Steppingstones to Curriculum: A Biblical Path by Van Brummelen Harro

Author:Van Brummelen, Harro [Van Brummelen, Harro]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Purposeful Design Publications
Published: 2001-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

• Linda Samland’s school emphasizes how humans share insights, gifts, and resources, and thus care for each other in community. Devotionsand communal prayer begin each day. Cooperative classroom and assembly activities contribute to the school’s being a caring community, as do special activities such as holding a cookie sale to buy Christmas gifts for poor people in the community. The choice of unit themes reflects this concern. A unit on building, for instance, explores how we work together to erect buildings, but more than that, how this shapes lives in community. The school helps students see how God calls them as persons with special gifts to be important “puzzle pieces” in the Body of Christ and in society. All units provide activities suited for diverse learning styles and for students with a spectrum of abilities.

• Hugo Vanderhoek uses a collaborative approach in his sixth-grade language arts/art unit on comics. He applies, for instance, the jigsaw technique by which students first learn the features of different types of comics in an expert group. They then report back to their home group. Each student has a specific role as he or she works in a group: checker for understanding, encourager, recorder, taskmaster, gatekeeper, reporter, or gofer. The students depend on each other but are also individually accountable for completing assignments. They are carefully taught the necessary skills for working effectively as a group. Vanderhoek also explains and monitors how to check for understanding and how to listen attentively. Each group gets cards with suggestions: make eye contact; ask questions such as, Will you explain? What does that mean? or What were your reasons? In the debriefing the teacher not only sums up the main content points but also reviews how the groups implemented these skills.

Schools must help students realize how functioning as trustworthy individuals depends on being constructive community members. Indeed, it is self-worship to think that it is possible to be autonomous. God created us in relationship with Him and with other creatures. We are interdependent. We need each other. Communities function only if we strive to be responsible and respectful. We enrich (as well as bruise) each other’s lives. We are part of communities that share common understandings and beliefs.

It is therefore important that schools function as communities that have a clear moral vision and that they adjust their structures and daily routines to reflect their values and goals. Schools also know that as “communities of memory,” they need to tell the story of the community within its cultural setting. Retelling, together with honest assessment, leads to a common understanding. This, in turn, allows students to see themselves as cultural-social beings who realize that public good sometimes overrides personal short-term gain and may even require self-sacrifice (Bowers 1987, 138–43).

Christian school classrooms strive to function as covenant communities. That is, they “foster an environment in which students and teachers take delight in being with each other and build relationships based on a general desire to be with and for others” (Stronks and Blomberg 1993, 110).

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