Christian Educators Journal April 2024 Vol. 63 No. 4
Resource Review
Ten New Books for Your Classroom Library Reading Books as Prayer Tough Women in Dystopian Literature Teaching Michelle Good’s Five Little Indians in a Christian School Wayi Wah! Let’s Go, It’s Time! Focus Period AI and Christian Education
Contents
3 Editorial 4 Ten New Books for Your Classroom Library: Middle-Grades and Picture Books MARY JO STAAL
8 Reading Books as Prayer:
Young Adult Literature and Spirituality CHRISTINE SCHOLMA
11 Tough Women in Dystopian Literature:
Considerations and Themes for Teaching SARAH KROESE AND BILL BOERMAN-C ORNELL
16 “More Than Their Trauma”:
Teaching Michelle Good’s Five Little Indians in a Christian School ANTHONY BIGORNIA
22 Wayi Wah! Let’s Go, It’s Time! JONATHAN BOONE
24 Focus Period: How to Give Students and Teachers the Time They Need BRIAN KARSTEN
28 Artificial Intelligence and Christian Education CHRIS PARKER
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Christian Educators Journal Vol. 63 No. 4, April 2024 cejonline.com Editor Abby Zwart cejeditor@gmail.com The Christian Educators Journal (CEJ) encourages letters to the editor in response to articles presented in the CEJ. Letters must be accompanied by the author’s name and email address. The CEJ reserves the right to edit letters for length and clarity. Where a letter addresses issues raised by the author of an article, the CEJ reserves the right to invite the article author to respond to the letter. Subscriptions Klaas Wolterstorff 2474 Westboro Dr NE Grand Rapids, MI 49506 business@cejonline.com Subscription Price (US dollars) US: $25.00 (one year, print) Canada: $30.00 (one year, print) Digital: $25.00 (one year) Beginning September 2021, all subscriptions outside the US and Canada are digital only. Please visit www.cejonline for subscription information. US Postal Information Nonprofit Organization Postage paid in Grand Rapids, MI Permit No. 657 Return postage guaranteed to: Christian Educators Journal 2474 Westboro Dr NE Grand Rapids, MI 49506 Address Correction Requested Canadian Postal Information Registered under Publications Mail Agreement: No. 40022165 at Norwich, ON Return postage guaranteed to: Christian Educators Journal PO Box 39 Norwich, ON N0J 1P0 Indexed in Christian Periodicals Index Copyrighted 2000 CEJ. All rights reserved. Christian Educators Journal (130630) is published quarterly by Christian Educators Journal Association. Scripture All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
Statement of Purpose The Christian Educators Journal Association publishes the Journal as a channel of communication for all educators committed to the idea of Christian day school at the elementary, secondary, and college levels. The views expressed are those of the writers and not necessarily those of the association. Reprint Policy We allow free reprinting or photocopying of individual articles that have appeared in our journal, as long as the copied articles are used within the context of schooling and the source is acknowledged. Editor Abby Zwart Copyeditor Bethany Murphy Design Editor Klaas Wolterstorff Business Manager Klaas Wolterstorff Web Shepherd Heather Altena Board of Trustees Dr. Henry Algera Heather Birch Justin Cook Sara Leo Albert Kok (Chair) Gayle Monsma Ed Noot Jim Rooks Sean Schat Christine Scholma (Secretary) Tricia Stobbe Edith van der Boom Heather VanDyke Christine Webb Supporting Institutions Calvin University Edvance Christian Schools Association The King’s University Redeemer University Trinity Christian College Tyndale University Subscribing Organizations Christian Educators Association Christian Educators of British Columbia Prairie Centre for Christian Education Printed back issues (if available) can be purchased for $7.50 per copy (cost of shipping to be added to total). Some back issues may be available in digital format.
Cover image by rawpixel.com on Freepik
Editorial
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ur April resource review issue always fills up quickly, and I think that’s a great sign! It’s so exciting to open my inbox and see proposals from teachers around the world who are reading great books, finding new technology tools, and designing lessons that will engage students and push them to more faithful living. We like to highlight a list of great books to add to your classroom library each year, and Mary Jo Staal volunteered for this issue with a guide to some of the best new middle-grades and picture books. Then, some interesting patterns emerge. Christine Scholma reviews a book by Bill Boerman-Cornell about some innovative and prayer-centric ways to approach reading novels with students. Then, Bill himself collaborates with a student (who is now a teacher in her own right!) to dissect some of our favorite dystopian heroines. Next, both Anthony Bigornia and Jonathan Boone write about books involving Indigenous people—Anthony’s contribution discusses teaching a novel that offers an amazing representation of Indigenous teens while Jonathan’s looks at a nonfiction text for teachers that gives suggestions for incorporating more Indigenous pedagogies in our classrooms. The issue ends with two technology-based articles. Brian Karsten writes about an app used school-wide that makes it logistically easy to get students the extra support they need for particular skills. Lastly, Chris Parker, a contributor from our sister magazine in Australia, writes an excellent piece about the implications of artificial intelligence for Christian schools, Christian students, and Christian teachers. We hope you enjoy this issue, and we hope you’ll consider submitting a piece to CEJ next year! You can find the announcement of next year’s themes inside the front cover of this issue. — Abby Zwart
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Reading Books as Prayer: Young Adult Literature and Spirituality CHRISTINE SCHOLMA
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Using methods traditionally reserved for analyzing sacred texts can open pathways for classroom discussions that dig below the surface themes to uncover deeper meaning.
The authors pair each prayer with a specific novel and practice for discussion.
ave you ever picked up a young adult book and found that your reading experience was spiritual in a way that you hadn’t expected? Perhaps the book wasn’t dealing overtly with religious themes, but you found God leading you to a deeper understanding of your faith. As a Christian educator, do you endeavor to support your students in exploring literature in new ways that build capacity for deep conversations that nurture academic and spiritual formation? Young Adult Literature and Spirituality: How to Unlock Deeper Understanding with Class Discussion (Boerman-Cornell et al.) answers these questions by asserting that some young adult literature can be read as prayer and that using methods traditionally reserved for analyzing sacred texts can open pathways for classroom discussions that dig below the surface themes to uncover deeper meaning. Building off of the work of Josh Larson’s book Movies are Prayers: How Films Voice Our Deepest Longings, Boerman et al. identifies eleven prayers that can be found in young adult literature and pairs them with texts that exemplify each prayer. The eleven prayers include prayers of lament, yearning, anger, confession, equanimity, thankfulness, reconciliation, obedience, contemplation, joy, and pilgrimage. The authors pair each prayer with a specific novel and practice for discussion. For example, the book identifies the text Goodbye Days by Jeff Zentner as a prayer of confession. Zentner’s novel explores the tragedy of a fatal accident due to texting while driving from the point of view of the friend who texted the driver. As the main character, Carver, experiences deep grief over the loss of his friends, he also wrestles throughout the novel with wanting to confess and escaping the pain of confession (Boerman-Cornell et al. 37). This prayer of confession helps the reader consider ways in which confession can be helpful in healing and ways in which confession fails to solve problems. In addition to reading books as prayers, Young Adult Literature and Spirituality presents a variety of methods for leading class discussion that have been used for centuries by spiritual leaders to examine sacred texts. Often, this involves taking a look at a smaller portion of text to find meaning rather than examining the text as a whole. For example, Internment, by Samira Ahmed, a dystopian novel in which the main character’s family is sent to an internment camp simply because they are Muslim, serves as a prayer of lament. This book can be meaningfully discussed using the practice of Florilegium, a method introduced to the authors through the podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. This method invites readers to highlight a specific sentence that sparks meaning and pair it with another meaningful sentence. The teacher guides the students in making connections between the two sentences and applying these connections to the broader themes of the 8
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book. In Internment, students engaging with Florilegium can have deep insights that relate the text to their own lives in either whole class discussion or partner groups (Boerman-Cornell et al. 12). One example that pulls both the book as prayer together with the benefit of deep discussion is the young adult novel The War That Saved My Life, by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. This story is an unlikely tale that moves toward a prayer of thankfulness through hardship as Ada, the main character, is navigating abuse, displacement due to war, and the effects of having a physical disability. Although Ada’s life is rife with loss, she finds thankfulness in relationships and the good in the midst of struggle. To help students discover this prayer, the text recommends using the practice of Lectio Divina, a series of questioning and short answer writing responses. The questions ask students to think about the literal and allegorical meanings of the text, the connection to their own lives, and the action that the readers might be prompted to upon reading the text. These types of questions, along with time for students to share their responses, can lead to both meaningful and moving discussion (Boerman-Cornell et al. 78). In addition to the books described above, the text pairs the following books as expressions of prayer with recommendations for discussion methodologies:
Students engaging with Florilegium can have deep insights that relate the text to their own lives in either whole class discussion or partner groups.
• prayer of yearning in The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas • prayer of anger in Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, and Long Way Down, by Jason Reynolds • prayer of equanimity in brown girl dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson • prayer of reconciliation in Louisiana’s Way Home, by Kate DiCamillo, and The Poet X, by Elizabeth Acevedo • prayer of obedience in Orbiting Jupiter, by Gary Schmidt, and The Beast Player, by Nahoki Uehashi • prayer of contemplation in Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, by Grace Lin • prayer of joy in The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green • prayer of pilgrimage in The Inquisitor’s Tale, by Adam Gidwitz Perhaps the best part about Young Adult Literature and Spirituality is that it provides the reader with a toolkit rather than exclusive book pairings. After fully exploring the text, it is likely that one will find themselves reading a different young adult novel, thinking, “This book could be read as a prayer of thankfulness too,” or, “While this book does exemplify a prayer of reconciliation, it is also a prayer of yearning.” Additionally, each of the practices for exploring literature through deep discussion can be applied to a variety of books, thus supporting teachers in the good work they are already doing with other texts within the classroom. If you are a teacher who uses young adult literature in your classroom, you will want to seek out this text to build your practices to include both deep discussion and spirituality.
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Perhaps the best part about Young Adult Litera ture and Spirituality is that it provides the reader with a toolkit rather than exclusive book pairings.
Wayi Wah! Let’s Go, It’s Time! JONATHAN BOONE
A The intent of this engaging read is to usher a call to action for educators to adopt new perspectives and pedagogies in order to improve learning for all students.
I have come to recognize after a lifetime of teaching and working in Christian education that we are not always good at recognizing how we have allowed idolatrous, Western ways of being to insidiously become part of what we consider a biblical worldview.
uthor Jo Chrona explains that Wayi Wah!—the title of her 2022 book on Indigenous pedagogies—translates as “Let’s go!” or “It’s time!” in Sm’algyax, the language of the Ts’mysen people of north coast British Columbia that she belongs to. It is clear the intent of this engaging read is to usher a call to action for educators to adopt new perspectives and pedagogies in order to improve learning for all students. Ironically, as one reads Wayi Wah! they soon discover that the perspectives and pedagogies are not actually new at all, but have been embedded and practiced within Indigenous cultures for generations, if not millenia. Until quite recently, Indigenous pedagogies and ways of being have been tragically ignored at best and aggressively suppressed and nearly eradicated at worst by the dominant Western culture. Thankfully, we are now living and teaching at a pivotal moment in Canadian history, as this country comes to terms with its complicated colonial history—specifically its aggressive assimilationist policies aimed at the eradication of Indigenous people and culture through the failed residential school experiment. American readers of this review will have to forgive me for not being as familiar with the current cultural realities in their country, but I venture to guess that even if the United States’ historic (and perhaps) contemporary treatment of American Indigenous people is not yet a topic of national conversation, it soon will be. And even if other pressing realities silence this necessary national conversation for a time, American Christian educators who simply desire to wrestle with their particular status quo and seek a more biblical way of fulfilling their calling will be better equipped by reading this resource. Regardless of whether we are fulfilling our calling as Christian educators in the United States or in Canada, many of us in our particular Christian school traditions are well versed and accustomed to developing a biblical worldview in our students to ensure “we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5) so that we “do not conform to the pattern of this world, but [are] transformed by the renewing of [our] minds” (Rom. 12:2). I am convinced that Wayi Wah! can help us in this very process, even though Chrona is writing specifically for K–12 public school teachers in the province of British Columbia. I have come to recognize after a lifetime of teaching and working in Christian education that we are not always good at recognizing how we have allowed idolatrous, Western ways of being to insidiously become part of what we consider a biblical worldview. By skillfully presenting Indigenous worldviews, ways of being, and pedagogies as valuable and relevant for all learners—regardless of their ethnic heritage— Chrona inevitably contrasts them with the commonly accepted and well- established Western counterparts that most of us in Christian schools have 22
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accepted and uncritically adopted, believing they are biblical simply because they reflect our cultural heritage and training. Growing professionally and personally in this area will take more than merely learning from an Indigenous author; in my own case it takes the hard work of also unlearning what I have assumed, practiced, and grown comfortable with over the years. It may be tempting for the reader to assume this valuable resource does not apply to them for any number of reasons: they teach outside of British Columbia, they already do good worldview development in their classrooms, they work against racism, their school does not have a significant Indigenous population, or their school is not situated near a reservation or Indigenous community. I am convinced that Wayi Wah! is an excellent resource for all K–12 Christian educators in any jurisdiction who find themselves unsatisfied with how we do our educating and who also desire to grow professionally and personally in the process. Further, Wayi Wah! is written to help educators who are specifically not of Indigenous heritage and who are interested in developing their understanding of Indigenous teaching methods, promoting reconciliation through educational practices, and establishing anti-racist educational settings.
Wayi Wah! is written to help educators who are specifically not of Indigenous heritage and who are interested in developing their under-
Work Cited
standing of Indigenous
Chrona, Jo. Wayi Wah! Indigenous Pedagogies: An Act for Reconciliation and Anti-Racist Education. Portage & Main Press, 2022. Jonathan Boone is the vice principal at Vernon Christian School, and lives in Vernon, BC, the home of the Syilx people since time immemorial. He is passionate about helping Christian schools work toward reconciliation with Indigenous people.
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teaching methods, promoting reconciliation through educational practices, and establishing anti-racist educational settings.
Focus Period: How to Give Students and Teachers the Time They Need BRIAN KARSTEN
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itting down to grade outlines for my science fiction literature class, I am not entirely sure of what to expect. Earlier this week, we reviewed the outline format—highlighting the importance of including an argumentative thesis statement that not only states the paper’s goal, but also reveals the paper’s organizational structure. I walked through the process methodically, trying to ensure that all students were clear on what was expected and gave them time to work while I bounced around answering questions. I felt like I nailed it. But . . . a handful of students missed that day for college visits, a few others looked exhausted because the school play is ramping toward opening night, and the course is already a mixed eleventh and twelfth grade class of varying skill levels. Canvas, our learning management system, lets me know that five of my twenty-four students didn’t submit the assignment. Undismayed, I start at the beginning of the alphabet and work my way down: Ray Bradbury uses the character of Faber to represent protagonist Montag’s moral conscience.
There’s no thesis providing the essay’s argument, but that’s an easy fix for this student. I comment accordingly, offer a few more suggestions on what is otherwise a solid outline, and move on to the next: Bradbury in his book Fahrenheit 451 tells the story of Guy Montag and how he learns about the problems in his society.
Yikes. No argument—just a plot summary. Skimming through the rest of the outline, it appears that the student seems to know the text, but this isn’t close to ready for the writing stage because she hasn’t done any literary analysis. I’m not sure comments alone will help here. The rest of the outlines show very similar issues. Some are outstanding and ready for drafting. Some are close but are missing key elements in the thesis or outline. Some are incomplete. And some need significant intervention before moving on. The problem, however, is that I need to move on to Brave New World next week and the next three class periods are earmarked for drafting, peer revision, and submission. I can quickly review what we did earlier in the week, which will bore some but help others; however, there are a handful of students that clearly need some in-depth intervention, and these are the same students who can’t afford to miss any of the upcoming steps in the process. What I need is an extra block of time with only a handful of students—some that need to complete 24
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the assignment, and some that need help revising. Thankfully, our school has Focus Periods. Focus Periods (also called Flex Periods or W.I.N. [What I Need] periods) are an increasingly popular addition to school bell schedules. Our school instituted them seven years ago, and it’s hard to imagine going back to a time before we had them. Four days a week, for twenty-five minutes after lunch, every student in our building attends a Focus Period where they can get necessary intervention, pursue interesting and helpful enrichment opportunities, or spend time studying or working on homework midday, saving them time after school for work, family, friends, or extra-curricular activi ties. Staff in the building plan these times and use them to reteach or re-assess students who struggle, offer opportunities for things that time might not allow for in their units, or create a quiet learning space where they oversee students working on homework. It’s been a massive help. All students need help at times—some more than others. The educational consultants at Solution Tree explain it this way: “Just as a group of boys won’t develop the need to shave at the same speed or on the same day, secondary school students will not acquire the ability to solve abstract equations or display empathy at the same speed” (Mattos and Buffum 2). We had to acknowledge this and do something about it. We had to recognize that “no matter how well a teacher teaches a concept, we know some students won’t get it the first time, because the best way to teach a concept to one student might fail miserably with another in the same class” (Mattos and Buffum 2). We also believe that mistakes are opportunities. A system where we don’t dive into mistakes as learning opportunities produces a fixed mindset in students. When we celebrate mistakes as opportunities, we develop a growth mindset where students know that their ongoing hard work will pay off. And so, collectively, our school has shifted from a world where time was the constant and learning was the variable to a school where learning is the constant and time is the variable. This started for us with the idea that we’d offer “office hours” daily for our students. Colleges and universities have allotted times where professors are available to help students that seek them out. We hoped (naively) that our students would do the same. We were wrong. The students that needed help the most saw their friends hanging out, enjoying an extra twenty-five minutes of free time at lunch, and they were not about to forfeit that time by visiting their teachers. Instead, the students choosing to come to office hours were the ones with 98 percent and were wondering what they could do to get themselves to 100 percent. Not ideal. Our primary goal was to help those that were struggling—some temporarily, some chronically—in our classes. And trusting that these students would seek out help wasn’t working. In Pyramid Response to Intervention: RTI, Professional Learning Communities, and How to Respond When Kids Don’t Learn, the authors explain why. They argue that it is imperative that students “receive timely interventions at the first indication that they need more time and support. This process should be directive rather than invitational, so that students get the extra help they need, consistently and without interruption until they are successful” (Buffum et al. 8). Needless to say, office hours weren’t cutting it. We shifted our practice to Focus Periods. During Focus Periods, all students are assigned a space for learning. Students that need intervention in a class are selected by their teachers Christian Educators Journal
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Four days a week, for twenty-five minutes after lunch, every student in our building attends a Focus Period where they can get necessary intervention, pursue interesting and helpful enrichment opportunities, or spend time studying or working on homework.
No matter how well a teacher teaches a concept, we know some students won’t get it the first time, because the best way to teach a concept to one student might fail miserably with another in the same class.
Trusting that these students would seek out help wasn’t working.