A Magnificent, Messy Mission

My beach: the beauty, the rhythm of the tides, the dying coral, the old woman picking up trash as we ate breakfast this morning...

What do a beach, a bench, and a book have in common?

They each paint in giant strokes for me what a magnificent world we inhabit, how very messed-up it is, and yet how loved and labored over it is as we all feel moved to salvage it in one way or another. As a Christian, I see a clear explanation of this in the big story of the Bible: God created everything good, sin marred that goodness, but Jesus came to defeat sin and to enroll us in God’s project of ultimately restoring all things. 

In fact, these days, everything I observe, read, experience, or hear about merges into that story. My current heightened sensitivity is due to having spent a good portion of my summer writing up subject area guides for my Christian school that each begin with a philosophy statement couched in these 4 movements of the Biblical metanarrative:

• Creation: What’s God’s purpose?
• Fall: What’s wrong?
• Redemption: What difference does Jesus make?
• Restoration: What will you do?

Here is a list of the 12 subject area philosophies (in alphabetical order):

Art

• Creation: God is creative, enjoys beauty, and communicates some of His truth through His creation. As God’s image bearers, humans are creative, are tasked with developing the potential of creation (including visual art), and can perceive truth as revealed in God’s creation.
• Fall: Because of sin, we glorify art and artists rather than the Creator. We fail to see and develop the possibilities of beauty and creativity within ourselves, others, and God’s creation. We wrongly perceive and wrongly communicate God’s truth seen in His creation.
• Redemption: Because Jesus died and rose to free us from the power of sin, we can use art to glorify God and to develop the potential of creation as God intended. We can see how God reveals Himself through His creation.
• Restoration: The Art Department equips students to walk with God and impact the world for Him. To do this, we help students understand, produce, and respond to art. We do this so students use art to glorify and enjoy God and serve their neighbors as they further develop the potential of God’s creation.

Bible

• Creation: God created all things very good for His own glory. Adam and Eve lived in right relationship with God, creation, each other, and themselves—they glorified and enjoyed God, cared for and developed creation, nurtured flourishing community with each other, and experienced psychological and emotional wholeness.
• Fall: Because of sin, our relationships with God, creation, each other, and ourselves are broken. We worship false gods, abuse creation, hurt and fail each other, and experience psychological and emotional brokenness. 
• Redemption: Jesus lived life as God intended it to be lived—sinlessly and for God’s glory. Jesus died and rose again to free us from the power of sin. All who believe in Jesus are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, restored to right relationship with God, and empowered to live as Jesus did—in healthy relationship with creation, others, and self.
• Restoration: The Bible Department equips students to walk with God and impact the world for Him. To do this, we emphasize sharing the Gospel and discipleship by meeting students where they are spiritually and by helping them (a) to read the Bible, (b) to develop Biblical literacy and a Christian worldview, (c) to think Biblically, and (d) to make and live out an informed commitment to Jesus.

Early childhood education

• Creation: Because God created people in His image, even the smallest child deserves respect and love. They are creative, communicative meaning-makers and truth seekers. They have gifts, and they are able to learn. 
• Fall: Because of sin, society can neglect or misuse children, or simply fail to support their flourishing. Children may face physical, social, emotional, and learning challenges. Children themselves can misuse or abdicate responsibility for their own and their peers’ gifts. 
• Redemption: Because Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me,” we follow His example of valuing children in their whole beings—physical, social, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual—and we introduce them to Jesus. Because Jesus died and rose again to free them from the power of sin, they are free to build meaning in the world God has given them, with the gifts God has given them, in the communities God has placed them, with gratitude to God and love for their neighbors. 
• Restoration: The Early Childhood Education Department (K3, K4) equips students to walk with God and impact the world for Him. To do this, we seek to meet each child where he/she is, support their flourishing as whole beings, ignite their God-given gifts and curiosity, and prepare them to effectively and joyfully rise to the challenges of a formal education that equips them to walk with God and impact the world for Him.

English language arts

• Creation: God made language so we could communicate with Him and with others. Language helps us love God, love our neighbor, and take care of God’s creation.
• Fall: Because of sin, we use language to exalt ourselves, harm others, and grab power. Because of sin, we miscommunicate.
• Redemption: Jesus, the Word, used words to proclaim God’s truth. He died and rose to free us from the power of sin. Because He redeemed us, we can use language as God intended.
• Restoration: The English Department equips students to walk with God and impact the world for Him. To do this, we help students enjoy God’s gift of language and use language to learn about God and His creation, effectively communicate truth, and bring shalom.

Japanese language

• Creation: God created language for power (how He created the earth), connection (how He communicated with people and people with each other), and truth (Jesus is the Word—God’s clearest communication of His truth to humans). People, as His image bearers, continue to use language to develop the potential of God’s creation.
• Fall: After the fall people used language to assert human power over God’s power (Genesis 11), to separate people, and to deceive others.
• Redemption: Jesus embodies how far God will go to re-establish communication. Jesus became human, sacrificed Himself to reconcile us to God, and rose from the dead so we could desire to be reconciled to others. He also sent His Spirit, and at Pentecost the Holy Spirit enabled all to hear the Gospel in their own language, thus showing us God’s vision of unity that will include people from every language praising Him in heaven.
• Restoration: The Japanese Language Department equips students to walk with God and impact the world for Him. To do this, we help students speak, read, and write Japanese language, and understand Japanese culture. We do this so that students will be gracious hosts and/or guests, appreciate the unity in diversity that people have developed as God’s image bearers, and appreciate the interconnection of language and culture. And we do this so that students can, in humility, love their neighbors and communicate the Gospel to them.

Math

• Creation: Math is the language of creation by which it reflects God’s eternality, unchangeableness, orderliness, dependability, logic, justice, beauty, and mystery. As humans discern and apply mathematical patterns, we delight in God, His creation, and our ability as His image bearers to learn. We make predictions, solve problems, discover laws of nature, steward our resources, create beauty (art, music, architecture...), and stand in awe at the limits of knowledge.
• Fall: Because of sin, we glorify the creation rather than the Creator, use math for selfish reasons, and give up in the face of difficulty.
• Redemption: Because He died and rose again to free us from the power of sin, we are free to use math to love and serve God and neighbor, and we are free to persevere in the face of difficulty.
• Restoration: The Math Department equips students to walk with God and impact the world for Him. To do this, we help students understand, appreciate, and apply the patterns of math; and we help hone their problem-solving skills. We do this so that students will glorify God for His attributes seen in math. We also do this so that students will use their knowledge and skills to steward their resources and serve others by reasoning carefully, using data ethically, and furthering uncovering and developing the laws and possibilities God has built into His creation. 

Music

• Creation: God created music for beauty, worship, response to life events, and communication with Him and with others. Music helps us love God, love our neighbor, and develop the potential of God’s creation. 
• Fall: Because of sin, we glorify music and musicians rather than the Creator. We fail to see and develop the possibilities of beauty and creativity within ourselves or others.
• Redemption: Because Jesus died and rose to free us from the power of sin, we can use music as God intended.
• Restoration: The Music Department equips students to walk with God and impact the world for Him. To do this, we help students understand, respond to, perform, and create music. We do this so students use music to worship God, communicate with others, and appreciate beauty.

PE/health

• Creation: God created us as whole people (physical as well as spiritual) in a physical creation, declared it all very good, and set a pattern alternating work with rest. He did this so we could enjoy and care for the physical life of ourselves and our neighbors, in gratitude to God for all His good gifts.
• Fall: Because of sin we idolize or fail to appreciate and care for the physical life of ourselves and our neighbors.
• Redemption: In becoming human, Jesus affirmed the goodness of physical life. In dying and rising again, He freed us from the power of sin so that we could enjoy and care for the physical life of ourselves and our neighbors, in gratitude to God for all His good gifts.
• Restoration: The PE/Health Department equips students to walk with God and impact the world for Him. To do this, we help students to develop skill in movement, to appreciate and steward the health and fitness of the body God has given them, and to collaborate with others.

Science:

• Creation: God created the universe to operate in an orderly system to show His nature and to provide a hospitable home for people. God created people in His image to live in grateful, dependent relationship with Him and to care for His creation as His regents. 
• Fall: Because of sin, our relationships with God, creation, and each other are broken. We glorify the creation (including ourselves) over the Creator. We abuse creation (out of arrogance or ignorance) for our own profit. The creation is not hospitable to us. 
• Redemption: Jesus submitted Himself to physical laws (He was tired and hungry; He suffered and died) and rose above them (He did miracles and rose from the dead). Because Jesus died and rose again to free us from the power of sin, we are free to live in grateful, dependent relationship with the Creator, to delight in and care for creation as His regents, and to further develop creation’s potential in order to serve God and our neighbors.
• Restoration: The Science Department equips students to walk with God and impact the world for Him. To do this, we help students to understand how creation operates and to apply scientific inquiry to learn more in order to develop creation’s potential for God’s glory and to help our neighbors.

Social studies

• Creation: God created people as interdependent, responsible agents charged with caring for each other and creation and with further developing its potential in ways that would build just and flourishing communities.   
• Fall: Because of sin, we are ignorant, apathetic, or Machiavellian about the interactions of societies, environments, individuals, and institutions; and about our responsibility as God’s agents in His world.
• Redemption: Jesus entered history and changed it. He modeled building just community, acting on behalf of the powerless, and speaking the truth to power. Because he died and rose again to free us from the power of sin, we also can use our power to build just and flourishing communities.
• Restoration: The Social Studies Department equips students to walk with God and impact the world for Him. To do this, we help students use their knowledge of the interactions of societies, environments, individuals, and institutions to inform the active exercise of their rights and responsibilities as local, national, and global citizens. We do this so that students will build flourishing communities characterized by peace and justice.

Technology

• Creation: God made people in His image, with the ability and responsibility to creatively develop the potential of creation. This includes making tools (for example, technology) that help us further develop God’s creation and serve our neighbors.
• Fall: Because of sin, we put our trust in the tools rather than in God, and we use the tools to gratify our own desires, to avoid community, and to lie, manipulate, and hurt.
• Redemption: Because Jesus died and rose again to bring us a salvation more sure than the false promises of technology, we are free to use technology as God intended: under His authority, with wisdom, to further develop creation and serve our neighbors. 
• Restoration: The Technology Department equips students to walk with God and impact the world for Him. To do this, we help students understand how to operate technology, evaluate content, work with others, and think critically and creatively as responsible digital citizens. We do this so that students can humbly and creatively use the tools of technology to further develop God’s creation and serve their neighbors.

Woodshop

• Creation: God created a beautiful, functional world. As God’s image bearers, we have the ability and responsibility to further develop the potential of creation by creating beautiful, useful things. We do this with gratitude to God for His good gifts and in service to our neighbors.
• Fall: Because of sin, we overvalue or undervalue the work of our hands. 
• Redemption: Jesus affirmed the dignity of work by learning the trade of carpentry. Because Jesus died and rose again to free us from the power of sin, we can use our skills as God intended—to humbly, diligently, gratefully, joyfully develop the potential of God’s creation and serve our neighbors. 
• Restoration: The Woodshop Department equips students to walk with God and impact the world for Him. To do this, we equip students with the knowledge and skills to repair and create beautiful, useful things, and to serve God and their neighbors in their work.

After writing all that, is it any wonder I see the creation, Fall, redemption, restoration story all around me? Where do you see that story today?

Things I’ve Learned This Year

Inspired by my younger daughter’s post of 2 weeks ago, reflecting on her first year of teaching, marriage, and adulting. It occurred to me that though I’ve been doing all of those things a lot longer, there are things we learn once and they stick with us, and there are things we have to keep learning over and over again. The important thing: Never stop learning.

Things I’ve learned this year:

1. When driving in Japan, you have to remember not only to drive on the opposite side of the road from the US, but also that the windshield wiper and turn signal are on opposite sides of the steering wheel.
2. It is possible to send your children off to college with blithe promises of finding new community, to still be terrified yourself of your first move as an adult, and to survive.
3. People in Okinawa, Japan, are more open and talkative than people in Tokyo, Japan, as a general rule. (The saleswoman at the cellphone store, the old man behind me in line at the grocery store, the woman sitting next to me in the clinic waiting room…I learn pieces of their life stories. Never happened in Tokyo.)
4. Empty-nest life can actually become busier because there is no reason to put work down.
5. You can have 100% humidity and it’s not raining.
6. It can be too hot and sunny to go to the beach.
7. Bare feet on tile floors have a great cooling effect.
8. Family connections via Skype and Facebook are amazing.
9. But they don’t replace the amazingness of actually wrapping your arms around those people.
10. Google Docs has an MLA report template.
11. More about math, science, and all kinds of standards (not just English and social studies) than I ever thought possible. (So THIS is what a curriculum coordinator does?)
12. The connections between said standards are pretty cool. (For instance, modern language standards emphasize learning subject area talk and actual access to stuff via Internet in that language—connects to subject areas and also to technology!)
13. Dragonfruit is a gorgeous color with a mildly sweet, totally bland taste. 
14. Passion fruit is as delicious as anything you ever had labelled with that flavor, but is full of seeds and looks the unappetizing texture of snot. 
15. What my mom meant when she said how humbling it is when your kids gain experiences, knowledge, and expertise beyond your own. (This is one I’ve been relearning every year for a while now, and every year I’m more awed and humbled and amazed.)
16. How to design my own web page.
17. Having your writing rejected hurts. 
18. I can make carnitas that taste just as good as the ones at restaurants in San Diego’s Old Town. 
19. Being a grandma is…surreal. My first grand baby hasn’t actually been introduced to the world outside his mother yet, but I have this weird sense of seeing many layers of time simultaneously: from photos of my parents as babies, to photos of myself as a baby, to memories of having my own babies, and now with my own baby having a baby, I can also imagine more generations backward and forward. 
20. What 2 tons of elementary math books looks like on the back of a flatbed truck, and how to organize 14 people to help unload said books. (More of so THIS is what a curriculum coordinator does?)
21. The delights of having Goodreads friend and posting reviews.
22. Spam has its own section of a grocery store aisle in Okinawa.
23. At 51, I am still growing and learning, and that’s a good thing.
24. But in those 51 years, I have learned some things. And that’s a good thing, too.
25. This prayer, adapted from John Calvin in Timothy Keller’s book Prayer. It is taped to the top of my laptop, and I pray it every morning when I first sit down at my office desk and pull my laptop out of its case: “My good God, Father, and Savior, grant me aid by your Holy Spirit to now work faithfully in my vocation, which is from you, all in order to love you and the people around me rather than for my own gain and glory. Give me wisdom, judgment and prudence, and freedom from my besetting sins. Bring me under the rule of true humility. Let me accept with patience whatever amount of fruitfulness or difficulty in my work that you give me this day. And in all I do, help me to rest always in my Lord Jesus Christ and his grace alone for my salvation and life. Hear me, merciful Father, by our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.”

What have YOU learned this year?

Dragonfruit

My happy place

Me doing my happy thing in my happy place

Experiments with Quick Writes

Quick write from this morning brainstorming this blog

I think I may be a convert.

Last week I committed to doing a daily 10-minute quick write for at least the next week in my blog reflecting on Penny Kittle’s Write Beside Them. I knew that to make most effective use of a writer’s notebook with my classes, I had to be personally committed to their effectiveness for me as a writer. Penny is. 

However, I’ve resisted assigning myself yet another writing task, feeling I write enough already in my personal and professional life—from prayer journal, to Goodreads reviews, to missionary newsletters, to curriculum guides, to this professional practice reflection blog. 

No wonder every time I’ve started the year determined to have students use a writing notebook, it’s turned into more of a reading journal.

But what I learned this week is that 10 minutes a day for rehearsing or brainstorming something I’ll be working on later is actually productive—sometimes as a step toward producing a piece I have to as a professional who writes, and sometimes as writing teacher insight into the experience of writing (joy, frustration, possible topics, process, tips, etc.).  

These were my topics:

• Monday (teaching topic): Why I’m doing this notebook
• Tuesday (interest topic): Stories of partings past, or, handling (or not) good-byes (triggered by a friend’s Facebook post and what a theme this has been for me in my life; Kittle said if you fee the energy, write about it…)
• Wednesday (curriculum topic): Rehearsal for a subject area guide for the technology department (one of my projects this summer as my school’s curriculum coordinator—a 1 1/2-page guide for each of 12 subject areas)
• Thursday (interest topic): List of things I learned this year (inspired by my daughter’s post)
• Friday (curriculum topic): Rehearsal for weekly photo blog on school website
• Saturday (teaching topic): Brainstorming what to write my weekly professional practice reflection blog on (see photo)

What did I learn? In a nutshell, quick writes are not just more writing on top of what I already do. They give me ideas for, traction on, and insight into what I already have to do. 

1. Ideas: The school blog I wrote on Friday after a 10-minute rehearsal in my notebook was the fastest and easiest school blog I’ve ever written.
2. Traction: For the technology subject area guide I rehearsed about on Wednesday, in between doing a lot of research and filling in the spaces on the template, it was helpful to have a free-zone to just begin articulating emphases I’d perceived and questions I still had.
3. Insight: Some days I wrote short (first day getting started; technology subject area guide with original thinking and looking up a definition). Some days I wrote long (with the good-byes topic I definitely hit a vein I’ve thought about before, individual stories I’ve told before, but I was energized by trying to put it all together. Not done, but I did go back another day and add a note about another thought. Put it on my list of topics to write about someday). Students will do the same. Don’t worry. Help them understand why. Some topics, you know you’ve hit a nerve you need to write about (good-byes, what I learned this year). They might make good quick writes for students to find out whether it’s something they need to write about. 

I will keep doing quick writes for the rest of the summer, and I think I’m a lot closer to a place where I actually will have students do them regularly—to get ideas for, traction on, and insight into what they already have to do.

Try a 10-minute quick write per day for a week for yourself and see what you learn. I double-dare you.

P.S. I also learned that sometimes life interrupts writing. As in this photo below. The corner of a notebook you see is my writing notebook. This day’s 10 minutes were not uninterrupted. And with the adrenaline overload I had going, it was hard to get back to the writing even after the spider was long dead. 

The moment itself captured on camera (notice writing notebook in lower right corner)

...and captured in my writing notebook!

Write Beside Them

“I believe each of my students must craft an individual reading life of challenge, whim, curiosity, and hunger. I believe in the collecting, noticing, living work of designing lessons to empower writers. I believe teachers provide vision for students; we live a belief in their success every day we teach.” —Penny Kittle

Penny Kittle is the guru of reading and writing workshop in high school.   If you find the above quote inspiring, skip my blog and order her books—Book Love for reading workshop and Write Beside Them for writing workshop. This summer I read Write Beside Them, and this blog is me thinking through and committing publicly to how I’m going to implement what I read. (See here and here for my responses to Book Love.)

While I can’t quite let go of the good things that happen when the whole class reads and discusses and writes about the same literature, and while I deal with a different sampling of students in my international Christian schools than Kittle does in her US public school, I do believe in teachers modeling and giving students time to do the skills we are teaching—reading and writing. I also understand the significance of choice, knowing your students, and meeting students where they are—which is a wide variety of places.

So here are a few of the effects that having read this book will have on my classes next year:

1. Starting with a tightened focus on narrative in 10th grade—both reading and writing. I did a bit of that last year—reading Amy Tan’s “Fish Cheeks” and writing a personal narrative about an incident from which they learned a significant lesson. But I tried to do way to much in that introductory unit. I’m going to drop Antigone, add a few more short personal narratives, do a better job using the mentor texts, and spend more time processing the writing.
2. Using a writer’s notebook more. This will start with me using one—I want to say for the rest of the summer, but I’m going to start by committing to the next week. I’m going to commit to 10 minutes a day for a quick write (see here for a definition), either on a topic I already want to capture, describe, or explore, or, if I’m drawing a blank, I’ll access a list of quick write topics (see here, here, or here—or Google “quick write prompts” for yourself). I can also use the notebook to record notable mentor sentences or quotes from my reading.
3. Creating a list of grammar/mechanics skills that I will teach and hold students accountable for contextualized in reading and writing. I will use mini-lessons, anchor charts, conferences, and a list against which students self-evaluate. I will use Jeff Anderson as well as Kittle for a source (Kittle, ch. 11 and final portfolio “30 areas indicating my skill/growth” 225).
4. Preparing a more formalized reflection on final drafts. (Kittle calls them “end notes,” see pages 218-19. See below for a sample.) 
5. Consider multi genre project (Kittle, ch. 10).

As far as writing beside them—I resolve to write when students are writing (and when I’m not conferencing), though I do not need to bring pieces to final draft. I am a writer—weekly blogs (this personal one for reflection on my own teaching practice, and another more official PR piece in my role as curriculum coordinator for my school), book reviews on Goodreads, and missionary newsletters. I can also use these as examples of writerly moves.

For continued inspiration as to what can be done with workshop and choice in high school English classes, I also subscribe to the blog “Three Teachers Talk,” in which three high school teachers share their journey and daily triumphs and struggles with teaching workshop style in high school. It keeps me knowing that I don’t have the final answer. And that’s important—to be a learner as we expect our students to be.

Don't Forget to Read for Fun!

I have a special genre of reading material for trans-Pacific airplane flights. I call them “suck-you-in-one-end-and-spit-you-out-the-other-hours-later” books. The kind where you start the book and the next thing you know, you’re done, and half the flight is, too. 

Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple was my most recent read from this genre. A friend recommended it to me about a year ago as sort of fluffy, but engaging and fun, and that’s exactly what it was, and exactly what I needed it to be as I flew from Okinawa to Tokyo to Los Angeles earlier this week. 

I didn’t want Alexander Hamilton—as interesting as it is, I don’t get lost in it because it takes too much brain power. I can only read a chapter or two at a sitting. And besides, the sheer size of it would take up my whole carry-on allowance.

I didn’t want Formative Walkthroughs, which is my current professional reading. That, too, was too much thinking. 

The moral of the story is two-fold:

1. Just like adults, kids read for multiple purposes, too. Maybe they, too, need to read a fluff book every so often. Just help them articulate all the reasons they read, why and when each is appropriate, and set goals for how they are going to keep themselves engaged as well as challenge themselves.
2. Take a break yourself this summer. Do some professional reading, do some stretch reading, and treat yourself to some that’s just easy and fun. 

And now I’m going to post this and go join the family. I’m at my folks’ house in Los Angeles. My sister and niece are here from San Jose. And within the next hour my brother and his family will be arriving from Ohio, and a daughter and her husband from Tennessee. 

Time to fire up the grill and get ready for the 4th of July weekend.