Monday Reflection for Week 10 March 7, 2007

The church consumer cycle: we provide a spiritual product which the masses consume for a price. It’s spirituality for sale- but not too much.

Just enough to make those sitting in the pews feel good enough to get through another week. Just enough to put a bandaid on the gaping chasm of desire for real community, real significance, a real connection with the Creator of our hearts.

“In exchange for 10%  of your income (or more if you are particularly holy) and a monthly rotation in the nursery, we will provide you with an excellant spiritual experience weekly, complemented by your choice of programs and methods of voluntary service. Are you a wife, father, newly married, been married for 50 years, 5-year-old, teenager, scrapbooker, mountain climber, new Christian, old Christian? Our church has just the program for you! Want to assuage your guilt and uncomfortability over the homeless you pass everyday on your way to work? Volunteer once a month to feed the homeless in the convenience of our own church basement! No need to deal with the messiness of encountering them on the actual street. Hurry, or you might miss out on one of these unique opportunities!”

Are we missing God in the midst of consumerism?

Wednesday Reflection for Week 9 March 5, 2007

I was intrigued with the discussion on the changing pedagogy and instructional methodologies at Fuller. It’s interesting to me to hear the same “new” ideas for teaching as those presented in Kindergarten trainings I’ve gone to in the past as a teacher. Experiential, constructivist, interactive learning is definitely at the cutting edge of teaching these days, at all levels apparantly.

Looking at the history of teaching, I think we need to be cautious about swinging the pendulum too far to any extreme. It’s easy to get excited about the “newness” of ideas, especially if they are backed by research. I think there is definitely a lot of validity to all of these techniques.

But we need a balance. Plenty of cycles have happened within teaching delivery- many ideas are just old ones re-packaged.

Whether teaching Kindergarten or grad school, both content and experience are important. And change does not happen overnight. People need time to adjust to new ways of learning, especially adult learners who think they are the experts in how they should learn!

I did appreciate the time spent in class discussing this. And I’m glad Fuller is on the cutting edge of teaching and learning- another reason why I’m glad to be here!

Monday Reflection for Week 9 February 28, 2007

Today in class we discussed McGavran’s work in India and his ideas that people shouldn’t have to change thier culture to find God.

I wondered, do we do the same thing in public education? Often the school “culture” is very different than a child’s home culture in areas of high poverty and low school achievement.  While the basic values in any given classroom reflect the individual teacher, as a whole they generally reflect a middle/high class Western modern culture where productivity, efficiency, predictability, and control are valued.

We are asking children to change cultures to get an education. And when they resist because this is counter to everything they have known in thier lives outside of school, most of our attempts to address problem behaviors or low academic scores are attempts to be even more efficient and productive and controlling. On a systemic level, our efforts are rooted in the same cultural values as public schooling has been historically rooted in.

What would it look like to take the effort to teach students in thier own culture? Is that realistic in a classroom full of various cultures? How can you create a classroom culture that is comfortable for all? And what implications does this have for content and testing?

So many questions….

Wednesday Reflection for Week 8 February 26, 2007

While I value the general premise of this case study paper in its application of course content to a specific context, I am really struggling with the format for writing it in multiple phases. I have never written a paper this way and find it very challenging to have to re-polish it each time instead of being able to attack the meat of the paper once and for all.

I once heard someone talk about different people’s writing styles. Some are planners and re-writers, starting early and writing rough drafts and creating thier ideas as they write. For them writing itself is a vehicle for formulating thoughts. I think this assignment is conducive for these types of writers.

On the other hand, some writers take a lot of time reading and processing and synthesizing information before ever writing a word. Once they start, the ideas come flowing out in a steady stream. This is closer to the way I write and I find it frustrating to have to write in a choppy, piece-meal fashion.

Okay, enough complaining about the format of our assignment. On a positive note, this paper has caused me to read books I never would have picked up otherwise and hear different people’s opinion on U.S. public education. A couple of the most thought-provoking so far were by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat in Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire and Richard  Allington and Patricia Cunningham in Schools That Work. If I were to enter the classroom tomorrow, I would be a much different teacher than I was when I left my job several months ago, and that makes me excited for the future.

Monday Reflection for Week 8 February 21, 2007

Well, I spent so much time on my 500 word paper, but after class, it turns out I focused on different things than we need in the paper. I’ve never written a paper quite like this- it seems that it takes my brain some time to adjust to writing in stages like this.

One of the biggest areas I didn’t include in my paper was describing the ways the Kingdom is and is not being embraced currently, including ways that this is translating into oppression.

Some ways Esperanza is embodying the Kingdom:

• Huge importance placed on the family unit including extended family and community.
• Free, after school program for students falling behind to recieve additional support- justice and equality for all.
• Additional support/assistance given to students learning English, accomodations made

Some ways Esperanza is not embodying the Kingdom:

• School is segragated ethnically and economically
• Large size of school makes cohesiveness, community difficult on a staff level
• Relationships are hard to form between students, teachers, families because of lack of time, heavy work load for teachers

Wednesday Reflection for Week 7 February 19, 2007

I really enjoyed our discussion of the Trinitarian view of missions and how this could apply to our case study. With its emphasis on relationship, inclusion, peacemaking, mutuality, and unity, I couldn’t help but think on a school wide scale in my case study. While all of those definitely apply in the classroom among teachers and students, they must also be embodied on a school level, among teachers, support staff, specialists, and administration.

So often teachers’ lounges can be caustic places and staff meetings can result in bitter differences. Disunity, disagreements, and frustrations can overshadow the common care for students. Ideally students would be surrounded by a model of unity in thier teachers.

The adminitrative question comes, then: How do you inspire a group of teachers to unite behind commonalities and a shared vision for the lives of these students when they must understandably face so many frustrations, unfair circumstances, and constant challenges? How do you inspire a group of teachers that are not Christians to adopt a “kingdom” mission?

Case Study First Draft February 19, 2007

Intro

Public education in the U.S. is failing many children, especially those affected by poverty and minorities. I believe the church has an integral role to play in redeeming the powers of public schools and embodying the Kingdom of God.

 

 

Context

Esperanza Elementary School is one such public school, located in the Pico/Union district just west of downtown Los Angeles. This predominantly Latino neighborhood is full of immigrants and their children, termed the “1.5” generation. In this high poverty area issues of gentrification, affordable housing, and livable wages make life hard for families, and especially hard for children as they attempt to live in two very different cultures: the North American, English- speaking world of school and the Latino, Spanish-speaking world of home.

 

Of the 1,025 students attending Esperanza in Kindergarten through fifth grade, 851 are English language learners and 95% are Hispanic. Esperanza is a school segregated by race and concentrated poverty and, as is often the case, also has low test scores as many students struggle to receive the support they need to be successful in their education.

 

 

Kingdom of God

It is easy to walk the streets of Esperanza’s neighborhood or work with one of its fourth grade students, Maria, and see what is wrong. It’s easy to make checklists of needs and to diagnose the problem as a series of deficits. If Jesus were to walk through Esperanza or teach Maria, however, I don’t think he would simply focus on her struggle to grasp English or her inability to comprehend the simple structure of a story. He would look into her eyes and see her gifts, her potential, her beauty, and her spirit. He would take the time to listen to her struggles, her fears, and her insecurities. He would truly see Maria holistically as Maria and not a statistic in Esperanza’s school data, distilling her down to her needs and demographics.

 

The Kingdom of God in Esperanza Elementary School would pulse with the heartbeat of relationship: among teachers, students, families, and the larger community. The true justice, or righteousness, of God’s Kingdom embodied in the social order of Esperanza would require right relationships with others in the economic, political, and social domains of the whole school community. Genuine equality would ensure that every child has the same access to resources regardless of family situations. As justice is experienced, true joy and peace will follow: the joy of being known fully and accepted completely and the peace of the removal of oppression. 

Activities

Esperanza creates a unique challenge for a community of believers seeking to foster and facilitate the Kingdom, as it is a public school. A great deal of creativity must be employed when explicit modes of ministry outreach cannot be used. As a classroom teacher, I have the unique opportunity to build relationships with a classroom of students and their families as well as with fellow staff members, support staff, and administration. This must intentionally be at the heart of each day, not to be overwhelmed by the busyness and demands of teaching. Home visits to each family, parent nights with food and child care provided, frequent home-school communication in Spanish, and actually learning to speak Spanish are all ways I can facilitate family relationships, with the goal of really listening to the needs and concerns and joys of each unique family.  I can also take the time to really know each student, digging deeper into relationship with them than mere test scores or reading levels.

 

With my unique relational position within the school community, I see myself as a bridge, linking the local church community, mission organizations, and community groups with students and families within my classroom and the school.

 

 

Conclusion

God has a mission in the sphere of Esperanza and other public schools. He desires justice and peace and joy to permeate both the institution and the individual lives of students and families. We, as his church, need to step into our God-given role of embodying his Kingdom within public education.

        

Monday Reflection for Week 7 February 14, 2007

In class we applied the characteristics of emerging churches to our case studies. I feel like I could have monopolized our small group discussion with all my ideas for the classroom!

By its very nature, my case study is transforming the secular realm (2) of public school and would be very communal (3) if I lived in the same neighborhood.

The one that perhaps made me think the most, however, was sharing generously (5). There are probably a million ways this could be lived out as a teacher: in relationship with students, families, staff members, administrators, and community members, with my time, resources, and ideas. In fact the easy part is recognizing ways to be generous. The hard part comes in being able to recognize my own limitations and how to maintain a healthy balance.

I am excited to put all of this into practice and at the same time I am exhausted just thinking about it. Relationships can be hard for me. I am an introvert by nature and that isn’t going to change. A day of teaching and being “on” drains my energy and I need time to recharge without people to be ready to start the whole thing over the next day and the next and the next. That doesn’t figure in the before school conference with the principal, the lunch meeting with my co-teacher, the parents that stop by after school and want to chat, the community meeting in the evening, my neighbor that stops by to talk, the phone calls and emails that pile up.

I pray that God will show me how to trust that he will provide the right amount of energy for the right amount of activity each day and teach me wisdom to recognize when I am pushing past his will for me into my own abilities and ideas of what I think I should get accomplished.

Wednesday Reflection for Week Six February 12, 2007

In class on Wednesday, we discussed the emerging church again, going over nine key hallmarks of this movement as identified by Bolger in his research. One area is participation and our connected discussion of the participation of children in the church is of special interest to me.

 So often children are either completely seperated from adults in age-appropriate groupings or never separated from adults with little or no age-appropriate groupings. But the truth is they need both equally.

Humans have very different developmental needs throughout thier life and this cannot be ignored, no matter how vibrant or authentic community is within a church. A five-year-old interracts with his or her world and is able to grasp the reality of Jesus in a different way than a twenty-five year old or a fifty-five-year-old. This has to do with brain, large and fine motor, emotional, and spiritual development. A church that does not address this is doing a diservice to its children and youth, no matter whether there are 3 or 93 of them in the church.

On the other hand, children and youth must live and interact in relationship with people of all ages, developing healthy role models for how to live. They must be active participants in all areas of the church. They are part of the family with unique needs.

Book Review: David Fitch, The Great Giveaway, 2005 BakerBooks February 12, 2007

David Fitch is currently a professor of theology, ministry, and ethics at Northern Seminary. He is also the pastor of the Christian and Missionary Alliance church, Life on the Vine Christian Community in Illinois.

 

In The Great Giveaway, Fitch offers the argument that evangelicalism has structured itself around a modern worldview, fundamentally asserting the authority of modern science and individual reason, and therefore failing to engage the “current cultural shifts to postmodernity” (17). The church has “given away” its historical and biblical roles of evangelism, leadership, worship, preaching, justice, spiritual formation, success, and the moral education of our children to modernity. Fitch dedicates one chapter to each of these areas, offering practices for the church to resist modern influences. He predicts the demise of North American evangelical churches as irrelevant and shrinking if they do not make these changes.

 

I appreciated the premise of The Great Giveaway. Fitch made a strong case as he laid his foundation, describing the clash between modernity and postmodernity within the North American church. I felt he applied this especially well in his chapter on evangelism. He compared the current evangelical modern approach of individualized apologetic conversion, in which it is assumed that the individual mind can be presented with facts and make a rational decision, to a postmodern disbelief in unbiased, absolute truth. Postmoderns wish to see this truth lived out in relationship. So instead of handing out the “The Four Spiritual Laws,” Fitch suggests that the church practice the acts of true hospitality, mercy and justice, community, worship, and true discipleship. I think a lot of truth can be found in his suggested method of evangelism as lived out in relationship over time.

 

While I agree with his overall premise, I felt Fitch attempted to address too many diverse issues within the church in one book. He attempted to be the expert on some extremely diverse arenas, from worship and preaching to psychology and public education. I was not able to accept his assertions, for example, that psychology as a general field is completely misguided and of no use in its current form to any Christian. This is a bold, unsubstantiated claim that I feel is far too extreme.

 

I was especially interested in his chapter critiquing the public education system in its moral education of our children, as this related directly to my case study of teaching within this system. Fitch’s contention was that the church should bear a much more distinct, involved role in the spiritual rearing of children and that this should be lived out within the family, thus enabling children to be wise and evaluative as they enter public education. While true, the premise of this chapter was very hands-off from the school system. He seems to be saying that, as parents, the most we can do is prepare our children by teaching them the fundamentals of Christianity, then send them off into the upredictable terrain of public educaiton and hope for the best. He failed to address the church or family’s role within the school. The only types of involvement he discussed were ones he felt to be ineffective such as advocating for the removal of evolution or the teaching of abstinence. He did not offer or even encourage other forms of  active involvement or work to bring about transformation within public education.

While not perfect, I feel this book is an important contribution to the ongoing dialogue regarding the church’s role within North American postmodern culture.