Teachers and Students

This is a part of my submission for 1 of my study unit.

It is about developing a biblical community with our students.

I have attached this portion for the Christian teachers who are reading this blog.

Recommendations for Christian Teachers
In order embrace our God-given roles and responsibility, even in public school, Christian teachers should consider the following;

1 Renew our mind
When there is no renewal of mind, there is no transformation of life (Rom 12:1-2). Our life in God is the basis for which we can bring transformation to the students. Thus there is a need for Christian teachers to have our mind renewed regularly in the Lord. Part of the renewal of mind would require the new teachers to attend some basic units of Christian Education by National Institute of Christian Education. Especially, for units such as ED 500 and ED 501 which deal with Biblical Foundation and Worldview. This would open the eyes of the teachers to understand the relevance of their faith in their sacred calling as teachers.

Unless the teachers recognise the subtlety of the devil’s scheme, their relationship with the students could become mere humanistic effort to show love and acceptance. There is no lasting power in such endeavours. Human effort, on its own, could lead them to discouragement, disillusion and even depression. This could explain why many teachers left the teaching forces. From the website of ABC News, it was reported that a quarter of new teachers left the teaching profession within a year. In Singapore, it was reported that about 1000 teachers resigned every year (Ministry of Education, 2006).

These reports heighten the need for Christian teachers to deepen their walk with God through developing a biblical mindset. With a renewed mind, they can have the strength to persevere in their sacred calling.

2 Review our teaching practises in the light of biblical worldview
2.1 Your position in class
Teachers in Singapore are taught to maintain a professional distance between teachers and students. This is rooted in our Confucius’ worldview whereby teachers are learned people thereby making them to be always right. Flowing from this worldview, and the fear of promoting favouritism, teachers are expected to maintain a distance with his students.
Noddings (1984) commented that this distance is a sense of “narrow professionalism” (p. 184). She further commented that teachers need to recognise the common humanity we are all part of. This is very true and necessary if we are serious to nurture a learning community with our students.

Edlin (1999) mentioned that the effective Christian teacher does not just “teach from the head, but from the head and the heart” (p. 125). If we are too distance from our students, they cannot hear our heart. We cannot nurture a community from a distance.
Thus we should review this practice of distance and seek to enter into the community of our students with them.

The Ministry of Education (MOE) website, under the “purpose of teaching”, highlighted that “we will be purposeful in what we do and our passion to care for our pupils and education them will be our source of motivation”. The students would only know if we care if we are willing to step into their community and not teaching from a distance.

2.2 Your layout of class
The layout of our class is a reflection of our worldview about our students and their learning. Individual seating arrangement would promote individualism and thereby destroy the very community we seek to nurture. Van Dyk (2000) promoted the idea of “a multifunctional classroom” (p. 222). Essentially it is still a collaborative classroom. But this idea helps to meet the communal and individual needs of the students.

In order for us to be able to fully implement this well, we need to start with an extensive inventory work of knowing our students. This would include details like their spiritual dimension, social relationship, physical/physiological strengths and weaknesses, emotional status, learning styles. For the purpose of nurturing community, all these information should not be collected through scientific means. We should attempt to collect them through our personal interaction with them during both formal and informal settings.

2.3 Your approach to teaching
Many of the lecturers who I came into contact with, viewed teaching as transference of information. They do not see the students as the focus of their vocation. Thus getting them involved in Service Learning with the trainee teachers was met with much resistance. They could not agree to spending time with their students to process their learning and being. This was what I advocated in my conduct of Service Learning Course for the hundred plus lecturers. It is, therefore, no surprising that many in-service teachers do not see value in nurturing community let alone to process the learning with their students.

This calls for us to recognise that we are not teaching academic subjects. We are teaching students. This idea was very well promoted by Doud (1988), in his “Teacher of the Year” audio CD. It was precisely the focus on teaching students that led him to become the “Teacher of the Year 1986-87”.

Christian teachers must review our approach to teaching and ensure sufficient attention be given to the being of our students rather than just communicating the importance of the subject matter. People do not care how much we know until they know how much we care. Nurturing community requires us to pay attention to the individual and not just our insights to the lesson plan.

We can draw inspiration from Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians. In 1 Thess 2:8, Paul shared that he went beyond the gospel of God (subject matter) to share even his life with his students because they had become so dear to him. We must grow in our compassion for our students.

2.4 Your strategies in teaching
Edlin (1999) highlighted that “best teachers are enthusiastic about their vocation and subject” (p. 125). This is very true because enthusiasm is contagious. And so it is with the lack of it. If you are not interested in what you are teaching, your students will pick that up from you too. Thus, it is important for Christian teachers who seek to nurturing community, to be enthusiastic about and the subject they are teaching.

And one of the ways of expression is to enhance your understanding of the students through the knowledge of educational psychology. Van Dyk (2000) encouraged teachers to keep ourselves abreast of the “latest theories about learning styles” (p. 116). We should examine every theory through our biblical worldview and apply those consistent to our faith into our lesson plan. In this way, we could make our lesson more “know-able” to the diverse groups of students in our class.

2.5 You confidence in teaching calling
Many Christian teachers would struggle with much of what have been suggested because of the fear of man within us. This is a very Singaporean worldview because of our colonial past and the Japanese occupation. The whole nation was brought up to fear authority.
But the root of fear is the lack of love. 1 John 4:18 explained to us that “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”

Christian teachers need to learn to receive this perfect love daily and release daily to the students. Fear will limit both the teacher and students from learning and growing. For a learning community to nurture and flourish, Christian teachers need to be the bearers of God’s perfect love to the community. When the students receive this unconditional love, they may be willing to try and achieve beyond our expectation. This perfect love would also help Christian teachers to lovingly correct or confront the students’ unhealthy habits or behaviours without fear of losing the community.

This perfect love would also restore the much needed confidence in the teaching professions to dare make a difference.

3 Realign the ultimate objective of community life
Community Engagement is not an end in itself. Christian teachers must work hard at nurturing community within the teachers and community sphere so that learning could take place. But the end of all learning must be to prepare the students for living in the real world. The goal of Christian Education is empower students to live life as intended in the real world (Fennema, 2006, p. 39). And the real world is not the secular world we are seeing. The real world is God’s world (Ps 24). Thus the final intent of the community is to bring this learning community into the kingdom life in Jesus.

And it is not through human effort or strategies. It is by the work of His Grace. Thus, we need to commit our learning community daily before our loving Heavenly Father who wants and will answer our prayer when we humbly ask of Him in Jesus’ name (Matt 7:7).

Conclusion
Community Enhancement Strategies are humanistic effort apart from the wisdom and grace of God. Thus, Christian teachers must daily bathe ourselves in the presence of our loving Heavenly Father and seek His Kingdom and His righteousness and all these things shall be added upon us (Matt6:33).