Almost Obnoxious - Part 3 - Spiritually Equip, Challenge, and Inspire

Our mission statement hangs on three walls of my classroom.  It hangs in the school lobby.  I walk past it a couple of hundred times a day.  In case you haven't been reading this series, it says,

"GRACE Christian School is a loving community that spiritually and academically equips, challenges, and inspires students to impact their world for Christ."

Read again.  There are parts of it that I am skilled to do, and there are parts of it that WE are skilled to do.  There are parts of it, however, that are, in fact impossible.  That doesn't mean we should change our mission.  Quite the contrary.  It means, we have to call in the big guns.  The portion of our mission statement that says we will "spiritually . . . equip, challenge, and inspire" is not within our power.  It is only possible if we are daily putting this part of our mission in the hands of God.

I don't know if you have ever written a mission statement with a group of people.  You wouldn't believe how long it takes to dissect each phrase and word.  The first draft of this statement only included the word "equips."  Some of the teacher in the room felt that word was too small, that it made it sound like we only did the minimum.  While I disagreed, I certainly understood how, if they thought that others might as well.  We spent several minutes brainstorming other words with the intent of replacing the word equipped.  When we were through, the three favorite words were "challenges and inspires," and there were a few people who still fought for the word "equips."  We ended up keeping all three words, not because it was easier, but because each of those words means something different that we agreed we wanted for our students.  Let's look at each of them.

Equip
 As I said earlier, there was a contingent in favor of this word because it means giving students what they need.  Imagine that you are an astronaut being sent on a mission.  You would expect NASA to equip you with training time and manuals, a suit, oxygen, biomonitors, etc.  You would expect that the ship would be equipped with fuel, safety devices and procedures, food and water that can be consumed in microgravity, waste disposal equipment, electrical systems, and guidance computers.  As you can see, equipping is hardly a small thing.

When we set out to spiritually equip students, the job is daunting.  We have chapel and Bible classes.  Our English classes teach students to analyze literature, and those skills are useful for Bible analysis as well.  We converse with our students often about spiritual issues.  Tomorrow, our high school students leave for a spiritual retreat, in which they will hear sermons but also be broken into smaller groups to discuss topics that have been specifically chosen for them by the faculty and staff.  While there may be people who thought of this word as small, you can see that God must be the one who does the equipping because it is too big a job for us.

Challenge
Challenging students comes with the job description of any teacher.  English teachers challenge students to raise their level of writing and increase their vocabulary.  Science teachers challenge students to ask big questions and draw conclusions from things they observe.  Foreign language teachers challenge students to speak when it is not comfortable to do so.  In Christian education, all of those things are still there, but we are also tasked with challenging our students to stand up to the influence of their culture, one that is increasingly secular and even militantly atheist.  Sometimes, it feels a bit like we are standing in a raging storm with the culture flashing lightning and blaring thunder, while we shout at our students to fight back.  It would be easy to give up on this if it were up to us.  Fortunately, God will challenge their hearts.  We, their teachers, are merely the tools he uses to do so.

Inspires
If there is any word in the mission statement that I know for sure I am incapable of achieving, it is this one.  I can teach.  I can talk.  I can design lessons.  I can give students opportunities.  I cannot inspire.  Only God can do that, so we as teachers should pray each day that he will.

Almost Obnoxious - Part 2 - Loving Community

GRACE Christian School is a loving community that spiritually and academically equips, challenges, and inspires students to impact their world for Christ.

Last week, I began a series of posts on my school's mission statement, explaining what it meant to be GRACE Christian School.  This week, I continue with the next phrase - Loving Community.

The faculty and staff at GRACE are all in, completely committed to creating a loving community for our students, for their families, and for each other.  I'd like to give a few arenas in which this happens and then address one big challenge.

In Our Classrooms
This is the first place a loving community must start.  Students must know that their teachers love them.  That will look different in a high school class than it does in a first-grade class.  It will involve different activities in math than it does in history.  In some classes, it looks like holding to a strict standard even when a student is asking you not to (which may not feel loving to them at the time but comes from the teacher knowing what is good for the student in the long term).  When teachers love their students, there are a few things that are ALWAYS there, no matter the grade level.

1.  We make decisions that have been well thought through rather than just reacting to the moment. It is unloving to give them what they want rather than what they need.
2.  We take the time to plan lessons that matter.  It is unloving to waste their time.
3.  We listen to students.  It is unloving to talk at them all the time rather than conversing with them.

4.  We give students the opportunity to grow.  It is unloving to give a student a good grade because you have held low expectations.  If they aren't better when they leave you than they were when they came, you have not loved them.

In the Cafeteria, Athletic Events, Concerts, Plays, etc.
Because our classrooms are places to do business, there is little time to have deep conversations with students about how much we care about them.  (I'm not saying there is no time, but you can't spend so much class time discussing personal things that we don't do what we are there to do.)  When you are at a game, however, there is a built-in assumption that this is a more casual time when we can chat.  I'm not teaching a science lesson in the bleachers (well, sometimes, I do talk about the physics of the sport because I just can't help myself).  Lunch duty is a great time to compliment a kid's taste in clothes or joke with them about a mutual favorite tv show.  Attending their activities, outside of the school day (or even outside of the school), communicates love in a way words cannot.  I'm not saying you need to devote every night of the week to your students, especially if you have a family; but if you attended something once a month of the school year, you would have shown love to your students at nine events.  Maybe your family would enjoy the Christmas concert.  Depending on the play, your kids might love to attend a production.  Some of our teachers bring their spouses to chaperone dances.  I don't know about the kids in your school, but GRACE kids seem to really love it. 

In Your Prayer Life
I am fortunate enough to be in a school where I can pray with my students.  You may not be, but you can pray for them.  It is the ultimate loving act.  It is also a way of finding a way to love the kid that drives you crazy.  My English teacher friend tells her own personal children that you cannot hate someone while you are praying for them.  You can pray for them when they are sick or injured, of course, but you can also pray that God will use you to help them find and develop their gifts. 

With Your Colleagues 
GRACE teachers love each other in an almost obnoxious way.  When one of us has a problem, we rally around each other like you wouldn't believe.  We enjoy each other, laugh together, pray together, and encourage each other's lessons.  You may be in a less supportive environment; but if you can find even one colleague to enjoy, support, and be supported by, you will be glad you did.

Teachers helping each other on graduation night

THE CHALLENGE
Creating a loving community is hard work.  A school is building full of sinners, so there are personality conflicts, egos, gossip, etc. just like there is anywhere else.  That's challenging enough just among adults.  Add to it the fact that we are spending our day with kids, and it is an even bigger challenge.  You can't have a loving community if the kids don't invest in it as well.  This requires implementing policies, activities, and programs that give kids the opportunity to exercise love.  It means modeling love for them and apologizing to them when you fall short.  It requires calling them out when they fall short and giving them opportunities for redemption.  None of this is easy, but it is rewarding.

Almost Obnoxious - Part 1 - GRACE Christian School

In a recent meeting, the head of school said that we should be almost obnoxious about carrying out our mission.  I like this phrase and kind of want it on a T-shirt.  I would put the mission statement on the back; it would be great.  Since that would be pretty expensive, I'll have to be almost obnoxious in other ways, like having the mission statement displayed in my classroom in three places (every wall seemed obnoxious, so three seemed almost obnoxious) and using my blog to really dive deeply into our mission by dissecting it into phrases and discussing how each one plays out in the classroom.  Let me begin with the following disclaimer:  I have not run any of this by my administration.  These thoughts are completely my own.

Our mission statement says, "GRACE Christian School is a loving community that spiritually and academically equips, challenges, and inspires students to impact their world for Christ."

Let me start with the first phrase - GRACE Christian School.

Grace is often defined as getting something good that you have not earned and, therefore, do not deserve.  It's difficult in modern culture to know when you are receiving grace because you are told that you deserve good things a hundred times a day.  If you won't believe me, watch daytime television for a couple of hours; the phrase "you deserve" is in almost every commercial.  Students at GRACE get unearned blessings every day in the form of their teachers, their friends, their education, field trips, and a variety of other things.  

Our school is distinctly Christian in staff, goals, and methods.  Someone at an open house asked us to break down our emphasis on the Bible and academics into a percentage balance - "like is it 70/30? 50/50?"  I was pretty shocked when I heard about this because I don't believe I can separate the two.  The percentage breakdown is 100/100 because every teacher at GRACE is a Christian all day long and carries that with them into everything, whether it is being stated verbally at each moment or not.

We are a school.  We are teachers, not camp counselors or youth group leaders.  A student will receive a solid education from me and my colleagues.  We will make decisions that are in their best interests, not those that are easiest for us or them.  

In the coming weeks, I will discuss our loving community and how we carry out this statement, which is, on our own and outside of Christ, impossible to fulfill.  It is far too much for one post, so stay tuned.

What I Wish I had Known My First Year

As the new school year is about to begin, there will be thousands of young men and women entering the classroom for the first time as teachers.  If you have made this career choice, congratulations.  That's not an easy thing to do in 2018.  The early part of this year was filled with teachers protesting all over the country, so you may think that it is a pretty lousy job that you will do in poor conditions (and they may actually be true in some places).  Someone in your life probably tried to talk you out of teaching in the last four years, attempting to convince you that you could make more money doing something else or that you wouldn't be safe because news coverage of school gun events make it seem like every school has one (much like plane crashes give people fear of flying even though the numbers are quite small).  At some point, someone has probably used "Those who can, do . . ." in their attempt to dissuade you from following the call of education.  So, before I mention some things I wish I had known, let me congratulate you for ignoring all of that to choose this profession.  It has its challenges, yes; but you will soon find that those challenges are far outmatched by its rewards. 

All that said, there may be nothing more difficult to get through than your first year of teaching.  Other than student teaching, there isn't a way to experience it until you are in a room alone with your students, who, along with their parents, expect you to be as good as the teacher they had last year even though that teacher had 15 years of experience to your 1 day.  Keeping a few things in mind will help.

1.  It's okay to not know the answer.  Students will ask questions every day that you won't know the answer to.  Don't be scared of that.  There is too much knowledge in your discipline for you to have it all in your head.  After a while, you will find it to be your favorite thing when a student asks you a question you don't know the answer to.  You will know that it means you are doing well, engaging students beyond the text.  In the first year, however, it can be frightening.  You might think that the students will think you are dumb if you don't know the answer.  In reality, they will respect your authenticity.  If there is time, google their question (or ask them to) to model the search for knowledge and the finding of credible sources online.  If there isn't time, tell them you will look it up (and write it down on a post-it so you will remember to look it up.  They will be floored if you return the next day with an answer to the question they may have forgotten they asked.  "I don't know" is a powerful sentence.  Use it.

2.  Don't be afraid to ask.  A lot of first-year teachers are afraid to ask for help.  I think it is self-protective because you think your job will be more secure if you look like you've got it all together.  Any administrator or colleague worth their salt will know that you don't have it all together because no one does.  Your school may have assigned you a mentor teacher.  That may be great.  If it is, ask them as many questions as you need to.  If that isn't great (because sometimes it isn't), befriend a teacher near you and make them your unofficial mentor.  If you have an administrator who is open, ask them questions.  They probably have experience in the puzzle you are trying to solve, so you want to know what they know.

3.  You don't have to say yes to everything you are asked.  You are going to be asked to do a lot of things, and you are going to feel like you have to say yes.  Parents will ask you to do things specifically for their child.  Some of those will be legitimate, and some won't.  If you don't know the difference, see point 2 and ask another teacher.  You will be asked to sponsor more clubs than you can handle.  It is okay to say, "I wish I could, but I am already the sponsor of two clubs."  I promise the student will not hate you forever. 

4.  Silence is more powerful than words.  When students are misbehaving, it is easy to go into lecture mode.  The problem is that lectures don't work.  Kids are used to being lectured.  Their lives are filled with sound.  If you refuse to speak, you will get their attention far better.  I don't do this often, but there are times when kids have gotten out of hand during a review game, when I've stopped or warned several times, when the kids are just not listening, that I have stopped and said, "You obviously don't need me" and then sat down at my desk and said nothing for the rest of the period.  (Don't try this if there are more than five minutes left in class.)  If you decide to try this, resist the urge to speak; don't even make eye contact.  Sit down and start grading something.  It freaks the kids out so much that you can hear a pin drop during that time. 

5.  Be the one in charge.  The easiest thing to be in your first year is the "fun teacher" until it isn't easy anymore.  A few months in, when the kids believe they can get away with murder, it becomes incredibly difficult.  Being the one in charge doesn't mean that you have to be mean and never smile.  You can do fun things in your classroom, but you will be the one who decided to do it.  You can enjoy your students without giving them everything they ask for.  My students know that they are not to take things off my desk without permission.  I rarely say no when asked, but they should not presume that I will be without asking.  Once it is established that you are the decider of what happens in your classroom, you can sing and dance and give them candy (although I don't recommend that) without losing your authority.  Kids don't say they appreciate this, but they do.  They don't actually like the easy, fun teachers that they can push around.  I know this because I've heard them complain about those teachers.

6.  Misbehavior is rarely personal.  Most books will tell you that the poor behavior of students is never personal, but I take issue with that.  On rare occasions, there will be a kid that just hates you know matter what you do and will try to take things out on you.  That is exceedingly rare, so you should treat most misbehavior as a kid's lack of impulse control and the testing of boundaries.  Even with those kids for whom it is personal, don't react to it that way.  It will only escalate the situation, turning it into a power struggle.  Avoid power struggles whenever possible because you have professional boundaries they don't have, making it hard for you to win.

7.  Have backup plans for your backup plans.  The thing that was hardest for me to navigate in my first year was timing.  I'd walk into a classroom with a plan I thought would fill 50 minutes, and it might take 20 minutes or 3 class periods.  It's just difficult to know until you have done it.  You need some things that you can do any day.  I have a bell in my room.  If I notice we are finishing up early, I pull out the bell and put it on my cart.  Then, I call out pairs of kids to the cart and ask them questions about things we have done in this chapter.  It's the quickest way to have a review, and you can fill time with it until you run out of material.  You are going to have a plan for a great lesson that requires the internet on a day when the internet is down, so you should be able to teach that material with a marker and whiteboard if you have to.  You do NOT want students with nothing to do.

8.  Apologies don't make you look weak.  When you have done something wrong, own it.  Apologize to the student you smarted off to.  Apologize to the class if you graded something wrong.  Make every effort to fix it.  You will strengthen your relationships with those students.

9.  Enjoy your job.  This job is hard, but it is also the most enjoyable way to spend a day.  You get to go to work, not at an office or on a roadside, but in a room full of youthful enthusiasm.  Your kids can tell you great stories.  They will teach you things you didn't know.  They will make you laugh.  If you can't enjoy those things, teaching may not be your calling.  If you can, it makes even difficult days better.

A Life of Positivity

I just came home from a funeral that lasted two hours.  I've never been to a funeral that lasted that long, but Ronald Butler was a man who had accomplished much and been loved by many in his 84 years.  A person from each stage of his life spoke, and they had many stories to share.  (Plus, three of those sharing were preachers and one an educator, so there's that to consider.)  The common theme from every speaker was that this was a man who was positive and energetic about all activities with all people from the time he was a child growing up with little to his last years of suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

I'm sure everyone in the room could have shared their own story, and I have one as well.

When I was thirteen, I was concerned about my approaching adulthood.   Don't get me wrong; it wasn't that I didn't want to grow up.  It was simply that every adult I knew talked about their work negatively.  They dreaded Mondays, lived for the weekend, needed vacations, and watched the clock.  Considering that the average adult spends 5 days out of 7 at work, I was not looking forward to the idea that I would dread over 70% of my life.

I decided to take a little survey.  I was in the church choir, so one night at rehearsal, I stood near the door.  As people came in, I asked them to tell me what came into their mind when I said "job" or "work."  Most people sighed, moaned, or grunted something discouraging.  This was a Sunday afternoon, and it seemed no one was looking forward to Monday morning.  When Ronald came in, I asked him the same question.  He smiled brightly and said, "I love my work.  It's great to . . ." and proceeded to expound and the people he worked with and the pride he felt in doing something important and how much he enjoyed interacting with students and faculty and administration (He was working in a college at this point, but he had also taught high school).

He may have been the only person to answer this way, but he made me know it was possible to do work that you enjoyed.  He didn't dread Monday morning; he loved it.  He didn't live for the weekend; he lived each day doing what God had for him that day.  I resolved then and there to find work that mattered to me and that I enjoyed doing.  That conversation made a big difference in my life, and I appreciate Ronald Butler for giving it to me.

Since this blog is about education, let me give teachers this one piece of advice.  Kids are looking to you for input about what adult life and work life means.  Speak negatively, and you will contribute to their fear.  Speak positively, and you will contribute to their hope.

Learning Styles Aren't What You've Been Told

Disclaimer:  I am a classroom teacher, not a lab researcher.  I have done my best to represent the research I have found, but I do not claim to have found every study or conclusion.  

Just in case you have lived under an educational rock for the last thirty years, here's a quick rundown of learning style theory.  The idea was that each child is born with a particular predisposition for the method in which curriculum is presented.  Visual learners would do better if the information was presented visually.  Auditory learners did well by listening carefully but would find visual aids a distraction.  Tactile and kinesthetic learners need to manipulate or perform labs in order to learn.  Teachers have been trained for the past three decades to find the learning style of each student and try to reach them using that style.  It sounded good.  It sounded logical.  It seemed virtuous to reach each student in the way their brain was designed.

Teachers always want to do what is best for kids, but we need to be careful that it is research-based, not just something that sounds good in a workshop.  The idea of individual learning styles sounded right, and we taught kids to find theirs for two generations.  The problem is that research doesn't back up what we have been telling them.  In fact, there are multiple studies that show potential harm from buying too much into the concept.

MRI's have been quite instructive on the function of the brain, but it is taking time for the findings to make their way into instructional practice.  Brain imagery has revealed that while the brains of different people will show activity differences based on academic disciplines (showing support for the theory of multiple intelligences), it does not behave differently if the same information is presented in different formats.  The conclusion of these researchers is that the presentation style is a preference, in the same vein as a favorite color or preferred musical style. 

It is difficult to let go of the "matching" approach to learning styles even when we know differently.  So, what's a teacher to do?  Instead of trying to match individual students, controlled experiments are now showing that it is best to match the style to the material being presented.  If we think about it for a moment, this just makes sense.  No geometry teacher would ever think that they should teach in an auditory only way, even if every student in the room was an "auditory learner."  No one who teaches poetry would think that they needed a kinesthetic approach, no matter what the preference of the students because that just doesn't make sense with the material.

As a teacher, think deeply about the material you are presenting and the best method for presenting it rather than trying to work in circles around all your student preferences.  Allow them to process according to their own preference.  It may actually be helpful for a student who has heard you teach material in an auditory method to draw visualizations of what they have heard or summarize it to themselves out loud as their method of internalizing material may be useful, but that simply requires that you as a teacher give them a bit of time for individual reflection.

Recognizing our Needs

I recently engaged in the futile exercise of trying to have a rational debate with someone on Twitter.  (I know, folly, right?)  The topic, if you can believe it, was the need for faculty meetings.  Perhaps, it is because my colleagues are fabulous people who I enjoy spending time with.  It could be because I'm single and want to be with people.  Maybe, I'm just weird.  Whatever the cause, I think faculty meetings are important and valuable uses of time.  While I don't believe in meetings just for the sake of meetings or the time-suck that is announcing things that could have been handled in email form, I totally believe in the value of a group discussion among people who teach different things.  There is wisdom that comes from differing perspectives.  The person I was arguing with online could only see that they could be "doing something else with that time."

Every summer, I volunteer at a weeklong camp, during which I have no contact with anyone except the camp folk and the photo desk lady at WalMart.  When we return home, we have a dinner with our families.  Stories are shared, the camp video is screened, and acknowledgments for years of service are given.  In recent years, some of the staff have balked at staying for the dinner after having been gone from home all week.  Again, I may be strange; but for me, camp wouldn't end properly without the dinner.  If I just drove straight home from the campground, I wouldn't have any emotional boundary between camp and not-camp.  Our directors are open to condensing the format, but last year, one of them said, "We will have something because you have a psychological need for it."

Analyzing these two events and other events in church and school life, it occurs to me that we are really bad at recognizing our own needs.  We tend to be short-sighted and want-focused.  The guy on Twitter who doesn't like faculty meetings can only see that hour and how many papers he could grade how he could go home an hour earlier if he weren't in a meeting.  He doesn't recognize that these conversations bring him perspectives he wouldn't otherwise have and, therefore lead him to better understand his students and improve his craft.  (To be fair, I know nothing about his school and whether or not their meetings are helpful or not.)

If we, as adults who have lived long enough to have had the experience of not getting what we want and being glad for it later, are bad at recognizing our needs, how much more might our students need help in analyzing their own needs vs. wants and short-term vs. long-term benefits and costs.  As with most things, doing this requires active reflection, a skill that requires training.

We have many opportunities with students to guide their thinking.  Some of it comes up in the material we teach.  Some may be done by modeling our own reflection process.  Some can be done in reflection at the end of a project or through a blog assignment.  Most of our opportunities, however, are unplanned moments.  When a student is frustrated by not getting something they want (the role they wanted in a play, becoming a starter on the basketball team, not getting the grade they were hoping for, etc.), we have the responsibility to help them process beyond the current moment while sympathizing with them in the moment.  If you remember being a teenager, every emotion feels like the whole world hinges on it.  As adults, we know that isn't true.  We can show them that it is okay to feel sad about something and then ask them questions that will help them put it in a larger perspective.  Be aware enough of your surroundings to take advantage of those moments, and your teaching will go beyond curriculum.