Can you feel it? School spirit is back in the air! Painted faces, school colors, pep rallies — it's time for sport events to begin. The past few months, we've seen the opening of high school and college sports across the country, together with the beginning of fall semester classes. From coast to coast, it seems like summer just blends into fall, from baseball and swimming lessons to football and basketball.

Even at your Christian school, your school teams are probably gearing up or even currently playing this season's games. If you have watched a high school or college football game the past few weeks, even if you're not familiar with all the rules, you probably know that at the beginning of the season is when the most mistakes happen. Because practice cannot replicate the actual game environment, athletes are the most prone to errors and to be a little rusty at the beginning of the season. This creates penalties, fouls, off sides, and the inevitable false start. A false start is simply when an offensive player jumps too soon and begins before the rest of his team does. This creates an unfair advantage for the offense, causing a penalty.

False starts don't just happen in sports, though; they happen in students' lives too. At the beginning of the school year, students are nervous about starting off right and doing their best, so they're jittery and prone to more mistakes. Dusty from a summer off, concepts aren't as familiar in their minds and errors happen. Students jump around trying to find their place in the class pecking order, in the curriculum, and in classroom expectations. False starts happen. The key for you, both academically and personally, is to be there to correct and guide students with Christ's help. Perfection is an unrealistic goal, so don't expect your students not to fail. They will.

Students will fail; they will trip up. It's okay because that's the only way they are going to learn. Let them fail; then, pick them up and encourage them to try again. After all, Christ did the same for us. Only with practice will they get it right. As the Bible teaches us, "Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord" (1 Corinthians 15:58).

More important than the correct answer is the lesson learned during the journey of finding the answer! So this fall, as you watch your Christian school's sporting events and teach the students in your classroom, remember that God picks you up too every time you have a false start, too. Let Him be your teacher so that you can be the best teacher you can be to your students, picking them up every time they have a false start. Let the cheering begin!

How do you use student failure to teach important Christian lessons?