Champions in Christian Education

My school is facing a challenge. The parents who choose to send their children here have been changing for some time now.

Half a century ago our school was a tight-knit community of Dutch immigrant families who were dedicated to the ideal of Christian Education. The fact that they stepped out in faith and built the foundation upon which our schools are laid is incredibly admirable. I look back on my parents and grandparents willingness to sacrifice with amazement. At the same time that tight-knit closeness had some unhealthy undertones as we looked down on outsiders and those Christians would not or could not send their children to our schools.

Our community is changing, much of it for the better. We now see so many different types of believers who come through our doors. This expansion of our Christian community is a joy to behold. 

At the same time it comes with a concern. How do we ensure that the deep Christian nature of our schools created by those founding fathers and mothers is not diluted or lost? Consider the example of the YMCA or places like Harvard, which all started as distinctly Christian institutions but now are not.

In order to address this issue, our school has chosen to keep attendance and membership in the governing body of the school separate. 

Attendance

All Christians are welcome to have their children attend our school, in fact we even have non-believers attending. Although those non-believers have to sign on to allowing us to indoctrinate their children in the faith. (Many of them don't quite realize how deeply our faith is woven into every corner of our school!) We have a chance to "Leak Christ" into many of these lives. These families are also a blessing to us bringing so much more diversity and opportunity into our school!

Membership

However, membership in our governing body is intended to be for those who are "Champions of Christian Education". We want to see those who are believers in Christian Education to be the decision makers and guardians of what God has given us.

In my mind there are two components that help identify these believers in Christian Education:

1. They are Christians in word and in deed. They are not perfect, as none of us is this side of glory, but they strive to live as Christ has called us to.
2. They are passionate about the cause of Christian Education. These are the people who meet night after night throughout the year on committees, who volunteer on Saturdays at school events, for whom  this endeavour is a calling. Not all Christians are called to this mission, nor should they be.

As we work through these governance issues it is my hope and prayer that the changes we have made will ensure that 50 years from now my grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be able to attend, work at, and volunteer in Christian schools like this one which are dedicated to the glory of God.

Dove Commercials - Not what I expected

So last night my wife called me over to the computer to show me a Dove commercial that was making the rounds of Facebook. This one.

At first I thought, "Wow, what a powerful message. I ought to use that in the Sex Ed unit I teach."

But then my wife sent me a link to this post the next morning while I was preparing for devotions in class.

Suddenly my opinion of the video was completely different.

Here's what bothers me most. I like to think of myself as an intelligent, perceptive, and critical thinking Christian, but I fell for the hidden messages in the video.

How are we to teach the discernment that we wish to see in our children when we don't always have it ourselves?

So, today, I threw my lesson plans for my Bible class out the window. Instead, we watched the video. Then we spent some time discussing it. The students had lots of praise for the video and pointed out the positive message that it was ostensibly aimed at. Then I had them go read the blog post rebuttal. After, we watched the video again. We spent some more time talking about it. The students had a very different reaction.

I hope that lessons about discernment of modern media sank in.

I did the best I could. I leave the rest in God's hands.

Who's with me?

"Perfection is not attainable but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence"

- Unknown Irish Coach

Last week, we had  a power flicker that took out our wireless network and with it went my lesson plan. So I went back to the old style of teaching. "Chalk and talk". I stood at the chalkboard for 30 minutes writing and speaking. The students sat there and wrote down what I put on the chalkboard. It was the first time in years that I've done that. It felt comfortable. It was easy to do.

How much did the students actually learn?

Last week, I was browsing Twitter and came across this blog post on "Weird Leadership"

One sentence in it struck me.

"Get off your butt and find a problem bigger than you."

I don't like "Chalk and talk", along with a whole bunch of other things we do in school.

God calls us to perfection. There has to be a better way.

I don't have answers, just a big target.

Who's with me?

I cried when I read it: Gaming, Grace, and God

I cried when I read it. You see, my  mom had cancer too.

I am a gamer.

Board games, card games, dice games, video games, and more. If it's a game I've probably tried it. I spend more hours than I care to admit playing games or thinking about games. We even had to raise the amount of insurance we have on our house to cover the value of the game collection I've been building since I was thirteen.

When I was updating my LinkedIn profile recently I asked for feedback from a number of people I respect. One of them said, "the hobbies or interest section of your linked-in profile mentioned about computer games a few times--you might consider cutting that back to 1 mention of that--especially if older people are looking at it.  They may view that a little negatively.  "

There's a negative view of gaming out there. Mind you, if you watch this video made from recordings of people playing games, you might understand why. I certainly find it a little disturbing. 

It's also certainly true that games can be a waste of time or a distraction. I know I've certainly spent enough time and money on them.

And yet there's an entire conversation happening around the gamification of education. You can find it on Twitter by searching for "#gamification #edchat". You can find it on blogs. There's even a website dedicated to it. I'm experimenting with it in my minecraft project that I've been reporting about here.

There's a lot of value in games. You  might even want to read the book that Kevin Schut, an old friend of mine, wrote entitled, Of Games and God. 

But what made me write this post is the story of a game being worked on now. I found it in a blog post on Facebook.

I cried when I read it.

This post.

The game is here. 

Clickety Clack - Students at work

All I hear right now is the sound of fingers on computer keys. My students are busily writing away like mad. Even the students who struggle to write anything are busy pounding out word after word.

The period before we just had the students participate in the next event in our minecraft story. The princess had been captured by bandits and they had to assault a castle to rescue her.

The Princess in her jail cell

Even before this event students have been writing far more than in any of my previous years of teaching how to write short stories.

An announcement that a short story would have to be a minimum of 750 words would be met with groans and complaints. Even before we began today's writing session the average length of story was over 1100 words.

Of course, the bigger question will be is the quality any better?

Watch this space for more details in the future.

The Death of Paper

"Wow! A hand-crafted thank you card arrived from a client for some art photography & web services I provided. Very thoughtful and I am so appreciative!"

This was one of my friends Facebook updates. I'm fascinated by the unintended impact of technology. Hand-written notes and letters have gained so much value due to the ease of digital versions.

Consider comparing one of those digital birthday cards with a real one.

Notice even the language I use, "a real one".

The death of paper has been predicted for years now, and it's wrong. The way we use the tools will change, but they will continue to exist.

Then of course there's the ad my wife shared with me on Facebook:

Short Stories - Minecraft Edition

So we've been hard at working learning about short stories in our Minecraft project. (For those of you who are members of the OACS I've been using the "Teaching Short Stories" section of the newly updated Choices and Decisions unit. I quite like what they've done with this part of the unit.)

We've been studying the structure of short stories using a plot graph like this one:

The first assignment asked them to create their character description and apply the lessons we learned in class.

This first assignment was to tie in with the introduction that I wrote and placed within the Minecraft world for them to find.

What I found most interesting is that despite the King's repeated warnings within the game and outside of the game, the students neglected to build the wall to defend the town.

Here you can see the tower I built to start the wall and the unfinished wall beside it.

The students were so busy building their own things that they ignored the story.

Which creates interesting consequences, because we are now arriving at the first crisis of the story, often called the Inciting Action.

The town is about to be attacked. Since the townsfolk neglected to build the wall their construction work will be damaged and the attackers will swarm throughout the town. If they had built the wall their buildings would be left intact and it would have been a battle to hold the attackers off of the wall.

I've taken the server off-line temporarily in order to prepare the next section of the story. Which includes building new elements in the game world, but also destroying some of what the students have done.

Here's a few pictures of some of the damage done:

The students were somewhat dismayed by the discovery that their work was under attack. I hope to have them share with you some of their thoughts on this discovery.

In the meantime the students are completing the second assignment. Tomorrow, those that have completed the second assignment will get the chance to participate in the defense of what's left of the town, as well as discover what the Inciting Event that reveals the main plot of the story is.

Those that haven't finished the assignment? They get to work on the assignment.

A view of the town with it's lights extinguished as the attackers sweep through the town and the villagers scramble to defend it in the chaos. The only light in the darkness is the King's Castle.

Don't be a Jerk - Minecraft Edition

It seems that when you give someone a computer and an internet connection that bad behaviour results.

As a Christian teacher I have often struggled to find a way to teach my students that their online behaviour should reflect Christ in the same way that the rest of their life should.

Last night my Minecraft project gave me a golden opportunity to illustrate this point.

In order to enter the world I've set up for them, students have to complete various assignments to unlock access. The first assignment was to write a character description of the protagonist of the story we're going to write centred around the Minecraft world.

Some students didn't finish their assignment on time, so they didn't get to play.

At the first location in the game I had placed some chests with supplies for the students to share.

There's only one rule I've implemented for this game. "Don't be a Jerk!"

Well, the first students who went online, promptly acted like jerks. Despite being told that the supplies were to be shared, they took everything.

At first I was very frustrated, but then in dawned on me. What a teaching opportunity!

So, when students get to school this morning, those students are going to discover that they have all been locked out of the game and their inventories stripped of items. Digital consequences for digital misbehaviour.

We'll see where this heads. 

What a fascinating journey!

Minecraft in my classroom

So this week I've just finished setting up a minecraft game server, running in Texas, for my class to use in English. I can already hear some of you say, "Gaming in English class? How does that work?"

One of the challenges I've had when teaching short story writing is getting all the students engaged in writing stories. Sure, there's always been a few students who are keen, mostly girls. I wanted to do something that would engage all of my students. I wanted to tap into something that many of them are excited about and interested in. A large number of my students enjoy playing minecraft and I had heard of other teachers who've been using minecraft in their classes. Check out one website here.

So how in the world does it work?

I'm going to use the game as inspiration for their writing.

Our story begins here:

This is the King's Throne room.

This is the King's Castle.

Here is the deserted island on which our settlers have just landed to build their new homes.

      "Wait a minute," you ask, "How does the King already have a castle if they just landed, who built the dock, and are those ruined buildings there amongst the trees?"

Well, I can't tell you those things because that's all part of the story we're going to tell in the game and my students will write about. You see, my students might read this blog and I don't want to give anything away just yet.

The first writing exercise my students do, will be to complete the character sketch of the character they will play in our story. This character sketch will then be included in the introduction they write about. Which they will then post on their blog for all to read.

Of course, the introduction has to end with an Inciting Action that reveals to the protagonist what the problem of the story is.

The King has summoned all of the townsfolk to the castle, a disaster has befallen the kingdom.......

The Pain of New Things

Today I had a conference with a concerned set of parents. Their child has been struggling in my math class.

The thing you have to keep in mind is that I've flipped my math class. All my instruction is done via pre-recorded video. This is only the second full year I've been doing this, with some dabbling in the previous years.

This young student has been falling further and further behind, Mom and Dad were quite concerned. My method of teaching was not working for this student. And here I am jumping off a cliff into the unknown with their child in tow.

I can't express my appreciation for these parents. We had an excellent discussion about their child and about what their child needs. They shared with me their concerns and we began to brainstorm solutions. I hope that they left our conference understanding that I am committed to finding the best educational opportunities for their child and every other child in the class. When I'm made aware of a problem I will act. I can't promise that what I do will work every time, but I can promise that they will see my best efforts.

When we try new things it isn't all going to be a bed of roses. There will be bumps and pain along the way. I appreciate the feedback these parents gave me as it will only lead to my classroom becoming more effective.

We can't let our fear of the pain of new things get in the way of trying.