Discipleship: Teaching for Change

As educators, we are faced with the task of guiding students through a series of changes to develop, enhance, and polish a variety of skill sets that will allow them to become productive and informed citizens. As Christians, we have experienced the most drastic change that is humanly possible, that of a dramatic encounter with Jesus Christ. Therefore, the task of the Christian educator is two-fold. First, we are to lead our students to discover the truest and most necessary change in their lives, which is accepting Christ as their personal Savior, and second, we are to equip them with the skills, knowledge, and confidence they need to take on the world.
How do we become agents of change in the lives of those we influence? How do we commit them to fulfilling the great commission to "go and tell"?

We must first understand the basic themes behind biblical discipleship: 1.) Its Priority, 2.) its Principle, and 3.) its Phases.

The Priority of Discipleship

A. Instability comes from immaturity Ephesians 4:14 - We are no more children, tossed to and fro by every doctrine.

B. Success comes from succession Mark 1:17 - Follow me...I will make you fishers of men.

C. True Ministry comes from multiplication Mark 6:12-13 - The disciples went out preaching… healing others.

The Principle of Discipleship - Teach others also...

A. The Principle of encouragement Ephesians 4:15 - Speak the truth in love.

B. The Principle of education Matthew 5:1-2 - He began to teach them.

The Phases of Discipleship

A. Life foundational need = Salvation

B. Life Style need = Basic Principles to live by

C. Life Design = Discovery of individual gifts

D. Life Service = Training for ministry

E. Life Leadership = Need to reproduce believers

The true purpose of education is to teach for change. As an educator, you are trained to assess and label academic, social, and developmental progress. Although knowing the "problem" is the initial step toward a solution, knowledge of deficiency is not enough. You must see where a student is, meet him at that point, set realistic goals for improvement, and equip the student for success.

Dream Big: Living His Dream for Your Life

What do you love doing? What are you passionate about? Only you know the answers to these questions. God has hardwired you to accomplish something that no one else will be able to do as well as you can. This is His divine design for your life. Once you tap into His calling for, you can experience the true fulfillment of your deepest dreams. With God nothing is impossible. He specializes in using the broken, downtrodden, and seemingly unexpected to accomplish great good for His glory. Throughout scripture He chooses those whom the world has cast aside. He chooses the least likely so that there can be no question of who should get the credit.

How can we transpose our dreams into our reality? It takes faith, hard work, and commitment. Will it be easy? No. Will those around you always support your dream? No. Will it truly be worth the sacrifice to see your dream come to fruition? Yes! When you know what you are made to do, the reward is always worth the cost in achieving it. It is essential that you trust God to guide, provide, and sustain you in the quest of living your dream. In good times, in bad times; through valleys and on the mountaintop, He deserves all the praise you can muster. The pursuit of your dream may possibly cost you money, time, and even relationships. Your dream may to take you far from the familiarity you have so grown accustom to. You might be thrown into situations, roles, and circumstances that you feel you are not ready for. It is in these times, these moments of hardship, that you are being purified and strengthened. Every encounter and trial you go through is equipping you for some greater task in the future. Your comfort zone will be invaded, and you will be forced to cross the barrier into the unknown. Press on. It is worth it. He is there. He is with you.

He made you to do this. This is your niche, and it is time to live in your sweet spot.

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step."

Communication: Where Teaching Comes to Life

To truly communicate with another individual, one must build a bridge of commonality. There must be an established reference point from which communication extends. Therefore, the greater the commonality, the greater the potential for communication. Basic communication stems from three basic components: thought, feeling, and action. Knowing something thoroughly, feeling it deeply, and performing it consistently, heightens the potential for effective communication. Effective teachers must use verbal and nonverbal communication to relay their message. These two forms of communication must coincide – what you say must correspond with what they see.

What are the areas of communication that must be evaluated in assessing effectiveness?

I. Quality of Speech…
Pronunciation
Diction
Vocabulary
Syntax
Grammar
Intonation
Enunciation

II. Clarity in Communication…
Giving directions
Lesson presentation
Conceptual explanation
Referencing previous material
Addressing confusion

How can these areas of communication be perfected? The aforementioned skills may be polished through appropriate lesson preparation and dynamic presentation of subject matter. Through adequate preparation, teachers are packaging and marketing their product for the desired consumer. It is the job of the communicator, in this case the teacher, to make their “product” as desirable as possible. The passion that is felt by the instructor must be presented practically for the student.

Instructional Effectiveness: Teaching for Mastery

“The highly effective teacher is an instructional virtuoso: a skilled communicator with a repertoire of essential abilities, behaviors, models, and principles that lead all students to learning (McEwan, 2002).”

In dividing up the actual process of the teaching and learning experience, the “behaviors” of education can be categorized into three groupings: 1) What the teacher must do, 2) What the student must do, and 3) What the lesson must do.

The teacher must…
…help the student relate to the familiar by giving all new information a reference point based upon previously learned knowledge (Eggen, 2001).
…develop examples and analogies that assist the learner with the connecting and storing of new information. Words, expressions, and gestures must draw a mental picture of the subject content in order for students to see relevance in the information (Tobias, 1994).
…identify key concepts within the lesson. Emphasis must be placed upon the important facts, terminology, and concepts that are most important for the students to know, grasp, and understand.
…keep goals in mind. In preparation for each new lesson, content goals and objectives must be reviewed to insure that the lesson is accomplishing what it says it is accomplishing.

The student must…
…complete tasks. In order for students to fully know and understand the information, assigned tasks must expound upon and align with the content taught inside the classroom. Meaningful assignments are preferred over tedious busy work.
…be engaged. Students must have an active role in the learning process. They need to be hearing, seeing, touching, and doing. Lesson concepts must be useful, thought provoking, and allow students to involve critical thinking and sensory intelligence (i.e., touch, feel, smell, sight, taste).
…be successful. It is important for every student to succeed. Develop assignments that make this possible. It may also be appropriate to modify some assignments so that all students can do well. The requirements must be the same, but the level of difficulty may vary (Eggen, 2001).

The lesson must…
…be planned and sequenced. Know what you are going to say and in what order you are going to say it. It is also important to have all materials and lesson plans ready in advance. This makes if so that another teacher could teach your lesson if the need arises.
…provide variety. Methodology must be varied in order to engage each individual student.
…be clear and meaningful. The content must be real and useful for student interest in order for it to mean something to them.

A highly effective teacher does not cater to only one learning style. The effective teacher strives to incorporate all learning styles and intelligences in order to draw all students into an active learning process. There must be a focus on individual learning, individual needs, and individual assessment. Therefore, in order to ensure effectiveness, the teacher must evaluate the nature of the content as compared to the complexity of the prescribed learning outcomes.

The Way We Learn

How do people learn? What methodologies motivate and enhance learning? How do people remember what they have learned? Do individual differences really have an affect on learning? The above questions can generally be answered by exploring the basics of psychological learning theory. These learning theories, as well as the men that postulated these theories, were greatly influenced by philosophy. While it is difficult to package all learning theories into one lump sum of philosophical jargon, it is possible to dissect a few that have especially influenced the study and development of learning style and multiple intelligence research. The more contemporary theories grow from the roots of behavioral and cognitive science research. Before one can fully appreciate and utilize learning styles and multiple intelligences in the classroom, one must understand the foundations upon which these theories were founded.

Behavioral Learning Theory
"Learning according to the behaviorist theory is an observable change in behavior."
General Assumptions of Behaviorist Theories
Principles of learning apply equally to different behaviors and to different species of animals.
Learning processes can be studied most objectively when the focus of study is on stimuli and responses. Internal cognitive processes are largely excluded from scientific study. Learning involves a behavior change. Behaviorist thought teaches that organisms are born as blank slates, and that learning is largely the result of environmental events.

General Educational Implications of Behaviorism
Emphasis on behavior: students should be active respondents; people are most likely to learn when they actually have a chance to behave. Also, student learning must be evaluated; only measurable behavior changes can confirm that learning has taken place.
Drill and practice: repetition of stimulus-response habits strengthens those habits.
Rewards: many theorists emphasize the importance of rewards or reinforcement for learning.
Breaking habits: one way to break a stimulus-response habit is to continue to present the stimulus until the individual is too tired to respond in the habitual way, or the exhaustion method. Also, the stimulus can be presented "faintly" so that the individual "learns" over time not to respond in the habitual manner, or the threshold method. Lastly, the incompatible stimulus method, would replace the habit with another habit, where eventually the individual adopts the "new" behavior in response to the stimulus.

Cognitive Learning Theory
"Cognitivism focuses on an unobservable change in mental knowledge"
General Assumptions of Cognitive Theories
Some learning processes may be unique to human beings. Cognitive processes are the focus of study. Objective, systematic observations of people's behavior should be the focus of scientific inquiry, however, inferences about unobservable mental processes can often be drawn from such behavior. Individuals are actively involved in the learning process. Learning involves the formation of mental associations that are not necessarily reflected in overt behavior changes.
Knowledge is organized. Learning is a process of relating new information to previously learned information.

General Educational Implications of Cognitive Theories:
Cognitive processes influence learning. As children grow, they become capable of more sophisticated thought. People organize the things they learn. New information is most easily acquired when people can associate it with things they have already learned. People control their own learning.

Learning and Individual Differences
SENSORY MODALITIES (Learning Styles)
Visual Learners enjoy…
reading and writing
visualizing what they hear
charts, maps, pictures and other visual aids
orderly, quite environment

Auditory Learners enjoy…
listening and talking
sounds, even noise
discussion, debate, concepts set to music
visually bland, sound-enriched environment

Kinesthetic Learners enjoy…
touching and movement
activity, involvement
projects, fixing things, manipulatives
space and freedom to move, hands-on

Human beings display substantial variability in the way they absorb information in the learning process. The preference that each individual displays for learning comprehension is known as his/her learning style. These learning styles determine how students perceive and interpret messages (i.e.-verbal and nonverbal cues influence classroom behavior). Walter Barbe branded they term modalities to describe the different learning styles used in a learning environment. Although, most people use all three, each individual develops an affinity for a primary style that is utilized most efficiently.

Literacy Instruction: The Legendary Debate

From several decades of research, much has been learned about the way in which children learn to read and write. The research results tell us that in order to become a more skilled reader over time; children must participate in a substantial number of higher level literacy enrichment activities. The successful teaching of beginning reading allows the child to more fully comprehend and produce written language. This extensive exposure gives students a wider variety of textual understanding from which they broaden their knowledge base and whet their appetite for further exploration in reading. Exposure also generates a greater enthusiasm and deeper appreciation for reading and writing, and it masterfully teaches the child how to effectively decode, interpret, and correctly spell new words due to the foundational basis of linguistic awareness. This level of learning is accomplished and heightened by building spoken language, phonological awareness, learning and using letter-sound relationships, fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension (Armbruster, 2003).

The debate over reading instruction is not a new topic in the field of education. Many innovative ideas and opinions have been practiced, published, and proposed. Two of the leading instructional methodologies for reading instruction are traditional phonics instruction and the whole language approach. Which does more to produce better results for student outcome in learning? Which method has more credited research to support process and procedure in instruction?

Definition of Terminology
Phonics Instruction
Phonics instruction helps beginning readers, see the relationships between the sounds of spoken language and the letters of written language. Understanding these relationships gives children tools that they can use in order to recognize familiar words more quickly and to figure out words they have not seen before (Groff, 1998).

Whole Language Instruction
Whole Language instruction immerses beginning readers in written material that is read aloud to them while they "follow along" in the text. After a designated number of repetitions of the oral reading, students are able to satisfactorily read the text in an independent fashion. It is acceptable for a student to add, omit, and substitute words and meanings in written material the student reads aloud--as the student personally sees fit (Groff, 1998).

Classroom Instructional Practices
Early literacy instruction focuses on developing talking and listening skills, teaching about the alphabet, teaching the sounds of spoken language, developing spelling and writing, building vocabulary, and enhancing comprehension skills. To ensure that all of the required literacy competency standards are met, the teacher must integrate literacy activities within the content of each of the core subjects (Armbruster, 2003).

The children must learn the names and shapes of each letter in the alphabet. This task is accomplished through recitation and writing of their ABC’s. The children also begin to learn that some words rhyme, that sentences are made up of separate words, and that words have separate parts called syllables. When a child begins to understand and identify these parts and differences, he is further developing his phonological awareness, or his ability to hear and work with the sounds of spoken language (Armbruster, 2003). This is also when the child begins learning the concepts of word blending (the putting together of sound) and segmentation (breaking words up into separate sounds). As children begin to develop their spelling and writing skills, they start by scribbling, drawing, and then begin to use their growing knowledge of sounds and letters to write messages. With practice the children begin to learn correct spellings, fluency, and even vocabulary meanings of the words they are writing. Children are encouraged to think about the sounds in the words they are writing, and how these sounds relate to the letter sounds that they already know. As the children become more familiar with the sounds and blends of letters, their reading speed and comprehension increases; they then begin to read more quickly, accurately, smoothly, and with more expression (Campbell, 2000).

So, which method is more effective? You can judge each method clearly by evaluating how they measure up to what is traditionally expected of a sound literacy program. What results are evident in the following areas?

Components of Effective Reading Instruction

• Phonemic awareness
• The alphabetic code
• Fluency
• Vocabulary/spelling
• Comprehension
• Written Language
• Motivating to read

Environment: What's Love Got To Do With It?

What is environment? Environment is defined as – all those conditions that affect ones surroundings and the people in them. In an early learning environment, that specifically translates to the physical, interpersonal, temporal, and spiritual aspects of the early childhood educational system. Therefore, it is crucial that educators view the classroom environment as having a dual existence. This dual existence is made of a literal environment and an invisible environment. The literal, or physical, environment is the one that you can see, feel, touch, and smell; while the invisible environment is made up of the relationships built in the classroom, whether they are between student and teacher or student and student. There are three ways in which teachers can “reflect” true care and concern to students through the design of classroom environment. They are as follows: 1.) Dynamic Environment, 2.) Caring Environment, and 3.) Kid-Centered Environment.

DYNAMIC ENVIRONMENT
First impressions are lasting. The first impression that parents and students get of a facility is the outer structure of the building and playgrounds. These areas should be secure, well maintained, and inviting.

The design of the early childhood facility should reinforce the concept of God’s love. Small group tables promote relationships between the students. Attention to minute detail shows God’s individual care through the love and concern displayed to each child’s needs.

CARING ENVIRONMENT
The environment in the early childhood setting is only as good as the people who staff it. Each staff member should have a Christ-centered focus to love and care for the students. Let the parents see first hand the impact that staff members are having on their child. Be sure to send good notes home, and give “good report” calls to parents. When dealing with the parents of students, communication is the key to success.

KID-CENTERED ENVIRONMENT
The early educational setting should be exciting, inviting, and fun. Display things that the students have created, made, or projects they have done. This allows the student to take ownership in the facility. This will be one of the most effective tools in retention. If little Johnny feels that he has something invested in your school, then he will continue to want to be there. If he is happy, then his parents are happy. Keep things at their level, both physically and mentally. Do not expect more from a five year old than a five year old can deliver.

As Christian educators, we are commissioned to show the love of Christ to students through the life we live, and through the environment that we create in our classroom. Our environment should be warm, orderly, and conducive to learning. Our classroom should be a reflection of who we are and what we value, and in essence, it is a reflection of our love and commitment to both our students and our commitment to Christ.