Often, the most complex, most challenging times to do a task or any job are when you start it. In Tolstoy’s masterwork, Anna Kerinina, Constantine Levin, one of my favorite characters in all of literature, decides that he is going to go out and cut the wheat with a scythe along with his peasants. He finds, initially, that he struggles to do the work that the peasants seem to do regularly. He doesn’t know the pace, the rhythm, or how to move the scythe through the wheat effectively. He wears out, faces exhaustion, and contemplates giving up. After watching the old peasants, he returns and finds his rhythm. He even begins to enjoy it.

If you are a first-year teacher coming into Omnibus, then thank you! You are doing work that, I pray, God will use to change hearts, equip students, and transform the world. Still, there are many temptations that, like rocks hidden just beneath the surface of the water, can wreck your boat and cause students to fail to love and learn from the love of the Great Books. This post is to help first-year teachers avoid the temptation that can wreck them and use the Omnibus curriculum most effectively. Here are three great reasons why new teachers should learn to lean on the curriculum:

Reason 1: It gives you questions (and answers) to help you avoid pretending to know what you do not yet know.

Eighth graders can smell fear, and you must be recently educated to have a Great Books education. That means you will learn much more during your first year than the students. In the early days of classical Christian education, we had no choice but to create as we were teaching. This led to some embarrassing gaffes. I blended two New Testament Jameses into one person. I also gave my students 50 pages to read one night of Aristotle’s Ethics. I was reading along with the kids and had never read Ethics before. Having read the bottom of the first paragraph, I realized that I did not understand anything. I went through it for a second time. Nothing. I went through the third time and still felt unprepared for the next one. Leaning on the curriculum can help you avoid these sorts of problems.

If you have been given a Great Books education but are in your first year of teaching, you should lean on the curriculum even more. You will likely have your college professor as a model and the pace of your college classes as the rhythm of your teachers. Your ship is ready to hit the rocks. If you are calibrated wrongly, you will fail and blame your students for not meeting your expectations. I have seen this so many times.

Reason 2: It keeps you from dying because you are trying to dig out more than you can as a first-year teacher.

Being a first-year teacher is hard; I don’t remember much that happened during my first two years in classical Christian education. The Omnibus curriculum enables you to survive and prepares you to thrive. New teachers have to learn so much. Back in the early days, there was no other choice. No curriculum existed. We had to dig for our lives. We hoped that by creating a curriculum, we could help you survive and work toward mastery so that you can take on the next significant challenge of leading this movement forward. A disciple is set on becoming a master, but before he gains mastery, he needs to become like his master. Let the curriculum and other resources help you survive discipleship and lean into mastery sooner.

Reason 3: It is a tutorial on how to learn from more experienced teachers so that you can get the feel and become one of them.

The Omnibus Curriculum was created by some of the best teachers in the country. Being the first person to read the first drafts of each essay and session was a privilege. Some were so brilliant that I would erupt with joy and laughter from my office. I could see that in this chapter, God had sent us a smooth stone that could help many fell the Goliaths in the land. The minds you will discover in the Omnibus Curriculum are of two kinds. You have the writers of the books. These are the masters. Communing with them is one of the greatest privileges of this life.

In some cases, it will be a great delight for the next. Reading Aquinas is glorious. Can you imagine what talking with him will be like? What sort of mystical experience caused him to say that all he had written was “straw.” Reading Jane Austen is incredible. She demands so much from her readers. She respects you enough to imagine that you can follow her inferences. What will it be like to have her help writing stories? First-year teachers need to spend time with these great minds.

The other minds that you will encounter are the authors of particular chapters. They are not Augustine, Dante, or Shakespeare, but many of them are master teachers who have ridden on the Omni-bus for several years. Many of them built the curriculum. First-year teachers also need to spend a lot of time with these minds. These master teachers might be more important than the great minds during the first year. New teachers should pay special attention to the questions that the writers of the chapters choose and the answers that they provide. First-year teachers should also learn how to make writing assignments from the types these teachers use. Also, learn the extent and the parameters of the creative activities these masters use to excite the imagination and hook the heart.

The Omnibus Curriculum is helpful for experienced teachers but critical for new Great Books teachers. They need the structure, the wisdom, and the guidance of the master teachers who wrote the chapters. In the end, when the new teacher has become a master, use the curriculum to help, but dare to add to the sessions and even create your own. Crawl, then walk, then run. Live through years one and two. Year three gets better.