I wish my high school education included a photography trip to the southwest, a behind-the-scenes tour of a medical facility, and an opportunity for picture book circle time in high school. Fortunately, though it is too late for me, I have the opportunity to give this gift to my students this year!
For three days on the week before spring break, the classroom will be extending far beyond the school into the local community and beyond with Calvin’s first ever Interim.
Learning never stops. Even if students are no longer in school, they are participating in sports or hobbies (and learning how to improve in them), hanging out with friends (and learning how to build relationships and respond to conflicts), or doing something else to entertain themselves (which is molding their minds in some way, whether or not they are aware of it!).
As a teacher, I want my students to be hyper aware of what they are doing and why they are doing it, and Interim is going to be a fantastic way to increase this. Analysis is not just for the English classroom, or discipline just for math homework. Student gifts aren’t limited to the academics of the science classroom, or the art classroom, or any classroom for that matter.
I want students to know that knitting can be a way to serve God and others, that international travel can help them gain a different perspective of God’s creation, and that the music of the 60’s contains a worldview, just like the novels they have read in class.
When students are cooking a healthy dinner, they are serving God by treating their bodies with respect and using their abilities, possibly even to host others someday as an act of kindness or hospitality. When students are playing music on a Ukelele, they are serving God with their gifts and praising him with a new song. When students are touring a Yearbook Printing facility, they are exploring how their gifts may match different career options and are improving they way they will tell the story of what God is doing at Calvin this year.
I may not have time to help them experience these things and more in my classroom, but with interim, they will have these unique opportunities. I have loved seeing the excitement in the student body as they make their choices, and I have loved uncovering it in myself as I prepare a course on how we can glorify God as subcreators with Interior Design.
Now I am not only looking forward to Spring Break as the opportunity for a break, but as a time I will get to share additional passions with my students – all for the glory of God!
