It is nothing but a pious wish and a grossly unwarranted hope that students trained to be passive and non-creative in school will suddenly, upon graduation, actively contribute to the formation of Christian culture. —Nicholas Wolterstorff
Every parent and high school teacher prays that the years spent engaging in Christian education will have a lasting impact on the way their children and students serve the Lord. We want our students to see God’s story in the content they learn, interactions they have, and activities in which they participate; but even more, our deep hope is that our students desire to engage in the world in powerful ways that demonstrate their love for God. We want them to live into God’s story as high schoolers and beyond.
Waking Up to God’s Beauty
Roberta’s art students are living into God’s story. During the last year in her drawing/painting and graphics classrooms, students wrestled with the questions, “What’s worth doing?” and “What is beauty?” As the semester progressed, their definitions of beauty changed. They found loveliness in aged, wrinkled faces at Byron Manor, where residents wore all their joy and sorrow on faces that have seen eighty, ninety, or even one hundred years. Roberta’s students were challenged to tell the story of beauty in their drawings, the story of the beauty and wisdom in the people they met.
Grounded in transformative and curricular learning objectives, Roberta designed a formational learning experience that invited, nurtured, and empowered her students to do real work to meet real needs of real people. Each student was instructed to create a portrait of a Byron Manor resident that conveyed an authentic physical representation of the person as well as the essence of his or her personality. No small task, this required vulnerability on the part of both the Byron Manor residents and the artists. As they sketched and drew, Roberta’s students engaged in conversations with their subjects, getting to know them on a personal and deeper level. Many of the residents were lonely, and some experienced dementia, but the respect and care with which the artists engaged and connected was a blessing.
After weeks of work, the portraits were ready for delivery and were hung in the hallways of Byron Manor for all to see. A celebration of learning and an art reception provided yet another opportunity to connect and grow. One student reflected, “These days, I believe God’s beauty was inside me, flowing out through the evidence of my drawing. God challenged me in the project and helped me see his glory in the most beautiful, simple things.” And growth wasn’t just for her students. In Roberta’s words, “These students are reminding me—no, they are teaching me, how to live.”
Faces of Cancer: From Chaos to Shalom
In Audra’s tenth grade biology class, her students didn’t just learn about cell reproduction and the cell cycle; they learned about how these processes impact real people who have been diagnosed with cancer. Audra’s deep hope was that her “students would come face to face with another’s chaos, develop increased empathy for the brokenness experienced, and grow in their compassion and desire to reach out in love by creating shalom for those experiencing the chaos of cancer.” In their formational learning experience, students were invited to interview someone who has or had cancer or who has lost a loved one to cancer. Audra wanted to nurture in her students an empathy as they began to understand how cancer affected their interviewees biologically, emotionally, relationally, and spiritually. She wanted her students to hear and respond to their stories.
After engaging in the interviews, students designed masks that created the “face of cancer.” On the outside of the mask, students wrote words that described what people saw or knew about the person with cancer—what people saw on the outside. On the inside of the mask, students wrote what their cancer subject shared about what was going on inside, hidden from most people’s eyes as they experienced cancer. Students then created designs on the masks that captured the essence of who their cancer subjects were—their personalities, their feelings, their growth. Finally, students gave titles to their masks. Now instead of the face of cancer, new faces emerged: the face of power, the face of faithfulness, the face of hope, the face of strength, the face of gratitude.
Stories are powerful. They have a way of engaging the heart and mind. And the stories Audra’s biology students heard were an important aspect of their transformation. As one student reflected, “After interviewing my grandma and working on my mask, I realized that sometimes we too put up false faces in situations. Cancer is an extreme situation to put up a false front, and I know that I put up false fronts at school and home. When everything is in turmoil on the inside, like unconnected puzzle pieces, I show that I am actually OK when I am not. If I could learn to express my emotions more and to tell what I’m actually feeling, the inside of me would not be in chaos. Both the outside and the inside would be like a completed puzzle, honest, true, and appealing to the eye.”
Know the Story
For Janie’s college composition students, living the story meant building communities outside their classroom and school. Their storyline “Know the Story” was prominently displayed on their classroom bulletin board. As they traveled through stories, novels, writing assignments, and movies, they identified what it meant to know the story of a character, how knowing a story impacted their lives, and, greater still, what knowing the story means in God’s big story. After reading Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, Janie invited her students to move beyond knowing the novel’s main character to really knowing the stories of World War II veterans who lived in the students’ own backyard. Students’ depth of understanding was nurtured through presentations by veterans along with guided tours of the local cemetery and the county museum.
Students then researched a local veteran and wrote a paper based on his story. After going through the writing process to produce a final copy, students gave their papers to the local genealogical society and historical museum. These gifts of story were met with deep appreciation, and these gifts were not just a blessing to the community; they were also a blessing to the high school students. One student reflected, “As I find myself in God’s story, it is important to remember others’ stories as they connect us and open our eyes to the way God works. In my research, I was continually reminded of the way God gives dignity in small stories today, as he did in Ruth’s story—the way God picks up all the scattered pages of our lives and through Christ binds them into a larger, greater, and new story. Our individual histories and pasts will not be forgotten but will be celebrated. In my reading of Unbroken, and in my research about veterans, I am reminded of our responsibility and blessing to remember.”
Because the students’ reflections were so powerful, Janie worked with her students to take them to meet some of these folks in their town’s care center. Students presented music, read reflections, mingled with residents, and showed residents some of the World War II artifacts brought over from the museum. Empowered by these opportunities to share and serve, Janie’s college composition students lived into knowing the story and created amazing community while doing so.
Work Cited
Wolterstorff, N. (2002). Educating for Life: Reflections on Christian Teaching and Learning (Eds. Gloria Goris Stronks & Clarence Joldersma). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. p. 31.
Pat Kornelis is a professor of education at Dordt College, teaching graduate courses in teacher leadership, assessment practices, and advanced educational psychology. She also serves as a CACE fellow and school designer for TfT.
The following teachers are mentioned in this article:
Audra Faber teaches biology, anatomy and physiology, environmental science, and physical education at Pella Christian High School in Pella, Iowa. She is currently in her twentieth year of teaching.
Roberta VanHaitsma currently serves as the art department chair at South Christian High School in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She teaches art and graphic design courses.
Janie Van Dyke has been teaching English for thirty-four years. She currently teaches English at Unity Christian High School in Orange City, Iowa.
