Clean That Window
Yesterday I spent thirty or fourty minutes cleaning our bedroom window. The soon-to-be-spring sun was trying to shine through the winter drops, spider webs, and grundge. We have a large second floor window that overlooks a beautiful park. The greens and blues and people having fun out our window are a gift. When we can see them through the fogs of weather or window. Yesterday was beautiful, so I cleaned the windows with sun shining on me. I swung wide the panes, reached outside, brushed away dead spiders and leaves, and polished the glass. I used too many towels. So, today I opened the curtains ready to enjoy the rays landing on our bed and warming the winter out. But, today is cloudy. No bright sun. I lay in bed looking at smudges that only show in the gloomy light. I got up and did some more polishing. Waiting for sun. I had spent the sunny day cleaning the dirt. I missed the joy. I hadn’t cleaned them before the sun wanted in. I wonder how many times I wait for the right moment and when it comes, I am not ready. I missed my chance. Think of words to Joshua, “Be strong and courageous.” Strong comes before courageous. If you are not strong, when the moment for courage comes, you are not ready. Strength comes from work ahead, preparation, time invested. Keeping ourselves clean and ready. What does it mean to be ready? What does it mean to be ready for the sunshine, to be ready for walking into life with courage. To have things cleaned up so the unexpected guest in life can step into your world for a few minutes or for lunch in your home? To have courage to do as Joshua and enter the Promised Land? What does it mean to have my heart clean so I am ready to serve well, to encourage or to have the grace and strength to listen? What needs to be in order so we are ready for the next thing or the opportunity to step into the “promised land” God brings today or tomorrow? Maybe you can think of ways to have your window clean and ready to take in the sun. Here are some I thought:
- Consider and confess my sins, regularly.
- Have no regrets, clearing up relationships best we can.
- Be well versed and shaped by God’s Word.
- Slow down enough to notice the things that cloud joy and grace.
- Get rid of junk in my life that distracts from what is important.
- Have my heart calm, to know that God is God, not me.
- To listen and hear.
I am sure you have your own smudges God would like to clean to be ready for His grace, to be able to step into what He brings. What are they? What can you do today to let the sun shine in and warm you? To be ready when the time comes. The sun will come out tomorrow. I look forward to enjoying it next time. Maybe even later today.
Transformation from a Distance
Lesson plans shape how your students learn. Often approaches are similar, maybe sliced up differently. A favorite of mine for years was this:
1. Students: Know your learners. Previous learning, abilities, disabilities, culture, attitudes, etc.
2. Outcomes: What are you trying to have the learner know (cognitive), feel (affective), and do (psychomotor)?
3. Methods: How will you take these learners from where they are to the learning outcomes? Methods are not the end, they are the creative tools to get there.
4. Assess: Did your learners achieve the outcomes? Summative, yes, but more important for learning is formative assessment: minute by minute, are they getting it? And how do you adjust?
I encouraged my teachers to use the approach. We built planning around it and had success.
A Missing Part
But something was missing. The essential part for powerful, wholistic transformational education. The part that makes what you do different than most classes in the world, online or in person.
You could say that biblical integration is missing. However, if you are wrapping biblical truth into these steps it might not be missing. Here is part of the problem: biblical integration does not equal transformational education. TeachBeyond transformational education goes beyond.
You might say that God is missing. But you can teach about God in this approach. He does not have to be missing. But, just teaching about God is not transformational education.
I have heard teachers say that the piece missing is “heart.” This is a good answer. After all, when we do transformational education we aim at the inside first, heart and head, instead of outside behaviors.
But what brings “heart” into it? What makes transformational education work?
The missing part in this plan: you.
You see, transformational education is about life. It is about changed, transformed lives. It is about bringing together you, the learner, the Holy Spirit, and God’s Word—all alive—and watching God “cause the growth.”
Transformational education is life on life, placing a transformed teacher in touch with a learner. You are the “living curriculum” that God uses. Excellent educational environments, one of our pillars of transformational education, brings this life together. It makes education about life in the subjects and in hearts. You are essential.
The Challenge of Online Learning
A teacher who walks into a physical classroom cannot help touching lives, for good or for bad. Students watch hour after hour. The teacher’s life becomes a book read by learners.
Good transformational educators bring themselves into class. Their love for God lived out impresses learners. Their unconditional love for students, shown in action, reaches hearts. Their love for their subject, the gift they give, shows in a passion that draws students into learning.
But, in an online class, a teacher can hide behind the screen and present a relatively sterile lesson. It is possible to go through the steps, having curricular goals achieved, and barely bring yourself into the class.
The challenge of online learning is to bring yourself, your whole self, transformed by the Holy Spirit, into your class. Here are some ideas that I have heard from great online, transformational teachers:
- See your class as your space, your home. Make it unique and personal as you invite students into “your online home.”
- Love, above all love. Ask yourself, how will you show love today? For God, for the learners, and for the gift you give them.
- Know individuals. Get to know each, have side notes or meetings. Treat each as a whole, living person with interests and needs. Pray for individuals.
- Show heart. Show your changed heart. Talk openly with learners about heart. Be real. Show your “inside.”
- Plan engagement. Make space for active learner engagement. In the online world, everyone is starved for interaction. Use online groups, discussions, art, side chats. Help learners speak and connect.
- Take care of yourself. “Zoom fatigue” is real. You need to care for your needs and not just keep plowing ahead. Take time to know that God is God and enjoy God’s goodness, even in lockdown.
- Give yourself permission. Know that you not only have permission to bring “you” into class, but if you want to transform lives, you must.
- Focus on the big things. Never forget that while students need to know nouns and verbs or equations, the more basic need is to know God and how a life is lived with Him. Keep those in front of you.
There are more ways. You are probably thinking of some now. Maybe talk with colleagues about what they do and keep the idea of bringing yourself into your class alive.
After I realized that I was missing the key to transformational education, I put this step between “know students” and “know outcomes”: Teacher: What flows from your life and heart?
Transformational education needs you to be there. As God changes you, may your learners see Him and be transformed by His grace.
(This piece was written for TeachBeyond’s On Practice publication)
Personal Core Values for a Lifetime of Leading
Your school or organization should have core values, a handful of items that tell everyone what is important. These values become the basis for decision making, interactions with publics, long-term planning, and use of resources. They are where you go when emotions are high or a situation heavy.
Public core values help everyone know what your organization is really about and how it operates. Then, even if some don’t agree, they know why you do what you do and that everything isn’t open to negotiation. Integrity is doing what you say you will do: having core values lets everyone see you are consistent in word and action and not playing favorites or unsteady.
You should have core values for yourself. They don’t need to be on display, but those close to you should know them and hold you to keeping them in your life.
Just as core values help a school, your personal ones will guide you in decisions as you serve in a long term ministry of school or organizational leadership with the constant pressure to do more, to bend, or to do what is good instead of what is best. Using your core values helps you sustain your work for years with personal integrity and peace. Even if others disagree.
Take time to identify three to six values that are most important in your life. Share them with your spouse, children, or close friends. You can always change them. But, have a set that will help you wade through the daily flow of life with consistency and courage, doing what is right.
Values are guides, not goals. They are also not priorities, although you could list them that way. Ideally, you live out all of your values and never have to decide between two or more of them. If you find yourself often needing to pick one over the other in your life, you should either reconsider the values or how you are living.
Values should reflect the beliefs that are most relevant to you, your situation, your gifts, and your call. They should be more than one word, with a brief description that helps you. Don’t worry about grammar, whatever works for you to use.
You don’t need to list everything that you believe is important or right. Just what you want to emphasize at this point in life. Examples of values that you may have:
• God: life is about Him, not me. For His glory.
• Bible: first source of truth, primary, sufficient.
• Family: deep care, meet needs, healthy, spouse.
• World: truths shared broadly, used by God.
• Creativity: fresh, study, as new wineskins.
When you have to make a decision about your time, talents, or money, these guide you. Identified core values help you serve over years in intense ministry with joy and peace.
The Powerful Pedagogy of Love
The most powerful pedagogy happens when there is a living convergence in a teacher of a love for God, a love for subject, and a love for student. It is simple. But, it is deep, and as true love does, keeps growing with a passion to know more about the beloved and to give more.
In the classroom with the three loves, in the moment of teaching, with sparkling eyes and reaching hands, the three loves search in the corners of knowledge and heart for just the right example, the most telling fact, the hook that will not let students get away. Truth and life are learned. Love is powerful.
The model isn’t simply knowing Jesus, understanding students, and earning a degree in a subject area. Great impact depends on a teacher’s love and passion for each of these: Jesus, students, and subject. A love that never ends, that is never satisfied or satiated. The love for each that commandeers a teacher’s heart and keeps him or her always pursuing, always learning, always hoping, always growing so that at the moment of the lesson in real time and real life, there is a fresh excitement and joy that draws from an ever increasing body of knowledge buoyed by an ever increasing love for God, students, and subject.
A teacher who loves wants this rich sweet spot now, all of the time, but knows it will take time to learn and grow and that they will have only moments of great teaching for a while before the moments pile on moments and become normal. This teacher knows that whatever others have learned and do, his or her joy comes from what he or she builds, not comparing to others because the well is deep enough for everyone and different in moment and place.
This teacher is sometimes hard to find because he or she just loves doing this with students and is immersed with them, not promoting self, very content to do her thing with students and not boast. This teacher never gives up and knows that there is always more, that even if something derails her heart and work, the best thing is to keep learning and loving and the passion will come back because real love is a commitment not a feeling. This teacher always looks for truth and rejoices in sharing what they find, never ending and always overflowing; she just can’t keep it in.
The teacher who loves God, students, and subject has something to offer that others don’t. Passion for each keeps the teacher relevant and current, and caring. Students don’t care to learn until they know the teacher cares. The impact for learning is greatest when it is obvious the teacher cares not only about the student, but also about the subject and God.
Because of this teacher’s love, which is always about an unconditional commitment to others and not just making everyone comfortable and happy, this teacher is something special. This teacher makes a difference, he or she can hardly help it because of the passion that overflows. Even if he or she is a rookie, a genuine and passionate love for God, students, and subject will make him or her valuable. This teacher will always profit a student, and not just be a dead spot in the student’s day.
A teacher who doesn’t care, who doesn’t love outside self, but is content or callous will never be a transformative teacher. He or she might warm a classroom and keep order, might even have students learn topics from the curriculum map, but will never make an impact worth remembering in the lives of students.
Love for God. Love for students. And love for subject–the gift the teacher gives. Brought together in a space with students sees lives transformed. By God’s grace.