“We live inside an unfinished story, a story that began with the Spirit of God hovering over the primordial waters at the beginning of time and which took a dramatic, climactic turn two thousand years ago when that same God became human, lived among us, and beat death once and for all. We share this story with Mary Magdalene and the apostle Paul. We share it with Saint Augustine and Julian of Norwich, Desmond Tutu and Leymah Gbowee. We share it with the pastor who runs the soup kitchen out of the church basement and with the first guy in line to eat there each week.
The stories we tell with our lives, then, aren’t meaningless absurdities, tragic in their brevity, but rather subplots of a grander narrative, every moment charged with significance, as we contribute our own riffs, soliloquies, and plot twists to the larger epic, the Holy Spirit coaxing us along with an ever-ebullient, And then? And then? And then?” (Evans, 217).
Teaching for Transformation (TfT) teachers seek to unveil the profound narrative their students are part of as they invite, nurture, and empower students inside and outside of the classroom to live into God’s unfinished story.
LG3: Learn, Grow, Go, Glorify
This past school year, Jill, a fourth grade teacher, embraced her school’s storyline, “LG3: Learn, Grow, Go, Glorify,” because it set the stage for learning that invited students into God’s grand narrative. She helped her students see their place in God’s story in an integrated unit incorporating literature, Bible, and social studies. After exploring Linda Sue Park’s novel, A Long Walk to Water, which shares the experience of refugees who fled from civil war in Sudan, Jill worked alongside her students, researching the people and countries affected by the war. She shared, “One of our focuses was for students to see that though they differ in so many ways with the main characters in their book, they still have so many things in common, and that we are all created in the image of God.”
In the meantime, her students were also studying goods and services as they learned about entrepreneurship. Recognizing that the TfT framework encourages students to get involved with real work, interacting with real people and meeting real needs, Jill was able to make these two paths of study intersect and to provide an opportunity for students to dig deeper by facilitating a meeting with local refugees at a local immersion center.
Depending on the student’s age, the concept of image reflecting may be difficult to grasp. Jill’s students made connections using the Image Reflector throughline. The Image Reflector throughline was a strand woven throughout the unit and acted as a reference point for students to better understand themselves and their refugee neighbors. Jill guided her students to a better understanding of what image bearing means through the context of literature, through the study of unique cultures, and through face-to-face interactions with refugees.
Spurred by this immersive experience, the fourth grade students then created items using up-cycled materials to raise funds for Salva Dut, one of the refugee boys with whom they connected. Powerful head and heart learning happened for Jill and her students as they lived into their school’s storyline. Jill shared, “TfT has given me a framework for creating curriculum in a God-centered way. It helps students to really see their place in God’s story and learn about kingdom learning and work at a young age.”
Explorers: Seeing God in Big and Little Things
In TfT schools across the country, other students also worked inside and outside of their classrooms, making an impact in a broader community. In Sioux Center, Iowa, and in Bellevue, Washington, lower elementary students established relationships with residents in retirement homes. In Kristen’s kindergarten class and Michaela’s grade one class, visits with retired residents were framed around the storyline, “Explorers: Seeing God in Big and Little Things.” The retirement home residents welcomed these younger students, giving them opportunities to practice skills they were developing and to share their learning. Michaela’s students knew communication was important to their visit, so they worked on speaking and listening skills before their visit. “We made a word web around the word fellowship and made connections to our trip to Franken Manor. We read books to generate questions for conversation with the residents.” When they arrived at Franken Manor, students were better prepared to communicate around the tables and to share some of their learning. Michaela noted, “Teaching for Transformation has impacted my teaching by guiding me to be intentional about providing authentic opportunities for students to practice living out God’s story.”
Kristen’s kindergarten students also created notes and brought games and books to share. Before their visit, Kristen invited her students into the activity using learning targets that stated, “I can join and serve with the greater community,” and “I can practice building relationships in small but meaningful ways.” These learning targets set the stage for the teacher and students as they worked with a similar purpose.
Throughline language was used here too, giving students a way to identify characteristics for living as Christ’s disciples. As they shared and visited with residents, students were being Community Builders. Kristen shared, “Our students learn and experience that community is built through our engagement, attitudes, words, working through conflict, and acts of kindness. We are all called to be Community Builders!” The kindergarten and grade one students were learning that these are not just throughlines; they are do-lines.
Transformational teaching and learning is happening in these classrooms as even the youngest students are invited to live inside the unfinished story.
Work Cited
Evans, Rachel Held. Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again. Nashville: Nelson, 2018.
Jill Van Soelen is the library media specialist at Sioux Center Christian School and serves on the school’s TfT leadership team.
The following elementary teachers are referenced in this article:
Jill Engel has taught for twenty-eight years and currently teaches fourth grade at Sioux Falls Christian Schools in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Kristen Hatate has taught for nineteen years and currently teaches kindergarten at Three Points Elementary School in Bellevue, Washington.
Michaela Rozeboom has taught first grade for two years at Sioux Center Christian School in Sioux Center, Iowa.
