People are storytellers. As humans, we spend much of our lives either telling stories, dramatizing storytelling, or writing our thoughts. Author Mark Roques has made a life quest of it in his work with youth. He received his PhD in studying the films of James Bond as a worldview analysis. Although this book was written […]
Shortt, John. Bible-Shaped Teaching. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2014. Lately I have been contemplating the act of remembering. Not just as related to memory, but as it applies to reassembling the “members” that make up human beings—the attributes of our physical, mental, and spiritual selves—into a coherent and flourishing wholeness that we bring to […]
Bandstra, Alan. Beyond Control: Heart-Centered Classroom Climate and Discipline. Sioux Center, IA: Dordt College Press, 2014. “Finally, the spirit behind our actions and words is closely tied to our beliefs and hopes.” (Preface, iv) In Beyond Control, Alan Bandstra writes in a style that is similar to an engaging memoir. Rather than taking the textbook […]
This century hosts one of the first generations—according to the late Arnold Toynbee—that does not deliberately teach morality and ethics to children in school. Caldecott’s book provides a past, present, and future view of the importance of educational foundations. In the process of examining what is relevant in an age when educational and relational flourishing […]
One of the largest tasks a teacher of special education students in Christian schools has today is that of integrating not only faith and learning, but faith and life for the students in his/her care in ways that promote individual and communal flourishing. Having a solid Christian worldview undergirds that task, but deep reflection on […]
As noted by Steven Garber in his introductory acknowledgements, “One gift of this study has been a deepened understanding of the role that my own teachers have played in my life” (11). The impact of teachers and their leadership within the craft of learning is significant to the education of the next generation. Steven Garber’s […]
“The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts,” wrote McLuhan. Rather, they alter “patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance” (Carr 3). When Nicholas Carr quotes Marshall McLuhan in the prologue of his book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, he introduces […]
Every day we are surrounded by words. We hear them in music, view them in media, speak them to others in conversation, reflect on them for meaning, and are guided by them in scripture and through prayer. Words provide identity, give direction, inspire and correct us, provoke an awakening of conscience, and inform wisdom. But […]