Sharing Joy, Sharing Life, Sharing Faith

Friday before school I watched our family grow to 6 grandchildren. No nurse, midwife, or doctor assisted, but a judge directed the proceedings. We’ve loved this little boy for a while, along with our daughter and son-in-law who have adopted him, and now he is legally theirs, and by extension, ours.

My daughter, her husband, their 2 birth children, and their soon-to-be middle son were in the courtroom, along with a small, supportive community of family and friends. And because COVID has made live streaming options standard, we (along with several more family members) were able to join virtually.

The judge was so joyful and kind. She engaged with the 3-year-old across the bench from her, between his mom and dad and 2 brothers. She asked him what he liked doing with his family. He replied, “Playing in the backyard and having fun.” So as part of the adoption ceremony, she made him a little charge: “Do you promise always to play the backyard and have fun with your brothers?” 

Later that day at school, I showed my 6th and 7th graders the family picture (see above) I’d used as an example of an image at the beginning of the term when I introduced both the family I’d visited during the summer vacation and the importance of people being created in the image of God. (It may have involved tearing out my husband’s head—see this blog post.) Then I pointed to one of the little boys and said, “You may remember that I told you my daughter and her husband were working to adopt this child. Well, it just became official.”

The kids cheered, clapped, and offered congratulations.

I showed them screen shot I’d taken of the courtroom proceedings. I let them know that I was sharing this with them because they are my class, we are a community, this is a big deal in my life, and in communities, we share life’s big deals. 

I also told them I was sharing it because it was connected to the novel study we were doing—A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park. No, it’s got nothing to do with South Sudan or the global issues of water scarcity, girls’ education, ethnic conflict, or refugees. But not all human needs are far away; many also exist in our own community. The point is to keep our eyes and hearts open to the needs of our fellow image bearers, our neighbors who God loves and requires us to love, whether they are far away or near by. My daughter and her husband saw this little boy who needed the care and love of a family, and they said, “God loves you, and we do, too. We will be your family.” 

Finally, I told my students that it was my deep hope that everything they learn at school would help them to be the kind of people who would step up to make a difference, too. Who would live in the world with their eyes wide open to all the blessings they have received, to all those neighbors near and far who don’t have the same blessings, and who would actively work to be part of the solution, part of the healing, part of God’s bringing justice and peace to the world. None of us can do everything, but all of us can do something.

May we all be that kind of people. Shalom.

What Type of Relationship with School Leadership Helps You Flourish?

Rice ripening toward harvest--the image of flourishing that meets my eye every day on my walk to school

The summer I was 15, my family moved, and my understanding of community was born. The church that had called my dad as pastor, 350 miles away, had a thriving young adult group of college graduates and young married couples. It also had only one other high schooler. 

The young adult group, however, embraced the two of us teenagers, modeling healthy relationships and immersing us in their community. They included us in their Wednesday night Bible studies, came to my basketball and volleyball games, bought me my first pair of hiking boots, got me every summer job I ever had, and one brave soul even parked his Peugeot in the parsonage driveway while he went on vacation, gave me one lesson in driving a stick shift, and told me to use it if I needed. 

They were my formative example of a Christian community flourishing in terms of healthy relationships.  I want the students at my international Christian school to experience similar flourishing as they develop healthy relationships with teachers.

But who will provide those healthy relationships for the teachers? For me, experiencing healthy relationships at school is vital. When I experience vibrant, healthy relationships, I experience joy and energy (instead of discouragement and a feeling like I’m slogging through things). And when I experience healthy relationships, I’m better able to build healthy relationships with my colleagues and my students.

As I look back on my 35 years in international Christian education, I’m grateful to school leaders (heads of school, principals, and department chairs) for demonstrating trustworthiness, support, respect, empowerment, and Christ-centeredness, five building blocks of healthy relationships. I deeply hope you are experiencing each of those building blocks consistently, daily.

You might be wondering, “What exactly does that look like? What exactly does it look like for school leaders to demonstrate trustworthiness, support, respect, empowerment, and Christ-centeredness?” Let me explain.

(1) When staff experience trustworthy leadership, they feel can rely on leaders to have both the character and expertise to do the job. The leadership is authentic, realistic, and reliable, as opposed to inaccurate, unrealistic, and unreliable. It could look like turning to a principal for help with a discipline problem knowing she wants to help, not blame; will have multiple strategies to try; and will follow through until the problem is resolved.

(2) When staff experience supportive leadership, they feel that the leaders see their strengths and struggles, are cheering them on, and have their backs. The leadership is understanding, encouraging, and protective, as opposed to suspicious, discouraging, and defensive. It could look like genuine curiosity about class displays or offering to field a parent complaint. 

(3) When staff experience respectful leadership, they feel the leaders rely on them to have both the character and expertise to do the job. The leadership is appreciative, considerate, and humble, as opposed to unaware, inconsiderate, and self-absorbed. In an international setting especially, it is crucial to be aware of what respect looks like to different cultures, to show respect across the cultures, to be sure all cultures feel respected and give respect. It could look like making a clear explanation of what western education is like available to teachers from non-western cultures (see here or here). Or it could look like a specific, targeted thank you, or like a leader who teaches one or more classes investing the time to consistently attend meetings of the department she teaches in. 

(4) When staff experience empowering leadership, they feel invited into collaborative purpose-building and trusted to make decisions that will further that purpose—rather than feeling micro-managed. The leadership gives responsibility, freedom, and trust, rather than being controlling in terms of vision, information, and resources. It could look like staff trying project-based learning, book clubs, blogging, podcasting, or Skype connections with classes in other countries. (Sometimes empowering leadership is terrifying. For me, it looked like being invited into the position of department chair and then curriculum coordinator when I did not feel prepared or inclined—but the leaders who invited me saw my potential better than I did!)    
  
(5) When staff experience Christ-centered leadership, they are welcomed into the spiritual life of a school-centered disciple-making leader. They come to understand what it means, at least to one person, to be a person, educator, leader, and colleague who loves Jesus, wants to be more like him, and wants the school to be a place where students experience God’s love, develop their God-given potential, and learn about God, his world, and their place in it. It could look like leaders starting every meeting with a short devotional relevant to an important aspect of the school vision or participating in regular staff prayer times.  

Bottom line? Staff tend to reproduce their experience for students. Experiencing healthy relationships with leadership will set staff up to have healthy relationships with colleagues and with students. To this end, my deep hope is that you are consistently experiencing trustworthy, supportive, respectful, empowering Christ-centered leadership.

How about you? What’s your experience with healthy/unhealthy relationships? What type of relationship with leadership helps you flourish? What type of relationship with leadership helps you develop healthy relationships with students?

What Type of Relationship with Staff Helps Students Flourish?

My 3 oldest grandchildren all started school this year: kindergarten and 2 different levels of preschool. What if, as they step out into this next phase of growth, any one of them felt their teacher didn’t like them? It would break my heart. It would break my heart not only because I love them and think everyone else should too, but also because…

• They are image bearers of God, worthy of respect and created for connection.
• They will be best discipled into the mutuality of the body of Christ by experiencing the adults around them practicing emotionally healthy spirituality. 
• They will best learn the content, skills, and mindsets essential to a flourishing adult life from teachers they feel value, know, and respect them as people and as learners.  

The significance of relationship in teaching is corroborated by research. Relationships aren’t the frosting on the cake of education. Jeff Myers summarized some of the findings in his book Cultivate: Forming the Emerging Generation through Life-on-Life Mentoring (30-31): 

• "Students’ sense of being liked, respected and valued by a teacher predicted whether they would value the subject matter and expect success."
• "Students who believed their teacher cared for them believed they learned more."
• "Students’ feelings of being accepted by teachers were significantly related to emotional, cognitive and behavioral engagement in class."
• "Teachers who expressed greater warmth tended to develop greater confidence in students."
• "Teachers’ nurturing behaviors were related to students’ adoption and internalization of teachers’ goals and values."
• "Teachers’ interpersonal relationship skills were significantly associated with students’ achievement motivation and self-esteem." 

Every student that walks into my classroom is someone’s grandchild. I want them to flourish, as I want my grandchildren to flourish--a flourishing that springs from roots sunk deep into healthy relationships with teachers. My deep hope is that students in my classroom and at my international Christian school are experiencing caring, collaborative, respectful Christ-centered staff.

What does this look like? For me...

(1) Students experiencing caring staff includes: 

• Checking my own heart. Do I truly value, respect, and want to know every student? This is such an important opportunity to remember God in Jesus deeply loves me and completely accepts me, and nothing I do can make him love me any more or any less. How, then, can I not live that grace for my students?  
• Making the implicit explicit. When was the last time I told my students I like them, I believe they can master this important and difficult thing, and I get so excited when I see them grow? When I give feedback, I make sure I tell them that their identity is separate from their performance, and I don’t like them any more when they perform well or any less when they perform poorly. (Check out Dave Stuart Jr's video, “It's Not Personal; It's Only Business,” especially 0:35-2:13.)  
• Reading middle grades novels. Okay, this is not mandatory, but it’s a fantastic opportunity. Reading fiction increases empathy. So for me, reading middle grades novels not only gives me titles to recommend to my growing readers, it also keeps me in touch with their emotional lives. For example, Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt puts me in the shoes of a student struggling with dyslexia. While I Was Away by Waka T. Brown puts me in the shoes of a Japanese American girl suddenly dropped into her heritage culture. New Kid by Jerry Craft puts me in the shoes of a Black child finding his place in a mostly white school.    
• Tracking student connections. The intentionality is important for me, because if I don’t pay attention, I will naturally connect more with some students and less with others. Tracking reading conferences ensures I have at least one individual conversation with every student every 2 weeks. Dave Stuart Jr. tracks Moments of Genuine Connection (MGCs). The 2x10 strategy is widely recommended for students proving particularly challenging.

(2) Students experiencing collaborative staff includes: 

• Exhibiting real curiosity. Curiosity about everything from what students are thinking (“tell me more”) to authentically wondering why class norms are being violated before jumping to a rebuke. I ask questions like, “Can you tell me why this group seems to be off task?”, “Can you tell me why I don’t have your paper?”, and “Can you tell me why you are falling asleep?"
• Normalizing questions. Even celebrating them. If I can move students from thinking of questions as exposing ignorance (asking embarrasses the student and the teacher because it implies a failure in the teaching or the learning) to pursuing understanding, I will be happy. I’ve moved from saying, “Are there any questions?” to “What questions do you have?” to “Ask me three questions.” And if I’m stumped, I admit it and model an inquisitive mindset: “That is a great question. I’ll research it and let you know.” Or sometimes, “Why don’t you research it and let us know?”
• Making the implicit explicit. I reiterate why collaboration is important: We’re smarter together than apart. I teach students how to collaborate: Here are some sentence stems for collaboration. I highlight the benefits of collaboration as it happens: “You know, Alice’s question just made me think of something I hadn’t before….”  

(3) Students experiencing respectful staff includes for me: 

• Having high expectations. This includes teaching whatever students need to reach those high expectations—even when it seems they “should have learned that by now”—whether it is organization or note taking or respectful discussion. As Dave Stuart Jr. says, “Teach everything and anything that you expect your students to do well. And then, reinforce it with relentless passion and optimism and gentleness and zeal.” 
• Being culturally aware. In a multicultural classroom, this means being aware of students’ home cultures, the ways those cultures can be valued in my class and the ways they may foster frustration from unstated expectations, being explicit about the collaborative learning culture I am working to develop in my class. For more information, The Culture Map by Erin Meyer is a helpful explication of how cultures can differ on 8 different scales. Some international Christian schools in Asia address these expectations by articulating for parents and students what their learning culture looks like (see here and here).    
• Normalizing learning mistakes. That means making them safe, expected, even celebrated. I start with taking my own learning risks (like the time I stepped up to a poetry open mic or when I read and write in Japanese while my EFL class reads or writes in English). Then I provide multiple low-stakes opportunities for students to experiment. I model my own writing with them--not just polished final drafts, but also notebook entries that just don't work. I work to identify the growth that the mistake indicates. ("You are trying a more complex syntax to express a more complex idea. That's great! Let me show you how writers punctuate that.")     

Students experiencing Christ-centered staff includes for me:

• Telling them my why. Why I love teaching reading, writing, thinking, speaking, and listening for the ways language reveals the beauty of creation, connects me to my neighbors and to God, and is an effective tool for pursuing justice in a fallen world. Why I love them. Why I love seeing them grow. What I hope for them.
• Making the implicit explicit. Turning my brain inside out and letting students in on all the ways that love for God and neighbors informs my reading and writing, and all the ways that my reading and writing inform my love for God and neighbors. 
• Embracing the opportunity to apologize. Because I know I am prone to faults and fully forgiven by God, I can drop my defenses and sincerely apologize to students when I have failed them in any way. I can seek to heal rifts and restore relationships. What do I have to lose besides the chance to demonstrate the freedom that God gives?    
• Praying. I pray for students: I have all my students’ names on a stack of index cards, and I pray for at least 5 a day. I pray with a small group of other teachers before school every day. I pray for myself. Taped on the cover of my laptop for me to read before I open it to begin my day's work is a "prayer upon beginning one's work or study," taken from Timothy Keller's book Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God (see photo below).

How about you? What is your deep hope for the relationships students at your school will have with staff? With you? How do you pursue that hope?

What Am I Known for Being Crazy About?

If you could take a pill that would increase your vocabulary, improve your writing, give you more background knowledge, make you smarter, and grow your empathy, would that be magic, or what?! Reading is MAGIC! If you love to read, you can learn ANYTHING! You need to love it because love makes practice easy and practice leads to unconscious mastery. If you don’t love reading, you haven’t found the right book yet. Here, let me help you….

Yes, I am the crazy book teacher at my school. The one whose room is flooded with books that I hand out like candy. The one whose classroom walls are covered with posters proclaiming the benefits of reading (get an infographic here and 17 beautifully illustrated A3 reasons here). The one who may, if she sees you with a book in hand, randomly buttonhole you for a conversation about how you’re liking it. The one who asks for 2 minutes at the all-faculty meeting at the beginning of each trimester to plug the benefits of reading, celebrate online library usage stats, and encourage staff to see me if they want their own “what I’m reading poster” to model an adult reading life and spark student conversations. The one who has read The Book Whisperer, Reading in the Wild, and The Joy of Reading by Donalyn Miller; Readicide and Reading Reasons by Kelly Gallagher; Book Love by Penny Kittle, and Free Voluntary Reading by Stephen Krashen. The one to whom people anonymously return library books gone walkabout. (Yup, that’s happened twice in the last month!)  

For reading, I am “an apologist winsome and sure” (see Dave Stuart Jr.). Dave encapsulates this idea by saying, “[W]e want to become the kinds of teachers who relentlessly, repetitively, confidently, and creatively explain to students why what they're doing in our classes ***matters.***”

It recently struck me, however, I am not yet that for writing. I am not the crazy writing teacher. I can’t roll off a sermonizing spiel like I can for writing. I have my own writing identity from writing these weekly blog posts. I can teach writing pretty well when we have to use it to formulate a response at the end of every unit. I talk about reading like writers. But I don’t fight to get kids writing every day like I do to get them reading every day. 

I’m working to change that. "We learn to write by reading, but writing can make you smarter" (Stephen Krashen). This summer I read some books and used what I learned to create a Short Memoir unit for my 6/7 ELA students that we started the fall term with. Our mentor texts, all available free on CommonLit, were “Funeral” by Ralph Fletcher, “Fish Cheeks” by Amy Tan, and “Little Things Are Big” by Jesus Colon. I chose them for their variety of perspectives: a white boy, a Chinese-American girl, and a Black Puerto Rican man. For each one, we first read like readers, using one of Beers and Probst’s Notice and Note signposts (Contrasts and Contradictions for “Funeral,” Words of the Wiser for “Fish Cheeks,” and Tough Questions for “Little Things Are Big”).  I created a list of possible quickwrite response prompts, based on Linda Rief’s “Do This” prompts in The Quickwrite Handbook. And we did a genre study looking for musts & mights (things all of them had, and things some of them had) across our 3 mentor texts to launch us into writing our own short memoirs (see A Teacher’s Guide to Mentor Texts, Grades 6-12).

Here are my quickwrite response prompts:

(1) “Funeral”: Pick One & Try This (as quickly and as specifically as you can for 2-3 minutes)

• Ralph’s friends tell stories remembering things Ralph did for them. What are some stories your friends might tell about you (or you might tell about another friend)?
• “I thought of all the things I’d done with these guys…” (para 32). Start with this line and list as specifically as you can memories you’ve had with a friend or group of friends.
• Ralph describes Ale’s Woods: “I knew every rock and mushroom and pine tree by heart….I lay on the pine needles, eyes shut, smelling the mix of the piney smell and the good, rotting earth underneath…. Bits of light danced in the deep forest shadows around me. I knew I’d never forget that place.” Describe a familiar place using as many senses as you can.
• How have you said goodbye to a place/person?
• Write about anything this piece brings to mind for you.

(2) “Fish Cheeks”: Pick One & Try This (as quickly and as specifically as you can for 2-3 minutes)

• A time you’ve been embarrassed like Amy (by family), and thought, “What would ___ think?”
• A time you’ve been in a cross-cultural situation like Robert’s family.
• Describe your favorite meal. Use as much specific, sensory detail as possible.
• “You must be proud you are different. Your only shame is to have shame.” These are Amy’s mom’s “Words of the Wiser.” Do you agree? How might these words apply to you?
• Some “Words of the Wiser” someone has told you, or you have read somewhere.
• Write about anything this piece brings to mind for you.

(3) “Little Things Are Big”: Pick One & Try This (as quickly and as specifically as you can for 2-3 minutes)

• Jesus Colon says courtesy is important to Puerto Ricans. What is a value that is important to your culture or group or family?
• A time you saw a situation and had to think hard about what to do about it.
• A promise you’ve made to yourself, like Colon: “So, here is the promise I made myself back then: if I am ever faced with an occasion like that again, I am going to…”
• A time you asked yourself or someone else difficult questions. 
• Write about anything this piece brings to mind for you.

Students' quickwrite responses gave them experience with some professional writer moves: dialogue, descriptive writing using lists, internal dialogue. They were also waiting there in their notebooks of try revising moves on. Here are some examples from student writing notebooks:

• “Funeral” #1, revised to include dialogue. I think I will talk about the day Himeka helped me find my train pass. It made us two late for school so I was really thankful for her being with me. // “Himeka!!” I shouted, “I lost my train pass…!”  
• “Funeral” #2. I thought of all the things I’d done with these guys: went snowboarding and was on a trampoline so long that I puked afterwards. Played ping-pong every Friday, and had a war with Nerf guns.
• “Fish Cheeks” #3, revised to use a list. The savory smell of shouyu and the noodles floating calmly in the brown soup, waiting for me to suck them speedily into my mouth and taste the delicious ramen. // The soup was crowded with appetizing ingredients: the savory chashu, noodles floating, waiting for me to eat them.

The quickwrites also gave students a pool of ideas from which to draw when it came time to produce their own full piece. Several students asked, “Is it okay if I write about the story I started in that quickwrite…?” Score! Writing doesn’t have to be that hard if you keep a repository of ideas as you’ve responded to other writers!

As we drafted and revised, we continued to read like writers. We went back over these short mentor pieces (just over 1 page to just over 2 pages) multiple times, looking at introductions, conclusions, narrative perspective, setting, paragraphing, titles. Students didn’t roll their eyes and groan when I said, “Get out your texts and let’s see how the authors did that.” 

The final drafts will come in next week. I’ve already seen evidence of students using their writing notebooks and mentor texts to shape their writing. I’m looking forward to seeing the finished products. 

I’m still not nearly as good an apologist winsome and sure for writing as I am for reading. But I do feel like I’m shifting, and that’s exciting. I love learning and growing. I love to see my students learn and grow every time I learn something new about teaching.

How about you? How are you an apologist winsome and sure for your class? What are your best lines? Which parts are you not as good at yet? How will you grow?

What Do I Do with a Classroom Full of Immortals?

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal,” C.S. Lewis famously wrote in “The Weight of Glory.” How can I help my 6th and 7th graders—as well as myself!—wrap our brains around that truth, carry it in our hearts and hands, our eyes and mouths, as we live with each other throughout the year?

I have a short, memorable object lesson I like to teach once a year. To see how I've done it with 10th graders, see these posts from 2013 and 2018. I did it Thursday with 6th and 7th graders.  

It was the first day of the fall term. I brought a new family picture we’d had taken over the summer, a combined Mother’s Day/birthday present. I talked to my students for a couple of minutes about my kids and grandkids. Then I tore my husband out of the picture. 

The atmosphere in the room turned electric. Eyes popped. Jaws dropped. Horrified gasps and embarrassed giggles escaped. Everyone’s attention was focused. 

“What’s wrong?” I asked, feigning innocence.

“That’s your husband!” a student blurted.

“No, it’s not,” I answered, holding up the scrap of paper. “My husband is much bigger. Thicker. Three dimensional. He walks and talks. This is a piece of paper with some ink on it.”

“But it’s a symbol,” another student offered. (Ah! That one’s been paying attention in English class!)

“You’re right,” I said. “This piece of paper is not my husband, but because it bears his image, it has significance, and how I treat it is important. Similarly, the Bible says that God created people in his image. That means you. You aren’t God, but because you bear his image, you have significance, and how I treat you, how you treat each other, how we treat every person we meet, is important. How you perform in class this term has no effect on the respect and love I have for you. And I want to help you develop all the language skills God has given you. So let’s go!”

What does this lesson mean for the rest of the year?

First, by the grace of God, I now have to hold myself to that commitment—that class performance has no effect on the respect and love I have for a student. It is what God tells me —as his redeemed child, nothing I do can make him love me any more or any less. Now, I can show my students a shadow of what I have received. If not me, then who? Who will show them God’s love? 

Next, I want to take the opportunity of returning evaluations or giving feedback to remind students of my respect and love for them apart from their performance. I want to follow the lead of Dave Stuart Jr., who says at this point, “I externalize something that’s true. I say, ‘I never like you more when you do well on a paper; I never like you less when you do poor on one. I never like you more when I’m giving good feedback; and I never like you less when I’m giving you difficult feedback. You can’t earn my love through doing good; you can’t lose my love through doing bad.” Check out Dave in the video below, “It's Not Personal; It's Only Business,” especially 0:35-2:13. 

Actually, the principle of being God’s image bearers is foundational to the rest of the year. It’s why I believe that every student has a voice and ideas that need to be heard in the class and in the world, so we will learn how to find those ideas, to talk about them, to write about them, to listen to each other. It’s why we treat each other with respect in the classroom. It’s why we’ll read, for example, A Long Walk to Water to learn empathy for other image bearers, care for the creation entrusted to us, and a passion for justice.

So here’s looking forward to the new term with a classroom full of immortal image bearers of God! May we truly learn to see each other, see ourselves, as such. 

How about you? How do you help your students understand what it means that people bear God’s image? What practical implications does this have in your class?