Interact Curriculum Pages > Articles > How Do We See The Child?
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How Do We See The Child?
The Child is a Learner
Before God, we, teachers and parents and children, are all learners. We are all engaged in the process of life. We are all given the opportunity to be disciples of Jesus. We believe that our lives on earth are but a short time in eternity, and that it is during this time on earth that we have the opportunity to respond to God in relationship and in responsibility. It is easy to become so focused on the requirements of an education system that we forget that our role as teachers and parents is to walk with God and to disciple children in walking with God in the course of all of life. The child, therefore, is not primarily to be seen as an example of the quality of the school or of our teaching. He is not primarily a receptacle to be filled with knowledge in order that he might pass tests. He is not primarily a candidate for a well-paid and respected job. No, the child is a person created for relationship with God and for responsibility. These things cannot be taught by instruction only, but by observation and participation. They are taught through relationship with teachers and parents who have a discipleship focus. The Child Reflects God's Image The child is created in the image of God. He is a unique reflection of God's creativity, character and life. He has potential that no one else in the world has to worship God in his own way and to influence his part of the world for good by using the gifts he has been given by God. He is part of the answer for the world if he can but understand this calling on his life, and be equipped by wise teachers to fulfil it. The Child Tends Towards Sin The child tends towards sin. He stands before God, as do we as adults, accountable for his actions and attitudes. We do well, as teachers, to identify with the child in his struggle against laziness, disobedience, selfishness, etc and to stand with him in his attempts to win the battles in his life. The challenge of developing godly character as a response of worship to God is a life-long challenge and not one that we adults can presume to have perfected! We do well, as teachers, to allow students to see our own struggles with temptation (to be uncontrolled in anger, to be late with our marking of assignments, to talk badly about another person etc), and to allow them, where appropriate, to hear our "sorry" and see our commitment to overcoming as we stand before God together. We do well, as teachers, to help our students understand that it is our job to provide an environment for them that makes it easy to choose for good and difficult to choose for bad. Consequences for sin are necessary as they are part of the discipleship process of teaching children to obey God. It is our job as teachers to find a consequence for sin that is sufficiently unpleasant that it acts as a deterrent for bad character habits. Negative consequences should not be for the relief of the teacher or to "put a child in his place". They are the expected consequences the child has chosen to accept when he chose to disobey the standard. His choice to disobey is something that we, as teachers, can identify with. When we are tempted to drive over the speed limit or bend the truth, we must face the consequences of our actions. Therefore, we can consider ourselves on the side of the disobedient child as we can identify with both his struggle against sin, and the pain of having to accept the consequences. The Child is a Unique Individual Children have a wide-ranging diversity of personalities, motivational gifts, strengths and weaknesses, learning styles, love languages, birth orders, family relationships and experiences, and all these things affect their learning capacity. The Interact Curriculum provides ideas for learning experiences in the different learning styles/intelligences outlined by Howard Gardner. We can observe that some children have a propensity towards sin that is readily noticeable by others (e.g. saying or doing hurtful things, rebelling against authority), while others appear not to have the same temptations. We should ensure that we encourage all children to repent of sin, obvious or otherwise, and be supportive of even apparently small progress in character development in those students whose temperament and leadership potential provide extra challenges. Jesus did not only choose compliant disciples or honour only those whose lives were lived according to the rules, and neither should we. Because we believe that the gifts and aptitudes of each child in our care are from God, we must seek to see the potential of those gifts in God's hands, even if they are presently being wrongly used. For example, a child who is disobeying may have gifts in leadership, seeing alternative possibilities, being creative etc, and he is currently misusing these gifts. We should do everything we can to inspire and challenge the child to use these gifts as God intended and to submit his life to God's leadership. Alternatively, the child who is disobeying may not have had his needs met. Perhaps the environment has negatively affected him emotionally, physically, socially, or spiritually, and by asking questions we can identify ways of working with the child to improve his environment. Perhaps the learning environment is not meeting his needs because he has a different learning style from the predominant style of the classroom. We should seek to provide a stimulating environment that meets the learning needs of the individual child wherever possible. Therefore, when a child is "bucking the system", we, as teachers and parents, should ask ourselves questions like:
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