questions from homeschool mothers with teary eyes asking, “how do I teach my kids how to write?” This made me think. I was writing books that [sold well] to a homeschool audience not realizing at the time [where it would take me]. 

I was writing books that [sold well] to a homeschool audience not realizing at the time [where it would take me]. 

What’s the most rewarding part about what you do? 

There’s a lot of rewards! On a daily level, when you are in the classroom and kids are engaged with what you are talking about, or when you are working on a tough subject and you can get them laughing and having fun—that’s really rewarding.  

Beyond the day-today level, it’s rewarding when your kids excel. I told a group of students today – “what you produce is not you.” Sometimes when you produce things it’s not very good–you have to refine it.  I get great enjoyment watching students improve their work, to go from not doing well to sticking to it and showing determination and resiliency. I get tremendous joy seeing them separate themselves from their understanding of what they do, so they can look at what they do more objectively and learn not be offended or hurt when they are told they have to improve something. 

When students show critical thinking and they start to demonstrate adult reasoning–that’s always rewarding. Young people can do amazing things if you encourage them and assist them. It’s a wonderful thing to give kids tools that they can do amazing things with that you can’t anticipate. That’s what writing is. I have been tremendously surprised how truly creative student writers can be. It’s rewarding, exciting, and hopeful, to see what young people can do. 

It’s a wonderful thing to give kids tools that they can do amazing things with that you can’t anticipate. That’s what writing is.

What do you want your students to come away from your classes with that are not writing skills or tools – non-academic. 

One of the things I’ve always said is I want students to have confidence that if they apply themselves to something they can have the confidence that they will be able to do it, and that the process of learning how to do it will make them better people.  We need to have confidence that no matter how I fail, or what mistakes I made, or what good I do, I should not be basing my confidence in myself. Deep down, if kids come out of my class that maybe they didn’t get the grade they wanted to but they came out feeling good that they worked hard, they can have confidence rooted in genuine effort and this recognition [rather than a grade].