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)
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.