What We Are Doing Right

Let’s remember that we are doing some things well:

1. We spend a lot of money to educate our children in this country.
2. We fill our classrooms with cutting edge technology.
3. We’re having success teaching our students to be creative. In the twentieth century, more Americans won Nobel prizes than in any other nation in the world—we’re teaching “out of the box” thinking.
4. With the passage of Title 9, the number of girls in grade school and women in college benefitting from organized sports programs has increased dramatically since the early 70’s (e.g. 400% in college sports).
5. Our tendency to be a nation of second-chancers has caused educators to make it possible for non-traditional, returning students—those older people who really want to go back and learn—to do so.

What Teachers Can Do

1. In my last few years as a high school teacher I came to a conclusion: effective teachers must be heroes, and heroic sacrifice begins with saying goodbye to the 40 hour work week and hello to 60 hours or more. You’ll suffer for it, and so will your family. But hundreds of students will be blessed for it.
2. Private and charter school teachers: get with your parents and take control of your curriculum. Make it purposeful. Plan it out. I can’t recommend enough the approach being taken by schools of classical learning as outlined in the book Wisdom and Eloquence (Crossway Books, 2006) by Robert Littlejohn and Charles T. Evans.
3. Private school teachers: consider your personal finances a part of your ministry. If you can figure out how to live by humble means, you can survive on private school salaries. Let every purchase be a part of your life as a teacher.
4. Private school administrators and parents: find funding in order to pay teachers better. One way to raise funds: publish a salary scale so supporters can see the sacrifice teachers are willing to make for the ministry of Christian education.
5. Public school teachers: be the person who hosts Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Show up to See You at the Pole. When kids ask to use your room at 7:30 in the morning for a Bible study, get there early with donuts and juice.
6. Public school teachers: explore religious content areas—you can often talk more about religious truth in public school settings than you think.
7. Public school teachers: look to adopt a Virtues curriculum. This can be done apart from religious studies through the teaching of classics in literature and philosophy (and will often lead students to religious discussions as well).
8. Public school teachers may also need to prayerfully consider those moments when religious freedom means taking a stand, even at the risk of getting fired.
9. All teachers: once a year stop preparing to teach, ignore the how to’s, forget about pedagogy, and go back into your discipline and read or study for the joy that learning about it gave you when you were a student.
10. All coaches, public and private: hold your players to higher moral standards than even student handbooks require, and practice the art of speaking loudly without losing your temper.

What Parents and Students Can Do

1. Make the private/public/homeschool choice together and recognize that each has responsibilities. Students need to know, for example, that their parents may have to make many personal sacrifices for private school tuition.
2. Homeschoolers: practice discipline! Both parents and students.
3. Homeschooling parents: don’t just accept a curriculum because it’s popular—study it out! Again, think about a classical curriculum.
4. Private school parents: slash your personal budgets to afford tuition costs.
5. Private school parents: get involved in curriculum development and fund raising.
6. Public school parents: eat dinner with your kids around the table and talk about the day. Look at their curriculum and content. Deal actively with issues of morality, bullying, and persecution. Join the PTA and booster clubs. Go to games and performances. Monitor anti-Christian bias in textbooks.
7. Public school parents: encourage teachers, call and ask how you can help, create support groups of Christians who pray in or near the school, and volunteer to help teachers.
8. Public school parents: get your kids into PSAT or PACT to measure how they stack up to national standards for college testing—respond accordingly before the SAT or ACT tests come along.
9. Public school parents: spend disciplined, weekly time teaching your kids the Bible, and encourage youth ministers to systematically teach the Bible, not just deliver inspirational devotions (but, if a youth minister offers such classes, make sure your kids are there for them!).
10. Public school kids: hold yourselves to a higher standard than the kids around you—in morality, grades and, especially, respect for your teachers.
11. Public school kids: be the ones who start the Bible study, recruit for See You at the Pole, attend Fellowship of Christian Athletes, be the light.