Nov 30, 2022 | Care Conversations
Student Leadership 17
We have talked about developing faith, character and skills that contribute to leadership development by having regular, and developmental Class Meetings. Then we have suggested that these good developments need to overflow into our pedagogical practices in other areas.
Let’s consider a few more simple practices that may aid Leadership development.
We need to intentionally practice skills like “mirroring”. This involves students listening carefully to each other’s perspectives and viewpoints, and reflecting those views back to the person; always seeking clarity and integrity. The further purpose is for everyone to exercise listening skills and develop the ability to humbly and respectfully critique.
In each of our classrooms we need to develop “Courageous Curiosity”. The desire, opportunity and ability to ask questions that will lead to the growth of knowledge, understanding and wisdom. We need to make respectful questioning for Truth the community norm.
We need to develop a classroom culture where questioning is expected and encouraged.
So, we need to move from “Are there any Questions?” To a more positive and expectant approach that says, for example,
“In a group, decide upon three important questions that should be asked about this topic/issue?”
If we are only ever seeking answers to our teacher directed questions, we may be stunting the growth of our students.
“An answer can be a full stop; questions can be the gateway to new understanding”
We need to make open-ended questions part of our assessment process.
For example, at the end (or even during) a unit of work pose some questions:
“How does your new knowledge and understanding help you to serve better?
“How can you use your new understanding redemptively?”
Good leaders are inquisitive people who seek to understand different perspectives and engage in respectful consideration of different viewpoints, then work out helpful responses and actions.
More suggestions next week
Blessings
Brian
Nov 23, 2022 | Teachers Talking
“Let my people go” was the Lord’s response to the Israelites heart cry as they groaned in their slavery in Egypt. Throughout history, the cry for freedom has gone out. Levi Coffin (1798 – 1877) was born into a Quaker family who were farmers in North Carolina. Quakers were people who belonged to the Religious Society of Friends, a movement within Christianity that began in England in the 1650’s. Their beliefs led them to respond to human suffering with compassion, regardless of race or religion. Both Levi’s parents and grandparents were opposed to slavery. As a young fifteen-year-old, he would talk to slaves to see if he could help them. In 1821 with his cousin, he opened a Sunday School for slaves, using God’s Word to teach them to read. As the oppression of slavery became greater, he and his wife Catherine moved to Indiana where African Americans could live in freedom. His home became the centre for coordination of the Underground Railway, which took runaway slaves in the darkness of night north to Canada. Levi’s courage had an impact on their neighbours, who began to provide active assistance in forwarding slaves on their way to freedom. During the day, families would hide them. These ‘stops’ to freedom became known as the Secret Underground Railroad Stations and Levi became known as its president. It is estimated that Levi and his wife helped more than 2000 slaves to freedom. One of these slaves was Eliza Harris, whose story is told in the book ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’.
Most people share the belief that freedom is key to human flourishing but have different ideas about what it is and how to realise it. In our culture, the most prevalent understanding is that freedom means doing what I want, and this autonomy means freedom from others, independence with no accountability and “a self-chosen rupture from creation, from the past … from earlier generations … and obligations of all kinds.” [1] In this way, we can be free to discover our inner self. Living in this current script deforms our lives in profoundly destructive ways. Big government, big Tech, big business and pornography’s ability to shape our inner worlds, is unlike any other time in history. The anxiety of choice and the overload of information has led to lostness and confusion.
Every day in the world of virtual reality, social media platforms enable our children to create an image, to project it and then try to live up to it. This is very different to the real messy world where the self is muddled, and life is difficult. Research shows that rather than finding freedom ‘to be yourself’, it is leading to enslavement. Having disconnected love from God’s relational design and the substitution of electronic devices for human contact, the result is consuming obsessions and erosion of moral character. These habits of the heart then flow out and impact our society. The person and society that cuts themselves off from God’s presence, experience the forces of chaos and coercion. For freedom without order leads to chaos and imposed order without freedom leads to control and enslavement, as in Egypt and in cancel-culture.
True freedom is a matter of the heart. Moses reminded the Israelites that the strength of their freedom from slavery to the Promised Land had to be passed onto the hearts and minds of each succeeding generation. Therefore, schooling in freedom is essential to sustaining freedom because education is a matter of character formation, as well as passing on our story across the generations.
Freedom is central to what God wants for His people – freedom from sin and idolatry and the freedom to love and be loved. “The true human identity comes from the True Human Himself: if the Son makes you free, you will be truly free …. (for) God’s love becoming human in Jesus and dying on the cross brings about new creation and invites each of us to inhabit it … Free people in a free world”. [2] Our story needs to engage in conscious tension with our cultural diagnosis.
As Christian teachers, we are to train our students to navigate life with each other. The heart of freedom is bound up in our whole-hearted love for the Lord and our love of neighbour, the stranger and our enemies. The Word of God speaks about loving relationships, commitments and trust. In our class and school culture, we are forming patterns that demonstrate that true freedom is not a licence to do as you like, but the freedom to love as you ought. This creates the moral responsibility of mutual obligation that in turn, creates ordered freedom in which all can flourish. It needs to be clearly demonstrated that they are individuals in community who can’t hope to live graciously with others while inventing their own moral framework. Trust based on shared beliefs is the glue that holds us together.
In our teaching and learning, we can assist our students to explore the nature of true freedom. Do our children know the story of the Western nations? Do they know the basis and meaning of the Australian constitution? Down through history, men and women who loved Christ above all else, were convinced that only the truth and power of the Gospel could set people free. This inspired their response to God’s call to set the captives free. We need to tell the stories of these men and women, such as William Wilberforce, Levi & Catherine Coffin, Amy Carmichael and Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration of Anzac Day, a war whose goal was to achieve freedom points to Christ, the ultimate sacrifice for true freedom. Throughout history, students can explore the consequences of the murderous tyrannies, such as Mao and Stalin, where God’s sovereignty and presence were rejected. Their power exercised in the arrogant belief they could change human nature and society, led to the enslavement and death of millions of people.
On a personal level, moral and sexual licence abuses humans, particularly women and children who are used as a means to an end. Power, not love, becomes the heart of human relationships. Every opportunity must be taken to affirm the humanity of each student in the school, of which they are a part; for true freedom is the freedom to love and nurture a community where dignity and respect characterise all relationships. Students must be aware of the Biblical beliefs and values and laws a nation needs to be built upon so that humans may flourish according to God’s design.
Celebration of what is good, confession, forgiveness and repentance are important practices that lead to restoration in our individual and communal lives, both personally and for the past. This transforms hearts and so forgiveness and freedom to choose the right path mean the future need not repeat the sins of the past for the chain of cause and effect can be broken. For only the redemptive work of Christ in human hearts can bring about true reconciliation and freedom. “Freedom begins and ends in the human heart, in the hearts of citizens and children, and all other attempts to find and fulfil it elsewhere are doomed to fail.”[3]
May we rejoice in our calling to unfold the Scriptures that give a transformational vision of human life, where every person has dignity, life is sacred and the notions of love, freedom, conscience and community are incomparable to any other story. As Irenaeus, the church father said, “A human being fully alive is the glory of God.” [4]
“So, if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
John 8: 36
Grace and Peace
The TEC Team
[1] Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity – Sinai’s Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom, (Illinois: Inter Varsity Press, 2021), 191.
[2] Nicholas Tom Wright, Broken Signposts – How Christianity Makes Sense of the World, (New York: HarperOne, 2020), 87-88.
[3] Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity – Sinai’s Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom, 179.
[4] https://www.crossroadsinitiative.com
Nov 23, 2022 | Care Conversations
Student Leadership 16
We are considering how to develop an understanding and practice of student Leadership.
For the past couple of weeks, we have talked about the usefulness of Class Meetings. These should only take about 30-40 minutes each week; but they are most effective when carried out regularly.
However, what we don’t need is another course or subject in our crowded curricula.
I would suggest therefore that the principles and practices that we develop in Class Meetings should be applied in every area – they need to become part of our good pedagogical practice.
Having students pray for one another at the start of a lesson is a unifying and beneficial thing to do. It reminds us of our dependence upon God and our care for each other. Finding opportunities to express gratitude and respect for one another can take place throughout the day and needs to become “normal practice”.
Students should be encouraged to share what they have learned in a particular unit of work and to have their “report” critiqued respectfully:
“What was really informative our helpful?”
“Can I make a couple of suggestions that might improve your report or project?”
Our pedagogical practices must include a high level of collaborative thinking and action. When students are involved together, we see how leaders arise to guide interactions.
We need to encourage Cooperative Problem Solving – sharing a problem and considering a variety of solutions.
We need to encourage Cooperative Care; simple things like keeping a record of learning activities, resources and expectations that can be passed on to absent students when they return.
Getting students involved in Mission and Service Learning – helping them to see why this is an essential part of life, why people have innate dignity and why we are committed to serving one another. Gradually students should become more involved in Mission and Service initiatives, planning and execution.
We need to encourage Cooperative Learning. It is the way that Christian communities grow – sharing gifts and understandings. It is quite sad that the USA, UK and Australia are top of the individualism index by a very large margin![1] This is not a good Christian community attribute.
It is likely that we will notice different students taking leadership responsibilities in each of these different areas. What we are trying to do is to develop faith, character, skills and growth.
Let’s consider some more helpful pedagogical practices next week.
Blessings
Brian
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Country-scores-for-individualism-index_tbl1_334509709 accessed 17/08/2022
Nov 15, 2022 | Care Conversations
Student Leadership 15
Exploring the “Class Meeting” idea for Leadership Development.
The purposes of a Class Meeting include:
– Broadening the horizons of young people by considering issues beyond themselves
– Developing good character during interactions with others
– Developing skills of listening, thinking, speaking and understanding
– Making thoughtful contributions in both discussion and action to contemporary issues within the classroom, the school and beyond.
Class Meeting Discussions might include things like:
How might we make changes in our school to ensure a better environment?
How might we develop better hospitality for parents and visitors in our classroom and our school?
What should our attitude and relationship be to leaders in our community?
In what ways can we make everyone feel included in our class and school community?
How can we serve and support people who are experiencing difficulty?
Facilitating Discussion in Class Meetings
Provide lots of ways to express and acknowledge each other’s comments, beliefs, ideas and contributions; these can be displayed around the room.
– That was a good idea because…
– Thanks for sharing your thoughts
– Why do you think that?
– Can you tell us more about that?
– How did you come to think that way?
– Why is that of interest to you?
– Have you had personal experience?
– Why do you think this issue is important?
– So you are saying….
– So you believe….
– Building on the last point
– Might it work better if….
Ideas to encourage respectful participation:
– Children may have a card with their name written on one side. At the start of the meeting all the names are facing down and when a child would like to contribute, they turn their card displaying their name to the chairperson
– An item is passed around the circle; when it reaches each person, they decide whether to comment, or pass the object to the next person.
– Children simply put their hand up
– Children may stand up when they wish to speak
– Any system that the teacher and children find is fair
– The Chairperson has the responsibility of regulating and choosing who is speaking
Let’s add some more thought to this concept next week
Blessings
Brian
Nov 8, 2022 | Care Conversations
Student Leadership 14
A possible model for developing student character, leadership understanding and skills.
The enhancement of understanding leadership, character, skills and practice needs intentional development.
One of the ways that younger students can develop these things is through a “Class Meeting” model.
The Class Meeting provides young children with the opportunity to discuss and learn about community and world issues outside their own world and to expand their capacity to understand and critique the views and perspectives of others. It also helps in creating a more engaging and respectful community. It develops good character attributes and good relational and practical skills.
How does it work?
It’s best to have a regular scheduled time – maybe 30-40 minutes once or twice per week.
Have an agenda posted in the classroom which can be added to, with teacher permission, prior to the meeting. These may be International, National topics or School related issues where students might contribute to good school culture. The topics will be monitored by the classroom teacher.
Provide leadership opportunities for students through chairing and leading a Class Meeting. Students can take turns in leading the meeting (an individual or pair)
Provide practice of responsibility and summation of key points through the recording role. Students can take turns in recording the key points from the meeting (again an individual or pair)
Assist children to understand and accept that people’s views, perspective and values may differ from their own and these can be expressed, explored and discussed without personal insults.
Develop clear thinking and articulate expression
Provide opportunities for children in speaking, listening, contributing and reflecting.
Sitting in a circle helps to facilitate easier discussion and everyone can see each other
It is not compulsory for all children to speak or contribute their thoughts. Rotating though the circle giving everyone the opportunity with a 60 second time limit, is a good initial practice.
Skills For Effective Class Meetings
- Prayer
- Practicing gratitude, compliments and appreciations.
- Respecting differences.
- Using respectful communication skills.
- Focusing on understanding and providing suggestions for progress and action.
More detail about how this might work next week.
Blessings
Brian
