RenewCast

While it's always important to have a strong foundation for a Christian education philosophy (and constantly lean on resources to strengthen that foundation), we also need resources to go to that next level and help to shape our teachers' approach to teaching in a way that's consistent with that philosophy.

Kids need to belong.

As with every academic discipline, teachers need a framework for teaching history that requires more than merely finding a verse or biblical analogy. Rather, teaching History from a Christian perspective requires an understanding of the key categories of a biblical worldview and applying them to the discipline.

The Two books that most grabbed my attention and shaped my approach to Christian education have very different arguments, but were equally formative for me as I began to grow greater understanding of the life of faith in relation to the task of Christian Schooling.

While Christian education and secular education are quite different (and should be even more different than many of the models we have), a Christian who teachers in a secular context can still teach "Christianly" within that context ... because teaching Christianly is far more than merely adding a verse or Christian lingo to an otherwise secular content.

Maybe one of the most important skills teachers need to have in their tool belt is the ability to help students understand the "bigness" of God and the beauty and wonder that result from living in a world He has created. And, there may be no author to help develop that skill than G.K. Chesterton. His writing continues to shape so much of what we believe it means to live faithfully, sensibly, and joyfully in God's world.

It shouldn't even be a question in Christian schools, but we live in a world where the Fine Arts are the first to fall victim to budget cuts and the last to receive the funding and institutional support they need to flourish. This reveals a common flaw in the way we think about school in general.

It's nearly impossible to talk about the Christian worldview without a healthy dose of the biblical framework of Creation, Fall, and Redemption. Not only do these categories help us to the story of Scripture more fully, but they also give us a stronger foundation for knowing how to understand our own stories, our place in the world, and to see God's work in it.

Creation Regained: https://a.co/d/9ikpedV

Christian education must be far more than providing essentially secular models and practices of schooling with Christian components (Jesus Dust) sprinkled on top. Far too often, this ends up looking like finding a verse or Christian lingo to attach to a lesson, or praying at the start of it. But, not only is this bad both theologically and pedagogically, it trains students to think that Christianity is also a fragmented way of looking at life ... essentially a secular life with just some Christian components added in for good measure.

Frank Gaebelein's *The Pattern of God's Truth* and Donovan Graham's *Teaching Redemptively" are the two books at the top of our recommendation list for Christian educators. They both provide profound introductions to and foundations for Christian schooling.