Here I Go Again

After 27 years of marriage, and two children my entire family is now enrolled in college. My son's are pursuing the prerequisites to apply to pharmacy school, while my wife is completing her EDS at the University of Alabama. After having earned a seminary degree from Samford and a Ph. D. from Southern Seminary I am now beginning to work on my Masters in Education hoping to return to the classroom.

Many of my friends find my new status as a student, comical.  I, however, am excited.

For the past two years I have been learning how to tell Bible stories (as opposed to traditional preaching/teaching) in church in an effort to help children and youth discover and internalize the truths of the Gospel more readily.  This strategy is new in the contemporary church although it was Jesus's basic strategy.  I was excited today while reading in Curriculum Planning, the textbook for my Educational Planning class the following:

Gerald Campano (2007) says, . . . one of the most powerful ways students can share their knowledge, partake in their own education, and intervene on their own behalf is by telling their stories, (as cited in Henson, 2010, p. 5).

I believe that Campano and others who are emphasizing the importance of story are connecting  our current education and increased dependence on technology to the ancient wisdom of how our minds have processed information from the beginning. The challenge for educators is learning how to guide students in sharing with one another the stories that are pertinent to the lessons contained in the curriculum. 

The hope is that connecting education curriculum with the students through students story is that this may assist in engaging the relucant learner.

Children and adolescents we label as "reluctant learners" are often anything but reluctant to learn some things. They commonly expend prodigious intellectual energy on whatever engages them--collecting hockey cards or seashells, deciphering arcane rules in online gaming communities, amassing vast amounts of information about pop stars, maneuvering through the Internet, or manipulating a cell phone with skill that seems close to wizardry. No reluctance evident there: They exhibit all the signs of imaginative engagement. It's just that their imaginations seem unable to connect with the curriculum they encounter in school. What accounts for these students' reluctance to expend effort on school learning? The world we expect them to learn about in school is, after all, wonderful and endlessly varied. Why do they fail to see it as such? And how can we make the curriculum as engaging as the world we want to reveal to students?  (Egan & Judson, 2008, p. 20).

My desire is to improve my own skills in engaging students in the lesson I am teaching them whether that lesson is quantum numbers in Chemistry or The Greatest Commandment in Matthew 22:37-39

References

Henson, K. (2010). Curriculum planning:integrating multiculturalism, constructivism, and education reform. (4 ed.). Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, Inc.

Kieran, E., & Judson, G. (2008). Of whales and wonder:by using cognitive tools to shape instruction, we can make the curriculum more imaginatively engaging. Educational Leadership, 65(6), 20-25.