Christian Educators Journal February 2025 Vol. 64 No. 3
Field Trips and Travel Slowing Your Roll The Challenges and Benefits of Student Travel Experiencing the Wonder of BC An Invitation to Be Part of a Better Story Faith Expressions Field Trips for Teacher Candidates Tips for Trips: Make the Most of Your Time Building Ecological Literacy Skills
Contents
3 Editorial 4 Slowing Your Roll CHRISTIAN ALTENA
10 Two Weeks in January:
The Challenges and Benefits of Student Travel BRIAN KARSTEN
14 Experiencing the Wonder of BC: A Full-School Experiential Educational Approach CHRIS STEENHOF
20 An Invitation to Be Part of a Better Story JONATHAN BOONE AND TARA CORNEAU
27 Cultivating Inclusive Classrooms: Faith Expressions Field Trips for Teacher Candidates
HEATHER BIRCH AND KRISTEN GOODMAN
32 Tips for Trips: Make the Most of Your Time DAN MEESTER
36 Building Ecological Literacy Skills Sparks Love for Creation SARAH BOKMA
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Christian Educators Journal Vol. 64 No. 3, February 2025 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.
Editorial
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n the summer of my sophomore year of high school, I took a trip to New York City with my school’s theater department. There were a lot of firsts: it was one of my first times on a plane, my first experience traveling without my family, my first Broadway show, and my first time in a hotel room sans adults. I thought this was pretty much the most fun I had ever had, made sweeter by the fact that all my best friends came along, as did one of my favorite teachers. We oohed and ahhed through Wicked and Lion King and Phantom of the Opera, we got up early to wait in line for cheap rush tickets to a show, and we took a million pictures with our digital cameras on a walk through Central Park. Looking back with adult hindsight, I realize that trip was a ton of work for our teacher leaders. They had to manage subway rides, individual tickets to shows for dozens of students, and getting us in and out of restaurants with minimal chaos. But as a teenager, none of that registered. I got to experience all of my “firsts” and bond with my friends and make memories without any of the stress. Almost twenty years later, that teacher I loved and who travelled with us still works at my old high school. And it turns out I do, too! Brian Karsten and I have been coworkers now for many years, and he still gets excited about travelling with students. In fact, he now manages a program at our school called Winterim that gives students the opportunity to travel all over the world. Check out his article in this issue to read his version of our New York Trip together and learn about the benefits and pitfalls of international student travel. Or take a bike trip and learn about American history with Christian Altena. Or learn how a school in British Columbia is committed to offering overnight travel opportunities as an extension of the learning students do in the classroom (Chris Steenhof ). Or read a first-hand experience of one of those trips from its leaders and students (Jonathan Boone and Tara Corneau). Maybe you’re not up for an overnight trip, but would like to have your students experience religious traditions different from their own—Heather Birch and Kristen Goodman have some tips. Or maybe you’ll be drawn to the last two articles of this issue, where we hear from two people who are writing from the perspective of field trip and travel hosts (Dan Meester and Sarah Bokma). Wherever you choose to read in this issue, we hope you’re inspired to get out of your classroom and into God’s great big, beautiful world. —Abby Zwart
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Slowing Your Roll CHRISTIAN ALTENA
I I biked the Great Allegheny Passage with some friends, and I quickly realized that with its gentle grades, beautiful vistas, and historic sites, this would be the perfect ride for my students to have a real learning adventure.
love being in the classroom. It’s wonderful when the bell rings, the seats fill up, and I can once again transport my charges to the foreign lands of 1607, 1776, 1861, and 2001. Open up your time machines to page 267! Come May, though, I get that itch to get out of Room 5, pack up my panniers, and spend a week just riding. I rise with the sun, pedal for seven to eight hours, and find a place to flop, grateful for having arrived safely and pleased with my progress. Though I bike alone, I meet many people, hear their stories, and learn lessons from the landscapes. Many of these lessons can’t be learned in any other way except at twelve miles an hour along a country road or a rails-to-trails path. I begin to wonder, How could I share this experience with my students? What new learning could there be in a community sharing in the hardships of a challenge? In 2016, I biked the Great Allegheny Passage with some friends, and I quickly realized that with its gentle grades, beautiful vistas, and historic sites, this would be the perfect ride for my students to have a real learning adventure. They would be challenged, face hardships, build community, and learn some important stories about our nation’s history.
The Trip The Great Allegheny Passage and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal together form a largely uninterrupted 350 mile pathway connecting Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Washington, DC. The path—sometimes asphalt, sometimes crushed limestone, sometimes muddy and root-strewn two-track— guides travelers past the hulking relics of the rustbelt; through thick, cool forests and high-walled ancient canyons; past caves; along rushing rivers; past famous battlefields and forgotten graveyards; through small towns; across long viaducts and aqueducts; and through tunnels dug and blasted by those hungry-eyed immigrants who stared at you from the pages of your high school history textbook. For me and six students, this would be our world for ten days in June.
Hardships You can travel by car on the interstate between Pittsburgh and Washington, DC, in around four hours. So, why would one exchange air conditioning and a plush reclining seat for ten days sweating on a bicycle? A simple answer might be to experience some difficulties. A complex answer would be that 4
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this trail through the woods addresses a desperate and growing need—especially among our youth—for experiences that challenge us to surrender, for a time, our insistence upon comfort, speed, novelty, distraction, certainty, and ease. We need to unplug, slow down, and depend upon a community in real time and in real space. We need to suffer a little bit. While it was nothing like the Oregon Trail (our trip had ice cream and nobody contracted dysentery), real hardships awaited the riders: sore bums, backs, legs, arms, and wrists (there were injuries and medical clinic visits); heat, cold, wind, and rain; bugs, bears (one imagined sighting), and snakes (definitely not imagined); flat tires, broken chains, snapped spokes, and bent rims; long miles between meals and tepid water in dirty bottles; and granola. For a number of students, the hardships began after the first couple of miles because that’s as far as they’d ever ridden a bicycle continuously in any one direction. Most of these students had been socialized to believe that bicycles were for children, and as soon as state authorities permitted and their parents’ pocketbooks opened, they ditched two wheels for four and never looked back. The only adults they ever saw seriously riding were either wealthy, middle-aged, lycra-clad weekend speed warriors or those who were down on their luck. Their communities discouraged any thought of cycling in any daily practical manner. Far-flung suburbs, high-speed exurban roads with narrow shoulders, and poorly maintained sidewalks are very real structural barriers to anyone considering an alternative model of transportation. Our urban environments are so thoroughly designed for cars that it practically requires a trip to Amsterdam, Copenhagen, or Berlin to really understand it. For others, the hardships awaited the evening of day one, when they experienced their first ever night in a tent. Others finally broke down days later, halfway through the sixty mile day. Exhausted and aching, they doubted they had it in them to finish the day’s ride. At the end of a long, hot Christian Educators Journal
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This trail through the woods addresses a desperate and growing need—especially among our youth—for experiences which challenge us to surrender, for a time, our insistence upon comfort, speed, novelty, distraction, certainty, and ease.
Two Weeks in January: The Challenges and Benefits of Student Travel BRIAN KARSTEN
Two Travel Stories
Hours of police reports, a missed tour, and many suppressed curse words
As a fairly new, still-unmarried teacher nearly twenty years ago, I was ecstatic when offered the chance to help chaperone a theater trip to New York City. Getting away at that time was easy, and there was no way I could pass up the opportunity to see Wicked, Phantom of the Opera, and The Lion King, along with the chance to (for the first time) walk through Central Park, see the Statue of Liberty, and more. I excitedly packed, thinking of all the cool sights and experiences ahead of me. Years later, I still have fond memories of the three productions, but I don’t remember much of the rest of the itinerary. What I do remember is the hour-long conversations with students about what superpower we would choose and why, the five pounds of fortune cookies one senior boy purchased and shared with us for days after a visit to Chinatown, and the incredibly awkward experience of taking a group of students to the not- so-appropriate production of 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee after waking up at five in the morning for rush seating. A few years later, I was again excited to be offered the chance to chaperone—this time, it was a June trip to London. Two of my English colleagues were the trip leaders, but they wanted a third (and male) chaperone, and I was fortunate enough to tag along. I expected a repeat of my last experience—building relationships with students while seeing Buckingham Palace, the Globe Theatre, and Stratford-upon-Avon. My biggest concerns centered around travel logistics, such as navigating customs and the Tube with highschoolers. This was my first school trip overseas. It was also my first time in a police cruiser. And my first time in an English police station, and my first time filing police reports. One of our students—against all of our pre-trip suggestions—packed, and then had stolen from him, thousands of dollars of electronics, including a laptop, an iPad, an expensive Canon camera, and Beats by Dr. Dre headphones. Hours of police reports, a missed tour, and many suppressed curse words later, I was second guessing the notion of ever traveling with students again.
later, I was second guessing the notion of ever traveling with students again.
The Challenges of Student Travel Since those first two trips, I’ve had the opportunity to chaperone and lead other student trips. I’ve floated on the Dead Sea with students and visited the Jamaican Deaf Village, and I now oversee our school’s Winterim program. Winterim is a two-week mini-semester in January that allows students to 10
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take a specialized course on campus (e.g., Fun with Physics, Watercolor Painting, Youth Police Academy), do an internship in the community (with veterinarians, cosmetologists, or lawyers), or take domestic and international trips led by staff members. In the past three years alone, we’ve sent student groups to Vietnam, Australia, Oman, the Grand Canyon, Kenya, France, and many more destinations. In just those three years, over six hundred students have chosen to travel. When speaking to parents and students, I almost always mention that our school’s Winterim program has now sent students to six of seven continents. (We’ve been to Patagonia, but Antarctica has yet to be proposed.) The feedback on the trips is amazing, as students have life-changing experiences. But in those same meetings, I always also speak to some of the downsides of student travel. I try to be open and honest about how our offerings don’t always go exactly as planned, and I hear about how they aren’t initially received by all with the same positivity. Cost and equity are the first major concerns that come to mind when it comes to student travel. And it’s a rising concern—literally and figuratively. When we started our Winterim program fourteen years ago, trip leaders felt that, for a trip to have a chance at success, it needed to stay under $3,000. In a post-pandemic world, our trip leaders have a difficult time keeping international trips under $4,000, and we have had trips over $5,500. This becomes a major hurdle for families that want to give their students these opportunities, and it can also divide a community, creating a line between those that can afford to travel and those that can’t. We have tried to address these concerns in a variety of ways. Our school, when starting Winterim, intentionally budgeted for financial aid for Winterim travelers. And in the past few years, we have had some generous donors (several of whom are parents whose students benefited from the program) create an endowment that allows us to grant scholarships to some travelers that apply. For schools that may not have the same accessibility to resources, the travel company EF Tours can set up a points program for your school (normally reserved for trip leaders) that allows programs to earn scholarship dollars that make travel accessible to students who might not otherwise have the ability to afford it. And lastly, we let our ninth graders (who aren’t eligible to travel) know that it’s a part of our program that they can plan for. Many of our students wait until their senior year to travel, giving them three years’ worth of part-time jobs to earn enough money to travel before they graduate. The other major concern with student travel is the headache that bringing teenagers anywhere can generate. Like the young man on my London trip, students don’t always make great life choices. He disregarded all of our advice and paid the price (or at least his insurance provider did) for bringing valuables with him unnecessarily. Other students over the years have made various poor decisions. From theft to vaping to alcohol consumption to the group of senior girls who thought getting tattoos while in Brazil was a good idea, traveling with students can bring with it a host of frustrations. Although there will always be students that push the limits, having clear policy and following through on consequences when problems do arise is key. We work hard to explain that travel is a privilege and not a right, we don’t offer travel opportunities to students that have already shown they aren’t responsible enough, and Christian Educators Journal
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In the past three years alone, we’ve sent student groups to Vietnam, Australia, Oman, the Grand Canyon, Kenya, France, and many more destinations.
Cost becomes a major hurdle for families that want to give their students these opportunities.
Although there will always be students that push the limits, having clear policy and following through on consequences when problems do arise is key.
Experiencing the Wonder of BC: A Full- School Experiential Educational Approach CHRIS STEENHOF
T We live in a beautiful part of the world, and students often engage in outdoor experiences, such as multi-day hikes, canoe trips, and winter camping.
his fall my school, Bulkley Valley Christian School (BVCS), embarked on a new approach to experiential learning. Our plan involved sending each grade on a different experiential trip for the first full week of school. Our school has a rich history of ensuring that all grades are involved in experiential learning through various experiences and trips. We live in a beautiful part of the world, and students often engage in outdoor experiences, such as multi-day hikes, canoe trips, and winter camping. Sometimes classes or groups have explored different parts of our province, such as Barkerville, a heritage site celebrating a mining town from the Cariboo gold rush, or the historical site of Fort St. James. We intentionally coordinate these trips to engage in them collectively and purposefully. Our school is guided by our GROW acronym (Grace, Respect, Ownership, Wonder). Each year we focus on one word of the acronym, with this year’s focus being wonder. We felt there was no better way to experience the awe and wonder of our Heavenly Father’s creation than to explore the beautiful province we live in. This article will explain our vision, our plan, and the trips we took last year, as well as our reflections on them, so that we can benefit other educators and schools as they walk their journey of integrating experiential education opportunities into their programs.
Our Vision
These experiences build relationships between and among students, staff members, parent chaperones, and members of the wider community.
Our school has been guided by a conviction that experiential trips are an essential part of our program. We do not view them as “extra-curricular” or an addition to our academic and non-academic offerings. Instead, we believe these trips allow us to fulfill our mission as a Christian school to powerfully encounter the diversity of creation. Romans 1 tells us that it is through God’s creation that we fully know his “invisible attributes” (1:20). We embrace the definition of creation that encompasses both the physical world and the unlimited creativity God has gifted human beings with, readily evident in many aspects of culture, such as music and the dramatic arts. While this connection to our vision is central to our rationale, we also understand the many positive impacts that experiential educational opportunities have on students and school culture. These experiences build relationships between and among students, staff members, parent chaperones, and members of the wider community. A recent book called Reclaiming Our Students suggests that these relationships are important to all students, but especially those who struggle with anxiety, aggression, and passivity (Beach and Neufeld-Strijack). Research also demonstrates that experiential 14
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education helps students be more engaged with their school, triggers identity formation, and fosters higher-level thinking and reflection (Eyler 24– 26). At a time when some schools and districts are moving toward standardization or a more rigid curriculum, experiential education opportunities are even more important. At BVCS, feedback from students and parents through the last number of years has demonstrated the positive impact of experiential education on the lives of our students.
Our Plan When we decided last spring to send all our students out during the same week to a variety of different locations, our desire was an extension of trips that already had a rich history at our school. We also realized by engaging in these trips simultaneously that we could be more intentional and purposeful in our approach. We wanted to incorporate the following elements into nearly every trip: • A significant outdoor component due to our location and the beauty and physical diversity of our province • Purposeful community-building activities, including self-reflection and group discussion • A service component and/or an emphasis on the transformative nature of the experience • Significant emphasis on relationships between students, between students and teachers/parent chaperones, and between students and the community
The Trips • Our grade 8 class went on a multi-day camping trip to a beautiful basin close to our community. Students spent two days planning the trip together, including meals, packing lists, and safety information. The trip involved multiple hikes, community-building activities, devotional times, and various outdoor activities. • Our grade 9 class spent the week on a variety of outdoor activities. They went rock climbing on the side of an incredible canyon, spent a day on a major hike, and spent two days at a Bible camp engaging in a service project and participating in several outdoor activities. • Our grade 10 class traveled to the Nisga’a nation territory in northwest British Columbia, an area rich in history with vast areas of land covered with lava from a volcano that erupted several hundred years ago. The group spent the week camping, learning about Nisga’a history and culture, hiking to the cone of the volcano, and engaging in several outdoor activities. • Our grade 11 class traveled to Vancouver to engage in arts-related activities, including attending a Broadway play, the Vancouver Fringe Festival, and the Bard on the Beach Festival. The group also completed the Grouse Grind (a 1–2 hour fitness test up the side of a mountain), boated through the waters around Vancouver, and spent a morning Christian Educators Journal
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We also realized by engaging in these trips simultaneously that we could be more intentional and purposeful in our approach.
An Invitation to Be Part of a Better Story JONATHAN BOONE AND TARA CORNEAU
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Out of a desire to make the learning more meaningful and to confront students’ assumptions and unhealthy stereotypes about Indigenous people, a five-day, four- night field trip to Haida Gwaii was hastily put together.
magine a nutrition class that never baked, a science class that never conducted experiments, or a drama class that never performed a play. All of us would certainly raise an eyebrow and wonder about the rationale behind the lack of creativity and planning on the teacher’s part. The same could be said for a grade 12 social studies class about First Peoples* that never left the comforts of the classroom to venture out into an Indigenous community for an extended period of time. This was the driving rationale behind a field trip that was originally created in the spring of 2004. At that time, Jonathan was teaching a new provincial course at Bulkley Valley Christian School (BVCS) in Smithers, BC, called BC First Nations Studies 12. Out of a desire to make the learning more meaningful and to confront students’ assumptions and unhealthy stereotypes about Indigenous people, a five-day, four- night field trip to Haida Gwaii was hastily put together. In 2004, this island archipelago approximately one hundred kilometers off the north coast of British Columbia was still known by its colonized name, the Queen Charlotte Islands. As this first-time field trip took part over a long weekend and was presented as an extracurricular option, only a small group of six courageous students and one other supervising adult signed up. There was a lot of trepidation in that first trip: how would these students from a homogenous background react to being an ethnic minority within their own province? Would they be good ambassadors of their school? Of their own community? Of Jesus? Would the Haida people they met even welcome them in the first place? Thankfully, the success of that trial run led to the course becoming a permanent course offering at BVCS, and the success of that first field trip to Haida Gwaii (officially renamed in 2010 when the Haida nation ceremonially gave the colonial misnomer back to the provincial government) led it to become a significant component of the same course. So despite the initial trepidation, the field trip was a success, and the next year, nearly the entire class signed up for a longer, more demanding field trip. Tara Corneau has recently taken over the teaching of this course at BVCS and has successfully led the same field trip several times. The testimonies of students about its life-changing impact on them continue to be a common theme, as students wrestle with how they shall now live out their Christian faith in light of what they learned and experienced during their time on Haida Gwaii.
* A note about terminology: the phrase “First Peoples” has become the accepted term when referring to more than one Indigenous people group within British Columbia. Wherever possible, the specific First Peoples’ name for themselves should be used.
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Adapting the Haida Gwaii Experience In 2017, as part of his graduate studies in education at Dordt University, Jonathan adapted this same trip to be an opportunity for BC Christian school educators to have an Indigenous place-based professional development learning experience. Each trip has included a wide range of Christian school educators from diverse backgrounds: seasoned administrators, educational assistants, veteran classroom teachers, newly graduated teachers still looking for their first placement, and those from both urban and rural school settings. Some of these educators had never traveled within the province outside of the greater Vancouver area, and remarkably, some had never met an Indigenous person to the best of their knowledge. What each educator has had in common is a commitment to learn about, from, and with Indigenous people so they can in turn help write a better story for those entrusted to their care within their own educational settings. These trips for educators not only provided Jonathan with the data he needed to complete his graduate studies, but they more importantly helped satisfy the growing desire among Christian school educators to learn about Indigenous ways of being and knowing so that they in turn can be better equipped themselves as Christian educators and leaders.
The Case for Place-Based Education This growing desire to expand our understanding of Indigenous people complements a larger movement within British Columbia and within Canada to come to grips with our country’s colonial history and historic mistreatment of Indigenous people. Ultimately, this movement toward Christian Educators Journal
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Some of these educators had never traveled within the province outside of the greater Vancouver area, and remarkably, some had never met an Indigenous person to the best of their knowledge.