Leaving To Learn: The Classroom Of God’s World

Can you imagine a scavenger hunt in a grocery store?  Our grade four/five class and seven students both travelled to unique learning experiences recently allowing them to learn more about food systems, farming, nutrition, food preparation, and much more. Later this week many of our older students will be taking in a unique trip to learn more about how energy is used (and conserved) as part of homes being built in London. 

LCES is blessed with the means to take learning on the road quite frequently. Why do we do this?

God formed sky, land, and sea;

stars above, moon and sun,

making a world of color, beauty, and variety—

a fitting home for plants and animals, and us—

a place to work and play,

worship and wonder,

love and laugh. 

Our World Belongs to God: A Contemporary Testimony

The length, educational focus, and structure of the trips is always different, but one thing remains the same. These memorable experiences are highlights of learning. I can think of several good reasons to venture out:

• These experiences help our students to see God’s world as a place of beauty and offer experiences to develop wonder and praise for an amazing world of people and places. 
• Taking the classroom on the road creates invaluable “touchstone” moments for our students to connect previous learning or prepare working examples for future learning as they see God’s world as a connected, purposeful, and intricate place prepared for his children. 
• Students see their teacher, classmates, and even parents in a different way as they respond to different topics and ways of learning. They understand each other’s interests, passions, and talents more fully.
• Students can see the world in its brokenness, and yet see hope in the ways to redeem it. 

Taking the classroom on road is part of the bold assertion that indeed, Our World Belongs to God! 

SJ

Mistakes As Learning At Our Christian School

I was with a relative who was paying for items at a checkout. Ten steps past the cashier’s till, it was realized that too much change had been given. Honesty and integrity won out over the anticipated delay in resolving the situation. When the other customers had finished, the error was presented.

“No, it was right. We don’t make mistakes here.”

Removed from the story, the statement seems a little ridiculous and plenty arrogant. Mistakes are part of our life, but what we do with them shapes their helpful or detrimental outcome. You could argue that wisdom comes from embracing one’s mistakes, and realizing that they are window to discovery and learning.

Golden learning moments are left unharvested when we pass by mistakes and carry on as if there is nothing to be gleaned from deliberately retracing the pathway. Somehow we’ve created a tendency in students to want to bury mistakes out of sight and try to quickly forget them.  That’s a sad reality. Certainly we want them feel the exhilaration of success, but the greatest potential for them to learn may well be to re-visit the places where they did not find success the first time. I’ve heard before of a helpful analogy that showed it this way: an airline pilot who first perfects the art of a good landing in a flight simulator environment hundreds of times, then moves to real-life situations under the watch full eye of an experienced pilot, all the while learning from mistakes made. Only when those items are in good shape does s/he attempt a landing solo.

God gave a tremendous blessings when he created the safe sandbox of childhood. There, under the watchful eye of loving adults, children can have free range to make mistakes within boundaries. The art comes in the balance of leaving room for children to fail, while preventing long term unchangeable consequences that will hurt them. I’m thankful for Christian Education at LCES that helps to navigate that balancing act.

SJ