During this Lenten season, I have been . . . trying to pay attention to the divine presence and what my role is in God’s plan to bring all things together in Christ. How do we actually experience God’s presence beyond an intellectual affirmation?
Sacred Spaces
Last year I was visiting a beautiful new school building (that’s you, Minnehaha), a facility rebuilt after a horrific explosion that destroyed much of the former campus. The staff spent countless hours with architects and builders to imagine the new space. Walking into a place that has been so thoughtfully imagined, so intentionally designed, so intimately prepared felt like a … Read More
Nurturing the Caterpillar: Ten Characteristics of Young Learners
We wouldn’t feed the caterpillar the same food as the butterfly. Similarly, we shouldn’t assume young children learn the same way adults do. Recognizing the unique way that young learners engage and learn can shape the way we educate, and ultimately invite young children into God’s story.
Lessons for Teachers From the Sons of Sceva
All the best methods, procedures, techniques, and curriculum won’t make the difference in your classroom if you don’t have love for your students and an desire to connect them with the material.
Lessons from a Taxi Driver
A taxi ride to the airport turned into an intuitive discovery for understanding the process of professional development. If you are an experienced teacher, you understand that when students walk into your classroom, you never really know what you are going to get, and that, “the success of our teaching depends on those moment-by-moment decisions as much as any lesson or project plan.”
How to Use a Textbook for Deeper Learning: A lesson for our times
I always used textbooks in my classes … but never how they were intended. They were valuable for me, as the teacher, to identify the important ideas in whatever subject I was teaching. We didn’t have state standards then, so I relied on the wisdom of the experts to break big topics (Ancient History, Simple Machines, Colonial Life, Force and … Read More
RAFTs: A Creative Way to Demonstrate Understanding
Whether teaching on-line or face-to-face, RAFTs is an engaging strategy that encourages writing across the curriculum and provides opportunities for students to demonstrate understanding in creative ways. The strategy invite students to assume a role, consider their audience, examine a topic from a relevant perspective, and write in a particular format.
The Third Way
The dualistic mind, upon which most of us were taught to rely, is simply incapable of the task of creating unity. It automatically divides reality into binary opposites and does almost all its thinking inside of this highly limiting frame. It dares to call this choosing of sides “thinking” because that is all it knows how to do! “Really good” … Read More
Third Thoughts on Curiosity
When one of my grandsons comes to stay, you can be sure that among the first books he plucks off the bookshelf and curls up on the couch to read is How Things Work. He has a delightful curiosity in how aspects of the created order function (such as photosynthesis or the limbic system) or how human re-creations operate (such … Read More
Second Thoughts on Curiosity
One thing I am curious about is the heart. I wonder why your heart goes faster when you run. I am so curious about the heart that beats. –Bryannah, 2nd grade I’m curious about how a brain thinks. What does a cerebral cortex do? I want to learn more about people’s brains so I can read people’s minds. —Devon, 2nd … Read More