Godsmacked

I'm taking a teachers' course this week on how to write units from a Christian perspective. Now, you may not know this, but writing and organizing a unit under one big question is hard work. It's a lot of thinking and writing collaboratively with your grade level partners that you don't normally have time for during the course of a school year.

Now, I had such high hopes for this course because it said that in the original description that you would have 3 complete units. I, and my colleagues, assumed this would save tons of time come September and have a good chunk of the year planned. I mean, 3 units can take until after Christmas to complete!

Well, as the course progressed, we found that 3 was a very high number and that "complete" meant, according to the instructor, 3 "skeletons" of units because "units are not finished until you  actually teach them. That's when you flesh them out!" Meh. What a rip-off. So the grumpies set in. I became more and more negative as the first two days went by and we were given a total of maybe one hour or so to actually write our units. I was discouraged as the instructor kept repeating and drumming into us the importance of what are called "Through Lines." For  example, one Through Line is called Servant Worker. If a unit was targeting the idea of Servant Worker, then the students would be led through an activity that involved actual service to the community.

Today, I woke up dreading today thinking that what we were to do, a field trip to Granville Island in Vancouver, would be a "time filler" that would keep us away from precious unit writing time. Our assignment  was a bit more interesting than just a way to pass a couple hours. We needed to take pictures of things that represent each Through Line and present them to class. We were broken into groups of 3. Of course we had no choice about who we went with. Teachers do this. I do this. Students hate this. I hated this, too, I realized. My group was two other guys, one I know quite well, one I just met today. Both of them love and know Granville Island well. Both of them were excited about one thing: The Granville Island Brewery.One of the guys had free passes to a tasting tour of the brewery. Now the guy I know already says, "Well, Matt doesn't drink at all." (It's true, I don't. It's for many different reasons, none of which are religious.) I said I'm not offended by it, I just won't drink it. They talk me into it and we're off to the brewery. I'm wondering what I'm getting myself into as I'm being told the beer-making process is quite fascinating in itself (Turns out it is. I know what malt and hops are now. I learned something new!)

We get there and find out that the tour had enough people and already started. The next tour is too late for us to catch our bus back on time, so we can't do the tour. The lady there (I feel sooo guilty for not remembering to ask for her name now) says she'll happily do a tasting session with us, which my two accomplices readily agree to. I go with them, thinking I will just listen and learn. She looks at me and astounds me with what she does next. She offers me a free ice tea or soda (organic, locally made, of course!). That may seem like a "so what" moment to others, but, for me, at that moment, I felt God's grace. She was acting as a Community Builder (yup, that's a Through Line) to me. She was not allowing me to feel left out and including me. I chose the root beer you see in the picture. It was really good. I felt like, "Yes, I do belong here. Right now, this is right."

I was Godsmacked while I was there. Smacked so hard that I suddenly understood, in a deeper and more profound way what these Through Lines mean. I was smacked upside the head by God through an act of generosity at, of all places, a brewery! I guess this course is worth it after all.

"They" Is "Us"

Interesting discussion in staff room the other day: The assertion was made that we should rethink the term "Special Education Student" because "Aren't all students 'special'?" The proposition is that we should eliminate the term in everyday speech, although we would have to keep the term for government funding. Essentially, then, should we just keep the term "on paper"? (If that is even possible, for how can term still exist, but never be spoken? Is it possible to have a word exist only as a term for one purpose, i.e., government funding, but not exist at all outside that purpose?)

What is at the heart of this discussion? We want to embrace inclusion, especially as a Christian community, and reject exclusion, which is anti-Christian by definition. (Then there can rise the whole side discussion, which came up after awhile during this staff room discussion, of how different Christian groups do practice exclusion, i.e., Anabaptist churches not allowing membership to persons only baptized as infants.) We want to embrace the whole and resist the labels that lead to defining some group as "the excluded".

Which brings me to another thought and that is how much I am becoming interested in how we use the word "they" and "them" in everyday discussion. Listen for it. Especially try to determine the assumptions behind the use of the word. As Christians we are told there is no distinction between classes, gender, etc. so we struggle with the use of the word "them" In the same discussion a definite line was drawn between Muslim and Christian, for example. Are those of the Muslim faith to be "them"? Is "they" just our common phrase identifying the Other? Aren't we supposed to embrace and include the Other?

We are told constantly in Christian circles that all are made in the image of God and therefore "we" share a commonality with "they"  "They" is "us" for all purposes.