Mrs. Grace Egger (Kindergarten Teacher)
At our last team meeting, the Lower-School staff discussed the topic of participation in the classroom and how we as teachers best evaluate and assess a student’s participation. I chose to introduce this topic by discussing what a good participant looks like and why participation is an essential component to consider during the grading process, as well as the importance of participation as it pertains to vocation and the culture of the classroom.
The portrait of a good participant is a student who pays attention, listens well, answers questions and asks questions, contributes to discussion, reviews and retains content, sits quietly and raises her hand, and produces ideas based off of the knowledge she has gained.
Psalm 51:5-12 says:
5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me.
6 Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being,
and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.
7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones that you have broken rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins,
and blot out all my iniquities.
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
11 Cast me not away from your presence,
and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit.
Although the Psalmist is asking that God cleanse his spirit and make him a righteous participant in a holy life, I couldn’t help but note the many ways this passage pertains to the life of a student. We seek to mold students to reflect this behavior actively in the classroom. And are we not, as teachers, ultimately seeking to mold students who participate in a life of piety, as the Psalmist prays? The prayer asks for cleansing, purging, renewal, and restoration. It speaks of delight, joy, and gladness. It prays for a “clean heart,” a “right spirit.” Oh how often do we pray the same be done for our little ones! And, as it pertains to education, how often do we pray for an active, willing, and joyful participant in our classroom. Jonathan Councell of the Circe Institute considers this idea in his article, “School is the Real World.” He writes:
“While parents and teachers alike are good at pointing out “real world applications” and the instrumental utility of this or that skill or fact, the critical error is in assuming that school isn’t the real world—that right now these children are preparing to meet their God; that right now the way they respond to authority, to a test, to a class discussion, to a classmate, is the way they will respond and react when in the presence of their creator. Again, participation in the classroom prepares the student for participation in the state and, ultimately, the divine life.”
To participate is to take part in something external to yourself. We participate in our families, our churches, our schools, our jobs, our communities, our governments. We take on the role of parent, sibling, minister, employee, citizen—and we do so for the good of others, certainly, but also for the sake of the vocation itself. We complete tasks well and we do what is required of us, as our various vocations demand. Similarly, we want our students to joyfully take part in the pursuit of knowledge, to seek it for its own sake. It is our job as teachers to cultivate an environment in which students have the opportunity to extend beyond participation for the grade, to “delight in truth in the inward being,” and participate for the sake of pursuing knowledge itself.
As a student actively and joyfully seeks knowledge in the classroom, he is simultaneously assisting the teacher and his peers in the act of educating. When a student raises his hand and contributes to the discussion, he is contributing also to the learning and reviewing process of his classmates. Without the students contributing to this learning process, students are unable to fully come to a knowledge of the topic discussed. As John Milton Gregory states in The Seven Laws of Teaching, “It is not enough to look and listen…Teacher and textbook may be full of knowledge, but the learner will get from them only so much as his power of attention, vigorously exercised, enables him to shape in his own mind. Knowledge is inseparable from the act of knowing.”
Every teacher prays the Psalmist’s prayer, asking that her students actively, willingly, and joyfully take part in their education. She prays that students would have a “right spirit” and a “clean heart,” and that students would pursue “truth in the inward being.” She prays that she may cultivate a classroom in which students seek knowledge for its own sake, and in which students bring each other to the truth by sharing their own thoughts, ideas, questions and answers. And ultimately, she prays that her students may participate in the pursuit of virtue, piety and holiness in a life that is lived for Christ.