On April 8, 2013, Maranatha Baptist Bible College held a Reading Education Summit on campus. A local 4th grade teacher at Webster Elementary School, Angie Johnson, presented an overview of her reading program and how to use data to inform reading interventions. Two of our own graduates worked as Grant Assistants and presented their findings on the data collection which they performed at two local schools. You can view the presentation here.
Christian Education: The Formation of Desire
January 11, 2013 By Leave a Comment
For the last few decades, Christian education has been dominated by “worldview education,” a trend that claims that Christian education is about helping young people to get a Christian worldview–to think biblically. Worldview talk focuses on education as the equipping of a set of beliefs that help young people think the right way.
Worldview education is good as far as it goes, but it tends to be out of balance. At times, it even demonstrates an unbiblical dualism that sees the mind as somehow unconnected to the body and the affections.
A more holistic and integrative approach to Christian education recognizes that human beings are much more than mere thinkers, and that although thinking is important, the mind is usually not the driving force behind most of our actions. For example, consider most Americans’ eating habits. How many people fail day after day to eat the way they think they should eat? The truth is that we tend to do what we do not because of the cold logical reasoning of our minds, but because of something deeper: the affections.
As educator James Smith points out, the world understands that human nature works this way. People who run venues like shopping malls, professional sports events, etc., are successful in forming young people to behave certain ways culturally because these people recognize the primary place of the affections in human motivation. But as Smith points out, Christian schools “are ‘fighting back’ by [merely] giving young people ideas. We hand young people a ‘Christian worldview’ and then tell them, ‘There, that should fix it.’ But such strategies are aimed at the head and thus miss the real target: our hearts, our loves, our desires.”
Effective educators realize that a more accurate (and more biblical) model of the human person sees our affections as just as significant as our thoughts. In fact, Christ challenged the Pharisees not as much for thinking incorrectly as for loving incorrectly (“Beware of the scribes, which desire to walk in long robes, and love greetings in the markets” Lk. 20:46). No matter what subject we teach, we need to demonstrate passion, love, and delight in the things of God if we are going to pass on the right values to the next generation.
As a literature teacher, I have started to explore ways to win my students’ hearts, not just their minds. One way I do this is by giving them tips for how to complete their reading assignments. These tips involve not just their minds, but their bodies, with the goal of reaching the affections. Specifically, I tell my students to find a comfortable place to sit, to turn their cell phones all the way off so they can enjoy the reading experience without interruption, to have a warm cup of coffee close by, to keep a reading journal, and so forth. I tell them that as they do these things, the readings will be more likely to come to life in their imaginations, making the reading experience much more enjoyable.
The point is that I don’t want them to simply pass my class–I want them to love reading for the rest of their lives, because I believe with all my heart that a love of reading has immense potential to help them become people with rich inner lives, with a sense of civic and cultural engagement, and with a hunger for God Himself.
Let’s be teachers who focus not just on the head, but on the heart.
Mrs. Margaret Handyside
November 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment
“Be sure to love the student even if you do not always like his or her behavior. Look beyond the behavior to the reason.” This is a quote from Mrs. Handyside, our Director of Early Childhood and Pre-Student Field Experiences. Mrs. Handyside believes that one of the keys to being a successful teacher is having love for your students. Margaret Handyside is married to David Handyside, the Director of Student Teaching and associate professor here at MBBC. They have been married for 42 years and have 2 children and 5 grandchildren.
Margaret began her career as a teacher at a rural three-room school in Illinois five miles outside of town. She says that “it was a wonderful place to start. One of the other teachers was a wonderful mentor. I taught there two years and looped (had the same children in first and second grades).”
Mrs. Handyside also believes that a teacher can have a profound influence on her students. Her favorite teacher growing up was her 7th grade science teacher. She says, “I did not like science before 7th grade. She made it fun and understandable.”
Most important, though, to Margaret is her relationship with the Lord. She accepted the Lord as her Savior when she was six years old, and this change in her life has had the greatest impact on her teaching as she believes that she should “never step into the classroom withoug having spent time in prayer, committing [her] day to God.”
National Geographic Educational Games
November 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment
A link to education games on the National Geographic for Kids website:
Presentation Tools
November 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Links to presentation websites that will help you create engaging, memorable presentations:
http://prezi.com/ - Create presentations live and on the web.
http://www.mixbook.com/ - Create a photobookonline and share it with others.
http://www.photoshow.com/home/start - Upload photos from your computer and create a digital photoshow with music. Then share online.
http://voicethread.com/ - A collaborative, multimedia slideshow that allows people to navigate slides and leave comments.
Using Pinterest as a Teaching Aid
November 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment
A link to a Prezi about how to use Pinterest as a Research/Teaching aid:
Add Some “Velcro” to Your Lesson Plans
October 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Velcro products are a fascinating invention. Their “sticking power” is useful for everything from children’s shoes to America’s space program. Kelly Gallagher (2003), noted English teacher and author, calls students’ background knowledge “prior knowledge Velcro” (Reading Reasons: Motivational mini-lessons for middle and high school). Background knowledge, or “prior knowledge,” is a key factor to students’ success in school. Students learn new information by making connections with information they already know. Simply put, the more a person knows, the easier it is to learn more. Reading, traveling, talking with people, and learning new skills open up new worlds for us–and build background knowledge. Learning new material is much easier when it can be connected to previous experiences or acquired knowledge–in other words, when there is something for it to stick to.
A recent trip to Hawaii provided a good reminder of the value of background knowledge. For example, after hiking to the summit of Diamond Head, the term “crater” took on new meaning for me—certainly more than could be gained from memorizing the definition from a list of vocabulary terms. Another day I thought immediately of the 1959 Newbery award book The Witch of Blackbird Pond when I had to “gain my sea legs.” And a visit to Pearl Harbor is unforgettable; the history books truly come alive as you watch the oil continue to leak from the wreckage of the USS Arizona.
Unfortunately, we can’t all take field trips to exotic places to increase background knowledge. So what practical applications can we make to our everyday teaching? First, activate the background knowledge your students already have. Encouraging students to make relevant personal connections to what they are learning in the classroom is accomplished in many ways: class discussions, Q&A sessions, learning logs, KWL charts, or quickwrites. A second very important application is to help your students build background knowledge when you begin the study of a new topic. Direct experiences (e.g., field trips, experiments, or simulations) are the most powerful, but not always the most feasible. Reading, conversation, a generous use of visual aids, and preteaching vocabulary are other effective ways to prepare students for learning. Creative and informative introductions help students make sense of new material easier and more quickly.
Consider using the power of background knowledge the next time you and your students delve into a new reading selection or unit of study. Its “sticking power” might be just what your students need to hold on to that new information.
What Makes a Good Teacher?
September 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment
One of the more amazing conditions that I have observed through the years has been the public (and sometimes, private) teaching community’s longstanding, instinctive, and (until recently) effective resistance to efforts to evaluate and assess individual teacher effectiveness.
Resistance Factors
Want to touch a raw nerve among teachers? Ask about merit pay. Few teachers disagree that they would like to be paid more for quality teaching. Few, though, agree that administrators can be trusted to assess good teaching.
There is an inherent, perhaps legitimate, fear that teacher effectiveness will be measured through invalid or unfair means. Few would like to see student test scores, for example, used as a straight-up indicator of teaching skills. Teacher effectiveness measures should always reflect differences in class-to-class aptitudes and community-to-community opportunities to learn.
The landscape is beginning to change. Increasing numbers of communities are insisting that their teachers submit to accountability systems similar to those that most workers face in their daily workplaces. Workers in nearly every discipline know that they must produce or improve, or risk losing their jobs. Parents now ask “If teachers and administrators want us to trust their assessment expertise regarding our children’s academic achievement, then why can’t they use that same expertise to produce a legitimate means of evaluating their own effectiveness?”.
ECMM and the Private Sector
This discussion is less prevalent among early childhood music and movement teachers and music therapists because, in contrast to their public school counterparts, most operate in a free market system. Studio managers and/or parent consumers decide, year by year, whether the teachers will keep their jobs. This is an inescapable fact of life in the private teaching community. Teach well, or lose your classes.
Defining Good Teaching
Good teaching (and its reciprocal, bad teaching) can be defined, and decades of research and study are available to support gradually emerging definitions. Robert Marzano, an influential educational theorist, addresses this question indirectly in his book Classroom Management that Works. I will paraphrase several of his key ideas throughout the remainder of this article.
On page three, Marzano states that effective teachers perform many functions. These functions can generally be organized in three categories.
1. Making wise choices about the most effective instructional strategies to employ
2. Designing classroom curriculum to facilitate student learning
3. Making effective use of classroom management techniques
One of the more amazing conditions that I have observed through the years has been the public (and sometimes, private) teaching community’s longstanding, instinctive, and (until recently) effective resistance to efforts to evaluate and assess individual teacher effectiveness.
Resistance Factors
Want to touch a raw nerve among teachers? Ask about merit pay. Few teachers disagree that they would like to be paid more for quality teaching. Few, though, agree that administrators can be trusted to assess good teaching.
There is an inherent, perhaps legitimate, fear that teacher effectiveness will be measured through invalid or unfair means. Few would like to see student test scores, for example, used as a straight-up indicator of teaching skills. Teacher effectiveness measures should always reflect differences in class-to-class aptitudes and community-to-community opportunities to learn.
The landscape is beginning to change. Increasing numbers of communities are insisting that their teachers submit to accountability systems similar to those that most workers face in their daily workplaces. Workers in nearly every discipline know that they must produce or improve, or risk losing their jobs. Parents now ask “If teachers and administrators want us to trust their assessment expertise regarding our children’s academic achievement, then why can’t they use that same expertise to produce a legitimate means of evaluating their own effectiveness?”
ECMM and the Private Sector
This discussion is less prevalent among early childhood music and movement teachers and music therapists because, in contrast to their public school counterparts, most operate in a free market system. Studio managers and/or parent consumers decide, year by year, whether the teachers will keep their jobs. This is an inescapable fact of life in the private teaching community. Teach well, or lose your classes.
Defining Good Teaching
Good teaching (and its reciprocal, bad teaching) can be defined, and decades of research and study are available to support gradually emerging definitions. Robert Marzano, an influential educational theorist, addresses this question indirectly in his book Classroom Management that Works. I will paraphrase several of his key ideas throughout the remainder of this article.
On page three, Marzano states that effective teachers perform many functions. These functions can generally be organized in three categories.
1. Making wise choices about the most effective instructional strategies to employ
2. Designing classroom curriculum to facilitate student learning
3. Making effective use of classroom management techniques
Our methodology providers address the first two categories effectively in their training workshops. Teachers learn repertoire, class activities, business practices, theoretical frameworks, and many other important concepts when they train with a particular provider. Although the content and methods may change from provider to provider, each curriculum nicely manages the (1) wise choices about the most effective instructional strategies to employ, and (2) designing classroom curriculum to facilitate student learning.
However, the third area, classroom management, seems to be the most important. On page five, Marzano describes one study in which the researchers found 228 variables that impact student achievement. Later, 134 educational experts rated and ranked the 228 variables.
Classroom Management as King
In line with a host of similar studies, the clear and consistent winner among the 228 was classroom management. If student learning is to take place, then the teacher must be a good classroom manager. A large number of studies reinforce this claim, whether teacher effectiveness is being rated by student learning or by ratings.
Marzano goes on to describe a study by Jacob Kounin in which he concludes that classroom management is comprised of the following four attributes.
1. Withitness (A sense that the teacher is on top of student attempts at mischief)
2. Smoothness and momentum during classroom presentations
3. Letting students know what is expected of them at any given moment
4. Variety and challenge in activities.
Another study, by Brophy (cited on page six), adds that effective classroom managers should develop a set of “helping skills” to employ with different types of students.
Marzano further states that attention to classroom management details at the beginning of the year is one key to a well-run classroom.
Finally, Marzano incorporates an analysis of dozens of studies involving over 5000 subjects. The result of this meta-analysis was to provide four broad management factors having the greatest impact on quality classroom management. These include
1. Rules and procedures,
2. Disciplinary interventions,
3. Teacher-student relationships, and
4. Teacher’s Mental Set.
So… having said all this, I will follow up this post by expanding on Marzano’s discussion of each of these four factors.
We all know good teaching when we see it. Perhaps we now have some tools to discuss it.
Perfectionism as an Addiction
July 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment
What would drive a student to rework problems numerous times even after mastering the concept? Why would one be fearful that he could never learn the material well enough? What would cause a student to believe he failed if he did not achieve a perfect score on a diagnostic or pretest even though he had never been exposed to the material? Why would a student be frustrated over forgetting even the most insignificant details or be heartbroken when he is not the top student in every subject? Why might one student study 6 hours for a quiz when every other student only studied 20 minutes? The answer to all of the above questions is perfectionism: an acceptable, perhaps even encouraged, addiction. What parent or teacher has never encouraged a student to excel or to be his best? Unfortunately, a student may misinterpret this seemingly good directive. Fuller (2008) explains, “Although my parents frequently insisted that they simply expected me to ‘do my best,’ I learned through their modeling that doing one’s best actually means being the best. As a result, I developed strong perfectionist tendencies, particularly in the area of academic achievement” (p. 46). Some of the brightest students are not only wrestling with perfectionism, but are unknowingly being encouraged by parents and teachers to continue their struggle.
In this article I seek to describe the addiction of perfectionism in education, explain our inadequate solutions for perfectionism, and show how perfectionism is an addiction of desiring to be God by wishing to be perfect and needing to be in control.
Study Help!
May 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment
I have for the past ten years served as the Director of Learning Assistance at Maranatha. This means that I have had ten years to observe and analyze students’ study habits. Students who struggle with getting assignments in on time and with studying for tests usually have one thing in common – poor time management skills. I believe that elementary and secondary teachers can do students a great service by emphasizing time management and by encouraging parents to realize that this will be a determining factor of college success.
Let me give you a couple of quick tips for time management. I have found that, on the college level, what works best is for a student is to use a chart showing the whole week with the hours of the day. You can find this chart HERE. They indicate on the chart the times they plan to attend classes, eat, work, sleep, etc. They then can see how many hours of each day are available for study. By using the daytime hours that are open to them and not waiting until the evening to start studying, they can often get in two hours of study before dinner another one or two after dinner. This way they have the rest of the evening to relax, do laundry, call home, etc. This plan can be used by parents to help their children realize that if they work before they play, there is usually quite enough time for play.
Another area in which college students struggle is the area of reviewing class notes. I continually emphasize to our students that they need to plan a time every week to simply read over all of their notes to date in each subject. This constant review will help them to be ready for tests. It will also help them come out of the semester actually knowing the material and retaining it. Statistics show that students who do not review their notes remember only about 10% of the information. Note the “Curve of Forgetting” chart below.
Time management is part of self-discipline. Self-discipline is an area that we all can continually work to improve!