No, the faculty didn’t play hooky this Wednesday. We left VCHS at 5:45 am for an all-day conference in Denver called Deeper Christian Learning. We had 3 goals for the day. First, we wanted to learn more about how to facilitate ‘deeper learning’ with our students. Second, we wanted to sharpen our knowledge and skills with teaching ‘Christianly.’ In other words, how do we not dichotomize faith from teaching and learning? Third, we looked forward to spending a day together bonding as colleagues and strengthening our team.
The paradigm for the day was an Expeditionary Learning (EL) model for Christian schools. The topic for the day, which we didn’t know ahead of time was climate change. We were immersed in EL teaching/learning methods such as a gallery walk and a field trip to Colorado School of Mines where we learned more about climate change from a Physics Professor and his spouse. Throughout the day we were challenged to ask ourselves this question: What does it mean for us as Christians to be stewards of God’s creation? In sum, we were students for a 9-hour school day stretching our empathy and understanding for our own students.
We’re grateful to our parents and students for flexing their schedules so that we could be away on a school day (I’m sure there were lots of complaints from our Saints ☺) and for everyone’s All Saints Fund support which allowed us to attend this conference and to grow in our craft as teachers.
