This semester I took an online graduate course in education from Calvin College. As part of the application process to the program I had to complete the following essay. Because my assignment pulls in some experiences from Indonesia... I thought I would share it with you.
Please write about
an educational experience that you had from which you learned from it.
Relatively new teachers in small Christian schools
most often get to teach the classes no one else wants and I was no
exception. As a social studies teacher
with 3 years of experience, the school needed someone to cover the new World
Religions class that had started the previous year, and I was slated for the
course. Already swamped with other
classes, a second child on the way and the commitment to coach varsity
Basketball for the first time, I did not look forward to the assignment. Seeking to minimize the push that would
happen during the school year, I spent a few pivotal days of the summer seeking
the advice of the first teacher of the class.
In addition to teaching the course, Theo was the librarian and yearbook
sponsor (obviously low on the seniority ladder as well) and while he did lots
for the school, was not trained to be a teacher. Theo, lived in the duplex next door, and I
went over to his apartment, sat on the floor with stacks of his manila folders
full of brochures, photocopies and printed and handwritten notes for the
class. With my legs folded, hippy style,
I listened as he explained the course and how he taught it. I found myself asking lots of questions. The framework that he selected to teach the
course resonated with me and suddenly many of the isolated, dry details of
different religions and worldviews I accumulated over the years suddenly found
their way into the framework he laid out.
During our 3-4 hours of conversing, the course became insightful, needed
and fresh.
In my 20 years of teaching, whenever I embark on a
new course, the first year is almost always brutal as I hack my way through the
material and stumble through the words and lessons I choose to convey the
important ideas and material—and this is usually in content areas I am trained
for! The exception to this is a World
Religions class that, even though I only taught it for one year, flowed out of
those question and answer sessions with Theo on the floor of his duplex, and
led to some of my most interesting classroom situations including a visit to a
mosque for Friday prayers and a visit from a Wiccan practitioner who explained
earth based religions to my students.
Since that year, so many situations in my life have
relied on the material I learned and taught in that class. This is especially
true these past four years as I teach students from Christian, Buddhist, and
Muslim homes in an International Baccalaureate school in Indonesia. These students find themselves challenged by
the secularization of their very traditional world and as many of them prepare
to go off to large Western universities in the U.S., Canada and Australia, I
hope they can find the framework needed to understand and interpret their world,
just I did on the floor of that duplex.
