Building Something That Lasts

     I recently attended a kids ministry conference along with other staff members from my church. It was a huge eye-opener not only for what I am called to do through my (minimal - and yes, I like it that way) influence in our church's kids ministry, but also what I am called to do right here where I work with my children on a more regular basis.

     Now, one of the breakout sessions was on how to build a ministry that would endure. Of course, I immediately started thinking along the lines of epic proportions. I'm thinking, "Boom! As a teacher, I have built-in leadership capacity... They HAVE to listen to me!" Strategy? "I've got strategy out the wazoo, fueled by the super-human researchers (namely, Dr. Kate Kinsella) behind Read 180! I kept going through the steps, and as I sat there, listening to Jeff Brodie, I felt more and more confident that these parallels exist and that I can pull this off in the public classroom.

     What is my ministry in the classroom, you ask? Why, the love of learning, of course! I know that I don't know everything, but I also know that I can find the answers to the questions I don't know the answers to. We are living in a day and age where the vast majority of people have access to information sitting in their pockets on most days (or in a belt buckle clip for the lucky few). I might not know everything, therefore I cannot teach everything, but I can go into a room full of kids and show them how much I love learning something new... show them why I love learning in such a way that the love for it is infectious! Then show them that the key to being able to learn independently is... to be able to read independently, my true charge.

     This was so easy to envision. In fact, Brodie's second step sounded a lot like the concept of backward design. "Start with the end in mind," Brodie proposed. The information I want to communicate also has to be delivered in the context of my strategy. While Brodie's 4-point strategy was more spiritually oriented, I found a pretty solid correlation between the two sectors:

     I do find that students will be much more engaged when these four tenets are present in the student's life on a regular basis. The first two tenets go hand in hand, somewhat. When parents and guardians are actively involved in their children's education, the result is that children, in turn (more often than not), view education as an important priority in their lives as well - regardless of their natural work ethic. Positive peer pressure also plays an important role in how engaged students are in the academic setting. How do we hook our children into the lure of knowledge? Show them why it's cool to know stuff! When you get them excited about understanding things, the effect truly is infectious. It just doesn't happen as effectively, in my opinion, if their attention is given to you, the teacher, purely based on the fear of consequence-oriented threats. It's like that quote from Monsters, Inc.,

A laugh is ten times more powerful than a scream.

      

     Finally, serving others. The effect of realizing how one's existence positively influences another human being is priceless and it's an extremely powerful self-reproducing incentive. It quite naturally feels good to help others. The sooner we can allow our students to experience how helping out a classmate feels compared to breaking him down by making fun of him when he's struggling with a particular concept, the closer we get to my personal version of an "academic utopia": an environment where the inquisitive learner is attentive to instruction and eager to try, fail, and subsequently try again.

     Who knows where this may lead? I sure don't, but I'll try this approach out with my students, and if it fails, I'll try again... having hopefully learned something of value from the failed attempt. I better lead by example, don't you think?