How do you teach social skills to a group of students lacking the basic social skills to sit, listen, participate, and learn?
How do you get a kid to listen to you, a well-educated person that may or may not be of the same gender/race/socio-economic status as them?
This is the problem many teachers face
today as they try to teach their students not only the basics of
reading, writing, and arithmetic, but also the skills necessary to make it in life.
Many teachers are trying to reach across
generational gaps and trying to find a foothold of credibility in the
world of their students so that they can relate to them about the needs
they have socially, emotionally, and developmentally. The problem is that the students aren’t listening.
Having marched down this road many
times, I decided it was time to take a step back, look at how kids
learn, listen to what kids are saying, and take note of what our
teachers do best. What came out of this process was a two-part learning
theory for teaching social skills that became the key to making LEAPS so
successful.
The first part of the equation was to develop a teaching style for social skills: the pedagogical methodology.
This method is called Probative – Informative – Probative – Assimilative (PIPA).
This teaching method is the key to participation and credibility in the world of your students.
Here’s the method:
Probative – don’t tell your students
their social deficiencies. This will throw up an immediate defensiveness
and will cause your students to immediately tune out what you are
saying. After all, you aren’t from their world, you don’t know what they
are going through, and you are old! Instead, ask them probing questions
and get them to identify the deficit
that ultimately becomes the skill you are going to be teaching. Guide
them through a series of questions so that they identify the deficit and
they take ownership of the issue you are going to be addressing.
Informative – after the students have
identified the problem, fully define it for them. Help them hone in on
the issue by taking their identified problem and defining it in a way
that molds it to the lesson you will be teaching.
Probative – once again, even though the
students have identified the problem don’t just tell them how to correct
it. Even though you might have the answer, you want your students to come up with the potential solutions.
And here is the key, don’t correct them when they give a bad solution.
Take note of all potential solutions, both good and bad, because the
good and bad will occur in real life. Taking note of the suggested bad
solutions also lends credence to the final step that is:
Assimilative – now we are moving to
action. This is the point in the lesson where you work with your
students to determine the outcome of each of the solutions they have
offered. You work to the point of consequence for both the good and bad
solutions and then ask the students to determine which consequence they
want to live with. You are using the students’ identified problem and
potential solutions to determine the consequences of their potential
actions. In doing this, you have created an experience for your students
because they have identified an issue, they have determined potential
solutions for the issue, they have worked to the point of consequence
for the solutions, and they have made a choice. It is their choice. People, even students, tend to take pride in what they chosen.
This methodology is all centered on the second part of the social skills equation that is:
You can’t hang a poster of a tranquil setting and make your students less angry.
You can’t put in a communications video and think that it will change the tone and language of your students.
You can’t hand out a hygiene crossword puzzle and think your students will smell better.
If you want to change the way your students are acting then you have to teach them in an active way.
The passivity of lectures, worksheets, videos, and other static
learning tools are not going to offer an experience to your students.
Experiencing a consequence, even under the guarded conditions of
role-playing and in vivo classroom activities, are still experiences.And
your students’ experiences will be a determining factor in the way they
act.
Look at it this way, a behavior is the action, interaction, and reaction to an environmental stimuli. It is the old A-B-C chart.
There is an Antecedent, or provocative event, and the student behaves
in a way that is either acting in accordance to the antecedent, reacting
to it, or interacting with it. The Behavior to the antecedent will elicit a Consequence. If
the behavior is good then the consequence is likely rewarding. If the
behavior is bad then the consequence is likely non-reinforcing, such as a
punishment or negative experience.
This is the basic scheme of how we learn
from our experiences because our experiences become cumulative in what
is called our “experiential knowledge baseâ€. This is the place we go to,
either thoughtfully or instinctively, to determine how we are going to
act based upon what we know and what we have experienced. The way you
will change your students’ behavior is to change their experiential
knowledge base. The only way to change the experiential knowledge base is by providing an experience. The only way to provide an experience is by and through active teaching and participation.
To see this theory in motion, take a look at some of LEAPS lesson plans. They are available at www.goleaps.com. There are several lesson plans for free.
Try the process with your students. Invite them to identify problems
and then work with them to determine solutions. Figure out together the
consequences for their solutions and then work with them to determine
the consequences they can live with.
Actively teach your students how to develop socially.
Don’t rely on papers and videos, and lectures. Give your students the
gift of knowledge by giving them an experience. Change their behaviors
by making them think through the issues and make decisions. And then
help guide them on their decision making process so that they can take
pride and ownership in the final results. You can teach social skills
and students will learn. You just have to respect your student enough to
involve them in the process.
Last week we talked about the method, or pedagogy, for teaching social and emotional skills. After all, you
can’t just start a conversation or class with kids by telling them what
they are doing wrong socially or where they are missing the boat
emotionally. The
Probative-Informative-Probative-Assimilative (PIPA) methodology lets you
start a conversation with the kids and then use the tenor of the
conversation to guide them to a skill that needs to be addressed. This
is a critical part of the social and emotional development process,
because it is an opportunity for the young person to identify a problem
and then begin the development of problem solving skills.
Angela
is a pretty girl but no one really notices. She is fair skinned and her
hair is red. Angela sits in the middle of the class and makes good
grades – not great but good. She could make better grades, but she never
talks to the teacher. She never asks questions. In fact, she sits in
class scared that the teacher will call upon her and looks down most of
the time so that she can avoid eye contact with her classmates… and
therefore avoid any and all unwanted looks and conversations. When the
bell rings, Angela gathers her things and hugs them close to her, waits
for the stampede to the door to calm down, and then quickly exits hoping
not to draw anyone’s attention.
The
hallways are miserable for Angela, because there are so many people.
She copes by keeping her eyes pointed downwards yet manages to always
look three steps ahead so she can avoid any incidental contact with
anyone in the hall. Angela is tense throughout the day and can’t wait
for the final bell so that she can go home and be alone. Angela doesn’t have any friends and she wouldn’t know what to do with them if she did.
We often think of social skills as “soft
skillsâ€. The term “soft skills” brings with it a connotation of
immeasurable, and often esoteric, skills that don’t carry the same
intellectual weight as other skills such as academic or even life
skills. The truth of the matter is that social and emotional skills are
the skills that give someone the foundational capacity of being part of a
group; they teach interaction with someone who is in an authority
position, how to be responsible for managing time and attention so that
personal and assigned duties are completed, and finally creating the
personal network necessary for confidence as well as personal
gratification. In other words, they are the skills that gives kids the
ability to be a part of a classroom and a school setting. Social
and emotional skills are just as important as reading, writing, and
arithmetic because without these skills, kids wouldn’t have the ability
to sit in a classroom and learn.
Tony is one of the kids that everyone in school recognizes. The
other students make sure to get out of his way when he walks down the
halls, because if you bump into Tony you are likely to get dressed
down… or worse. The teachers all know Tony because he
finds great joy in disrupting their classes. He isn’t the class clown.
No, that would be too kind of a description. Instead, Tony is the mean
one. He relishes the fact that he is bigger and more muscular than the
other kids, and he takes every opportunity to remind less developed boys
of the exact pecking order in the hallways, gym classes, cafeteria, and
school playgrounds. Everyone knows Tony, and Tony seems to love the
role of school bully.
The
greatest benefit that comes from teaching kids social and emotional
development skills is that it gets them into the mindset of problem
identification, and therefore problem solving. Social and emotional
skills help kids begin to see the world through the lens of opportunity,
because unexpected problems become solvable and manageable rather than
always seeming like absolute roadblocks. Teaching a student to manage
time, how to understand that their appearance communicates their
attitude, and why they should respect other people’s personal space are
life skills that will be used from now on. But they are also
foundational skills that afford students the ability to see what is
happening around them as manageable. When kids can identify, break down,
and then create solution opportunities for a problem, they become
confident. One of the great
secrets of social and emotional development is that the confidence of
learning these skills washes over into other parts of the students’
lives; they begin to look through the eyes of a maturing young person
who is beginning to deal with their own problems rather than someone who
throws their hands up at the first roadblock and goes on acting the way
they have always acted.
Tony and Angela could not be any more different. Everyone knows Tony – Angela is pretty sure no one even knows her name. Tony
loves it when everyone is looking at him – Angela would love to blend
into the wallpaper so that no one would see her and no one would even
accidentally look at her. Tony establishes himself as
the dominant male by making sure everyone knows how tough and aggressive
he is – Angela prays that no one even knows she is in the room. Tony
and Angela are complete opposites – yet they are exactly alike.
When you read about Tony and Angela, you
can easily remember kids you went to school with who filled these
roles. You know who the Tony in your school was, and while you might not
remember her name, I bet you can visualize the Angela from your class.
They are complete opposites, but they share one critical deficit that
makes them completely alike. Tony
and Angela both lack the social and emotional maturity to fit into a
socialized setting (school) so they live outside the acceptable
boundaries and they pay the price. Tony is going to end
up in an alternative campus, then likely suspended… and eventually
expelled. Angela is going to graduate someday, but she will lack the
basic skills to be successful, and more importantly happy, because she
never learned to socialize in a highly structure social environment.
The biggest difference in the two kids?
Tony is actually going to get help. Teachers and administrators know
Tony and they are going to send him to the school counselor and to
alternative campuses and other “interventions†that the school offers.
No one notices Angela. She is just as behaviorally involved as Tony, but
no one notices. She won’t get any help, because no one recognizes that
she is in trouble. She won’t see the counselor, because no one sees that
she is hurting. She won’t go to an alternative campus, because she
never makes any waves and she never stands out.
Of these two kids, Tony actually has a
better chance of getting help and improving his social aptitude, because
people are noticing him. But
Angela is the true casualty; she is genuinely sweet and kind and
cautious, but her gifts are kept hidden under a dark veil of self-doubt.
She will not learn to problem solve because she spends her life trying
to be problem averse. Tony and Angela need guidance, need maturing and
need to understand how to recognize their problems and how to fit into
their social context while addressing their problems.
Tony and Angela are in every classroom. One has a chance… but the other is slipping away. Give ALL kids a chance to thrive by teaching social and emotional skills.
Over the last three weeks I have had the
incredible opportunity of visiting with educators, administrators, and
legislators in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Alabama. I have spent time in
Lansing, Madison, and Huntsville, and during that time and at each stop I
have had the great privilege of visiting with people who are dedicating
their lives to making sure our children have the best opportunities
possible. From school to
ready-to-work to free and reduced-cost meals to immunizations, these
good people are trying to insure our kids have access to the greatest
social experiment in history – the American way of life.
It
makes me proud to live in a country where people genuinely care about
the quality of life and the opportunities our kids will experience. It also makes me proud that we are a generous nation when it comes to teaching and caring for our kids.
Whether because of religious beliefs or simply because it is the right
thing to do, most everyone agrees that our kids are worth the effort and
they are worth the price we pay. Now we just need to ask the question
of whether or not we are getting a good return on our investment.
Let me preface that question with this
caveat – this nation has the finest educators and the best educational
system in the world. Our test scores may not place us at the top, but
what makes this country special is the fact that our educational system
is designed to give every child an opportunity. It is designed to make
the information and knowledge necessary to succeed accessible and
attainable for all kids. We do not predetermine any child’s future based
upon aptitude or a formalized caste system. We
give every child the opportunity to learn and then that child, and just
as importantly, that child’s family can either receive or reject the
education provided.
With that caveat out of the way, one
common theme I heard from educators in large cities and small towns and
from northern urban to southern rural is that our educators are
concerned. They are concerned that our kids aren’t as interested in
learning as in years past and they are concerned that the value of an
education does not seem to reside in as many homes as it should. They
are concerned that they have to become more than just academicians. They
also have to become life coaches, interventionists, preventionists, and
social engineers. This focus on social development raises the ire of
some people, especially those that believe that social engineering
should not occur in our schools. Let’s look at in context:
Mrs. Howard’s 4th grade class has 21 students. Here’s the Breakdown:
So, Mrs.
Howard is supposed to teach 21 kids who come from different backgrounds,
different home situations, different learning levels, different
socioeconomic statuses, and different cultures. She is supposed to not
only teach reading writing and arithmetic, but she is also supposed to
identify the students who are at-risk socially and emotionally and
provide intervention small groups and then behavioral prevention lessons
for the full class. The tricky
part is that Mrs. Howard’s schedule is packed, so when she has time to
devote to behavior prevention lessons she really needs them to target
the most significant behavioral risks for the largest percentage of kids
possible. And when she does a small group, she really
needs that group to be comprised of the kids who can benefit the most
from anger management training or communication lessons or even basic
hygiene. There just isn’t time in the day to teach redundant or
non-focused lessons to kids who don’t need it and then miss teaching the
right thing to the kids that do. Mrs. Howard is a teacher, but she is a
social engineer in every sense of the word. Her daily work is preparing
kids to become contributing members of our society and that task
requires the development of the kids socially with an engineered plan
for each student with implementations in modalities ranging from classes
to small groups to individual. Our teachers have to be as multi-faceted
as the classes they are teaching. They are the engineers that are
laying the foundation for our nation’s future.
This is the world our teachers live in each day.
Kids from all sorts of backgrounds with all kinds of different needs
all need to score at a certain level on the standardized testing. All
the while some of the kids need to have their behaviors addressed before
they can even fully participate in class, and the entire class needs to
learn maturity skills to prepare for the following grade’s
responsibilities and accountabilities. Sounds fun, doesn’t it?
One of the things that has made America
great is that we are the grand experiment. We are the world’s melting
pot. We have people of all nationalities, belief systems, cultures, and
abilities. What makes us unique is that we offer opportunity to every
one of these people and every one of these groups. That offering is
fomented in our educational system and is guided by educators who devote
their intellect and their time to making sure that each student has a
chance to achieve. And that’s the beauty of our system – it is predicated on opportunity not a predetermined end-result. It works best when our kids are rewarded for achievement based on what they have done not just the mere participation.
In visiting with educators, there were two common themes that resounded in each meeting. The first theme was that educators are worried about our families.
They are worried about the number of kids coming from broken and
uninvolved homes. They are just as worried about the “helicopter
parents†that hover over every move they make waiting to pounce and
further push our society into a litigious one. They worry that many of
the parents don’t have the basic skills or value set that they need to
teach their children. They also worry that some students are so
privileged at home that they will not accept work or discipline at
school. Educators worry about what happens when their students leave the
classroom and go home.
The
second common theme of educator concern was that such an incredible
amount of burden is placed on our teachers that they are concerned
whether or not they can hold up and stay in the system.
There is a balancing act that needs to occur between providing the
resource to affect change and heaping one more thing onto an already
over-burdened teacher. Administrators must make measured choices to
insure that time is allocated to the greatest needs and resources are
devoted to the greatest good. As I listened to this concern, I kept
coming back to the notion that if we only gave our teachers the
necessary tools to affect change, then the world’s best teachers could
again produce the world’s best students. It was very affirming for me in
that it made the work my colleagues and I have put into Leaps seem not only valid but necessary.
Our society is like a huge jigsaw puzzle
and we are asking our educators to put the pieces together. Their job
is to develop a group of young adults who are prepared to either enter
the workforce or go on to higher education. Our educators take little
ones who cannot read and still need a nap to make it through the day–
and by the time that child goes through the system and walks across that
stage to receive her diploma, they are supposed to be ready to be a
contributor to our grand experiment. They are supposed to be a
contributing ingredient to our melting pot. And
if this child is ready to work, and if they are ready for college, and
if this grand experiment can reach its potential, then you have to thank
men and women who chose a life devoid of fame, fraught with increasing
demands from an evolving society, destined for middle class with no hope
for wealth, and dedicated to achieving one year only to have to start
over the next. Our grand experiment is built on the
backs of our teachers. That means the rest of us should recognize the
sacrifice they are making and what they need from us to be the social
engineers who build the foundation for our nation’s success.
I sat with a high level administrator of
a state agency recently and listened to her explain why she thinks we
are losing the battle for so many of our kids’ futures. She truly
lamented the fact that a large Midwest city that is under her purview
from a service standpoint was dramatically affected by a large group of
young parents and kids who have grown in an environment where little is
expected and so little is realized. She talked about how 26-year-old moms have 12-year-old daughters and they both live with the 42-year-old grandmother. She talked about this cycle of kids having kids and parenting being abdicated to the system, or worse, to the streets.
As she talked, I watched the obvious
pain on her face and listened to the true sorrow in her voice. She was
genuinely hurting at the thoughts of generation after generation of
youths repeating the mistakes and the cycle of dependency, reliance on
entitlements, and living a life that is void of expectations and even
hope. The pain really came to the forefront when she talked
about the lost talent and the lost potential ambition, because so many
of these kids are growing in environments where hope and ambition just
aren’t part of everyday life. She spoke of unrealized talents
and un-nurtured ambition and unclaimed hope. This agonizing cycle
perpetuates in all corners of our society, but those who are poor seem
to be the most susceptible.
When I asked her how she thought we could affect change, she sat silently for a moment and then boldly proclaimed, “We have to start teaching parents how to parent.â€
Now, this may seem a bit in your face to some, and it may seem
insulting to others, but if you are reading this and you are offended,
then she is not talking about you. She is talking about the kids who
have kids and still live with the young adult who had them when they
were a kid.
When we have generation after generation of kids having kids,
when do they learn to grow up and how to parent?
One of the harsh realities of parenting is that you parent without a net. We
have a lot of people parenting without the benefit of actually becoming
an adult and having the life experiences necessary to guide and nurture
another through the travails of life. So, we end up with a
young adult raising a young teen who is raising her young baby… and
none of the three have life experiences to stop the cycle.
Why do I bring all of this up? Because we have to stop the cycle, and we have to help kids understand the concept of hope. We have to instill in kids that opportunity is out there and life can be more than their neighborhood. We
have to help them understand that there is more to life than
perpetuating the cycle of dependency and, ultimately, despair. But when
the problem is at home, where can change occur?
∞ ∞ ∞
Rhonna is an old 14.
She has basically been on her own the
better part of her life. Her Dad is long gone and her mom works double
shifts at the nursing home and then the convenience store. When her mom
is home she is checked out asleep or worse. Rhonna goes to school
because that’s where her friends are, and that’s where she can get a
meal that doesn’t come straight out of the microwave. Rhonna has
friends, but she is in constant conflict with herself over her real
self-worth. If she was all that great, then why did her daddy leave? If
she was interesting at all, then why won’t her mom talk to her? Rhonna
needs someone to make her feel like she matters. She wants to feel
liked. She wants to feel special. She wants to feel wanted.
Malcolm is solid muscle.
Even at 16 years of age it is easy to
see the lines of his triceps as he places his hands on the table in
front of Rhonna. Rhonna feels flush because Malcolm is not only cute, he
is handsome. Before she realizes what is happening, Malcolm is walking
Rhonna home. She is loving the company and more importantly, she is loving the attention.
When they get to the door of her apartment, Malcolm hangs around a
while talking. He tells Rhonna how pretty she is and how he has watched
her for a long time and how he has wanted to get to know her better. In
fact, he says he wants to get to know her better now. He asks if he can
go inside and spend some time with her. Rhonna hesitates, but the
compliments keep coming and Malcolm seems to really likes her and really
finds her interesting… and he really wants her.
Six weeks later, Rhonna is
sitting in the nurse’s office waiting for her mom to get to the school
so that she can tell her that she is pregnant. She isn’t really
worried about her mom being mad, because she had Rhonna when she was
15. Rhonna really isn’t even that scared because, even though Malcolm
only came around a few more times, when she has a baby she will have
someone with her all of the time who needs and likes her and, most
importantly, wants her.
∞ ∞ ∞
This scenario plays out daily in the
homes of kids who need to feel needed and want to feel wanted. A
compliment opens a door and a kind word opens a heart, and the feeling
of being wanted opens the young girl to doing things that a 14 year old
should not do. And now she, and her young child, will live with the consequences for the rest of their lives.
If only mom was home, and if only dad was there to tell Rhonna she was
special, and if only Rhonna believed she was worth more than a look and a
compliment, then Rhonna might not be a child about to raise a child.
We have a perpetuating problem because
we have homes with missing fathers, and many mothers are emotionally
gone. We have kids having kids, because they are using whatever means
they have to validate themselves and feel needed and wanted. We
have kids having kids because an adult has not stepped in and guarded
the innocence of those kids by building a wall around them called
self-esteem.
If this is what is happening or not
happening in the homes, then how and where do we affect change? The
answer falls to the schools. But how does a school teach self-esteem and
self-worth when it is measured on reading – writing – and arithmetic?
How does a school impart values when the test never mentions them? Why
should a teacher take time from her busy schedule to worry with a kid’s
self-worth when she has lessons to teach and papers to grade and
planning due – not to mention a school play and lunch duty and kids of
her own? Why does the burden fall to our teachers?
The answer is simple: If our teachers don’t step in, no one will.
We as a society have to make the conscience decision to reprioritize the education our kids are receiving. We have to educate the whole kid, not just the academic kid.
There will be some that scream, “That’s
what homes are for!†and I will reply, “Yes, but what about the kids who
aren’t getting it at home?!†It is easy to stand against affective
change when you aren’t sinking in the whirlpool of dependency. But, for
those kids who need validation and want to feel wanted and are looking
to fit in somewhere, our schools have to become a proving ground for
life, not just for a test. Our teachers have to teach our kids to
thrive, not just recite. Our
teachers are inheriting kids who have needs beyond the classroom, and we
need to support our teachers and give them the resources to prepare our
kids for life outside and beyond the classroom. Rhonna
needed to learn self-worth, and she needed that lesson to follow her to
the front porch of her apartment where she traded herself for the
feeling of being wanted.
Rhonna is a smart girl with a great smile and a quick wit. Rhonna is funny and vivacious. Rhonna is 14… and she is a Mom.
I work with educators. I spend my time helping educators deal with student behaviors and attitudes. We work together to create a better teaching environment as well as a place where students can grow intellectually and developmentally. When you spend a big part of your life looking for solutions to the social degradation and emotional blunting of our kids, it is easy to begin seeing things through the prism of skepticism. It is especially easy to get lost in the reports and the numbers that leave you with a real fear for kids and their ability to maintain the infrastructure of this great but burdened country. That skepticism, though often times warranted, is based on calculations and data and forecasting against trends. But let’s talk about the kids.
I must admit that my skepticism meter had been running high lately. Between school violence, downward trending graduation rates, and the reports of general apathy that seems to be running rampant among so many kids, the future seemed a little bleak. But this weekend reminded me that all those reports and all that data and all that forecasting of doom and gloom is resting on the back of flesh and blood: children and teens and adolescents. This weekend, I had the real privilege of watching thousands of kids participate in a weekend event called LTC – Leadership Training for Christ. Now, I know that we are supposed to act like God and any mention of God is taboo when discussing education, but to these kids and to the strong majority of Americans, God does exist and He is worthy of our consideration. So for this blog, let’s accept that there are lots of people out there who consider faith a big part of the development process and are working on developing their faith in conjunction with their intellect and body.
Now that we have that out of the way, let’s go back to this weekend. I will be the first to admit that when I see a group of teens hanging out together, often times my first thought is to wonder what kind of mischief they are getting into. I would just as soon walk a wide path around them than to listen to the words that are coming out of their mouths. If my wife and kids are with me, I immediately worry about how bad their language will be and whether or not they will be respectful about our personal space. In other words, I found that I had conditioned myself to expect the worst from teens. Boy was I wrong.
This weekend I found several thousand preteens and teens in Houston spending their weekend at the final LTC convention. They were presenting works of service they had done for their communities – voluntary works where they spent their free time helping people who needed help. They were singing together in praise choruses, studying together for a series of very difficult tests called Bible Bowls, and more importantly, laughing together and telling stories and enjoying each other’s company and acting like kids. These kids of all different socioeconomic and social and cultural backgrounds who came together to celebrate their faith were playing and laughing and rough-housing and acting like kids, but there was no profanity or cross social discourse. They weren’t dressed inappropriately, nor were there overwrought levels of public displays of affection. There was no need to avoid the groups, because at least one of them would hop up to open the door for you and say hello while making eye contact. My mind and my narrow preconceived notions of teens was completely blown!
Instead of being social burdens, these kids opened doors for older people. Boys opened and held open door for girls. When they bumped into you they said excuse me. When they became too loud and someone asked them to quiet down they said, “Ok,” and apologized. These kids even smiled at strangers, me included, and laughed and talked and played as kids should, and they laughed and talked and flirted as teens should. But I stood in awe of these kids, because within hours of being around all of them I found my prism of skepticism diminishing. I found myself looking at these kids and laughing at their goofiness without being disgusted by their antics. I found myself cheering for kids to achieve just because I had watched them undertake some simple act of random kindness like offering to help a stranger carry their bags. I listened to their stories and laughed at their jokes and marveled at their willingness to work at bettering themselves through activities that developed and fomented their faith.
I do not believe that religion should be taught in school. Whose would you teach? I do not believe that schools should endorse any religion because that endorsement would block out way too many kids. I believe that separation of religion from state business is necessary for fairness to all. But separation is not the same thing as quarantining. Not endorsing is not the same things as building a full barrier wall of access.
In other words, I think that the kids who have faith as a cornerstone of their life
should not have to hide it or conceal it when they are at school.
Likewise, teachers who live a life of faith should not have to change their social and contextual pretext
to conform to some antitheist anachronism presentation of information.
Our teachers should absolutely not proselytize,
but that doesn’t mean they should hide one of the foundational tenets of who they are.
This weekend reminded me that this great nation, despite some revisionist history that is out there, was founded on a belief system that is governed by a mighty God. This belief led to the values which resulted in a society that is to be governed by free men and for free men and built on the principals of the pursuit of life for self and family, the pursuit of liberty for you and your kids, and the pursuit of happiness. And for many, life, liberty, and happiness is found in spiritual fulfillment. Personal completeness and self actualization is built on something bigger than personal attainment, wealth, and materialism.
So what does all of this mean? It means that we need to be careful not to push the development of the spirit out the door when we are trying to develop the minds and maturity of our kids. We need to be careful not to exclude faith when talking about growth, but instead make room in our discourse for the fact that many kids come from backgrounds that honor faith. Schools should not be a dividing ground that separates kids from their faith any more than it should be a mission field for zealots bent on changing kids’ faith. Schools should be a developing ground for our kids and should be preparing them for a life of competitiveness and achievement and contribution. For many kids, having the spiritual balance of faith means having the foundation to actually grow and achieve and contribute.
This weekend I watched thousands of preteens and teens laugh and play and talk and sing and hug and run and interact… and I left smiling and believing once again that better days are indeed ahead.
Sometime in the near future I will hear a report of violence at a school or a failing report card for a district or some new controversy in a textbook that dares to hint that there might be some design behind the irreducible complexity of this thing called life. But when I see these reports and hear these stories, I am going to lean back and remember that there are lots of kids out there who believe there is something bigger than them and they are working towards a common good for all men. It is in this I will find solace for my belief that my kids will grow in a time that gives them the opportunity to pursue life, liberty, and happiness while acknowledging and even forbearing that their foundation does include faith.
What a country we live in when people of all walks can come together for a common good while still respecting the individual backgrounds and beliefs of each other. We need to make sure our schools never lose that ability to respect the backgrounds and belief systems of our kids and their families. This weekend my hope for the future was fully recharged by a bunch of kids who acted like there was something more important than themselves. What a weekend! What a blessing!
