Acknowledging that many of our readers will be participating in hours of fall parent/teacher conferences around the time that this issue hits their mailboxes, we’ve decided to encourage you to share some of your experiences with each other. All you need to play Parent/Teacher Conference bingo is the gameboard below, a marker, and a way […]
D-cell batteries power a flickering of miniature light bulbs across a kindergarten classroom. Intermittent, high-pitched alarms sound as little fingers discover the joy of closing their own circuit. These sounds are not the result of an electrician at work. Rather, early-elementary students are exploring and testing new-found theories in electrical circuitry in the Makers session […]
I am a product of Christian education from kindergarten through college. I loved my education and am grateful for how it shaped my knowledge and worldview. When I began teaching in a Christian school straight out of college, however, it “got real, real quick.” Being responsible for helping students to see God in every subject […]
In my first few years of teaching, nothing made me more nervous than when students asked science questions I couldn’t answer. I’d be teaching about energy and someone would raise his hand and ask about nuclear power plants—something that wasn’t in my lesson plan for that day or included in that unit at all. In […]
Observers of Christian schools and the wider American culture know the depths of controversy elicited in recent debates by the topic of origins. Whether the age of the earth or the inception of human beings, concerns about the beginnings of things have led many Christians either to join in culture wars or to flee them. […]
How old is the earth and what do the days of creation measure? Was the flood local or global? How much of evolutionary biology can Genesis 1–2 incorporate into its testimony? I began teaching high school Bible seven years ago. Had you had asked me to describe what a Christian’s role was in engaging faith […]
After nearly twenty years of teaching science at the secondary level, I have come to a concerning realization: being a Christian, teaching at a Christian School, and teaching Christianly are not all the same thing. Put another way, Christian curriculum does not guarantee Christian pedagogy. Through developing and testing materials for teachfastly.com (mainly tenth and […]
We live in an age in which what we think we know from science is modified daily, theological stances on current issues seem to divide as much as unite communities of faith, and questions at the interface of faith and science keep shifting. Both history and present experience suggest that when theology and science point […]
Fifty years have passed since I took my first college biology course. In 1967, the genetic code had just been deciphered. For the first time, I watched an animated filmstrip of the dance of life on a projector screen: ribosomes moved along a messenger RNA with tRNAs jumping on and off; a chain of highly […]
Last night, our school held its annual open house for parents. Throughout the evening parents moved from classroom to classroom to hear their children’s teachers talk about what they would be teaching this year and how they would integrate faith with their instruction. During my presentations to parents of my English 4 and AP English students, I […]