Last summer, six ILS faculty members were invited to present at the eighteenth annual Consortium for Classical Lutheran Education (CCLE) Summer Conference. Ms. Katherine Kramer, Assistant Headmaster, and Miss Kristin Malcolm, 5th grade teacher, were then invited to submit their presentations as articles for the CCLE’s Classical Lutheran Education Journal.
And With All Your Strength: Knowing and Moving the Human Body is a compelling paper written by Kristin Malcolm, a summa cum laude graduate from Hillsdale College who interned with – and now serves on the faculty of -- Immanuel Lutheran School in Alexandria, Virginia.
The human being occupies a unique place in all of creation. Find the nearest human being and look at him: you are looking at the only creature in the cosmos to possess both a body and a mind. Find the nearest rock—a body, but no mind. Find the nearest plant—a body, but no mind. Find the nearest animal—a body, but no rational mind. Find the nearest angel (!)—a mind, but no body. Find your neighbor again; he alone has both. He can learn, reason, understand; he is intellectual. He can see, walk, digest; he is incarnate. The immaterial world and the material world meet in the creature that is man.
As teachers and as parents, we are charged with the task, at once maddeningly mundane and maddeningly lofty, of teaching human creatures what it means to be human, and then of helping to make them so. We do this in a thousand ways, small and large. For example, we say to our students, “You are a baptized child of God; come, I will show you how to live as one.” “You are, whether you’d like to be or not, a mathematician; come, I will show you how to live as one.” “You are a lover of story; come, I will show you how to live as one.” In short, in each lesson and lecture and exam, teachers say to their students: “You are a knower of truth; come, I will show you how to live as one.”
How Do We Teach Self Governance? fills us with thought provoking questions from Katherine Kramer, a graduate of Patrick Henry’s Classical Liberal Arts program who now serves as the assistant headmaster of the newly CCLE-accredited Immanuel Lutheran school in Alexandria, Virginia.
Try this thought exercise: Take no more than 5 minutes and make a list of all the choices your children or students might make on a given day. Then, review that list and see if you can categorize those choices in any way. Truly – take a few moments to do this! Start with whether to rise from bed punctually. Proceed to dressing. Which clothes shall I wear today? How neatly? Which shoes? Shall I tie them hastily or securely? Shall I make my bed now or after breakfast, or not at all? Shall I greet the person(s) I see first thing in the morning? If so, how?
What do you learn? Are there any patterns or presenting themes? Perhaps you will see categories of preference, moral choices, organization, personal needs, and so on. Then, examine what percentage of choices a day your student makes regarding category. What do you learn? Which choices might a student be faced with spiritually or morally? How much responsibility does your student have? Ask yourself how his levels of responsibility relate to his development.
Please enjoy these two excellent articles from Ms. Kramer and Miss Malcolm, and to read the entire journal issue, view exclusive videos, and listen to conference recordings, join the Consortium for Classical Lutheran Education to receive Member access.