Word-sense

I’ve never been much of a basketball player. In spite of this--or more likely, because of this--I have a profound admiration for talented basketball players. A skilled player knows precisely where to be on the court, and when. They can think ten steps ahead and see a clear path to the basket even when an inexperienced spectator like me cannot. When they pass the ball, they know where to pass it without needing to stop and look around first. To my eyes, this almost looks like magic, but the technical term is court sense. Players with court sense may have been particularly quick or coordinated to begin with, but they have also put in countless hours of practice over the course of years, often starting with pick-up games when they were children. As they played, mastering the basics, learning the rules of the game, and improving their form, they also developed an awareness of the court and the players on it that has essentially become instinctive.

While writing and reading may seem incomparable to the game of basketball, I believe that word sense exists in much the same way that court sense does. Writers with word sense express complex ideas in a way that illuminates rather than obscures. Their diction dances and their sentences sing. Their paragraphs pulse with dynamism, every word, every clause, every sentence purposefully developing the main idea. They know precisely when to pause, when to pivot, when to drive forward. And then, like players on defense, readers with word sense pick up on nuance and subtleties to determine exactly where the author is going. They quickly ascertain the author’s purpose and detect the strategies the author will use to achieve that purpose. They spot the relationship between the words and phrases on the page and know when the author is pausing, pivoting or driving the point forward. They keep up a constant inner dialogue with the author, agreeing, disagreeing, questioning, critiquing.

 
Here we come to the crux of the matter: just as court sense is not built overnight, neither is word sense. Basketball players develop court sense through years of practice, shooting hoops with friends, learning the rules of the game, watching professional players, mastering the basics before trying more complex maneuvers and plays. Court sense is not a formulaic sum of all of these elements, but rather the organic byproduct of years dedicated to working on them.

Readers and writers, likewise, develop word sense through years of practice, writing for fun, actively acquiring vocabulary and grammar, reading voraciously, and trying out styles, words and phrases that they’ve picked up from their reading. I know that I as an 11th grade teacher cannot take credit for my students with word sense. That credit must be shared among the students’ other teachers starting as early as elementary school, the students’ parents, and most of all, the students themselves.

These are the students who will ace reading comprehension tests, who will pick up on argument analysis the first time around, who will get A’s on the essays I assign, who will receive 4s or 5s on the AP exam. I’m adding a square to the mosaic of their word sense, but I did not magically make them into exemplary writers or readers over the course of one school-year.

This has implications for the students who have not developed word sense, as well. It means that they should not expect A-grades if they have not invested the years into developing word sense that a handful of their classmates have. For me to give out A’s for work that is simply competent or basic would be unfair to those whose work is truly exemplary, tantamount to comparing a player who has finally figured out dribbling, passing and shooting with a player who mastered the basics long ago. I’ve been guilty of this in the past--it has resulted in grade inflation, where an ‘A’ in my class did not mean what it should have meant. This year, I’m consciously fighting that. This means that students need to adjust how they view the grades we as teachers give. A ‘B’ is not a bad grade for students who have finally gotten the basics. In my mind, ‘B’ shows that the students are competent, that they have met the standard, but are perhaps not quite ready to go beyond it. I will do whatever it takes to help my students grow as readers and writers, but I also recognize that my first priority is to help them become competent, and then to find ways to push them beyond mere competency--not necessarily to get them to an ‘A’ level. I want my students to look beyond the nine months they will spend in my class to the future. For those who have a vibrant word sense, how can they use that in whatever calling they pursue? For those who have not developed that word sense, is that something they want to develop? If so, what will that goal require of them in the coming years?

Not all of my students will attain word sense during their lifetime, and perhaps even the majority will not. However, I hope that my students, regardless of their writing or reading abilities, will come away with an admiration for word sense as I have an admiration for court sense. I want them to recognize the hours, months and years of engagement and investment that goes into truly exemplary writing or perceptive reading. And, I want them to realize that if they genuinely want to develop word sense, it’s never too late to start trying.

Teaching Logic

When I was a sophomore in high school, taking Integrated Math, I hated proofs.  For some reason, I just couldn't see the value in outlining the logic of a solution step-by-step.  To me, it seemed redundant--like a waste of time: if a conclusion was obvious to me, why on earth would I need to explain the reasoning?

Fast-forward 16 years: as a teacher, I never thought to teach logic.  As far as I was concerned, if students had a good enough grasp on a concept or theme, they would be able to arrive at logical conclusions about the topic at hand.

Here's what I have realized, though:
1) Being intelligent does not guarantee that one will arrive at logical conclusions.
2) The ability to arrive at logical conclusions does not necessarily mean that one is thinking logically.

In other words, the process of logic needs to be taught and practiced, even for students who consistently arrive at logical conclusions.

I have set aside time on Mondays and Tuesdays each week to study rhetoric in my Humanities class, and the past month has been dedicated to an in-depth study of logos--an appeal to logic.

We spent some time on syllogistic reasoning, the classical example being:
Major premise: All men are mortal.
Minor premise: Socrates is a man.
Conclusion: Socrates is mortal.

We then looked at enthymemes, which condense syllogisms into a single statement, typically leaving out the major premise.  For example, "Socrates is mortal because he is a man" (the unstated assumption being that all men are mortal).

I had the students practice converting syllogisms into enthymemes and vice versa, the main purpose being to root out and explicitly identify the major premise inherent within each claim.  I also had the students practice evaluating each syllogism for its validity (whether or not it followed a logical form) and its truth (whether or not its premises were true).

This was where we observed the limitations of syllogistic reasoning: for a syllogism to be sound, it not only needs to follow a logical pattern, but it also needs to start from categorically true premises.  Most debates in real life are far messier, resting on premises and assumptions that are, themselves, controversial.

This was where the Toulmin model came into play.  Stephen Toulmin was a British philosopher who created a model for argumentation that he believed would fit the messiness and ambiguity of day-to-day discussion and debate.  The Toulmin model is comprised of six parts:

I. Claim (The proposal made by the speaker or writer)
II. Reasons/Evidence (Their reasons for making the proposal and the evidence supporting the reason)
III. Warrant (The underlying assumption connecting the reasons and evidence to the claim)
IV. Backing (Evidence in support of the warrant)
V. Rebuttal (Anticipating and responding to potential counter-arguments)
VI. Qualifiers (Words and phrases that qualify and limit the claim in order to avoid sweeping generalizations such as "every", "all", "always", "never", "none", etc)

We spent a day going over these terms together, and since this was my first time teaching it, I decided I'd try assessing the students right away.  I gave them a short, two-paragraph write-up arguing in defense of a proposal for a tax on sugary drinks and junk food and asked them to analyze it according to the Toulmin model.

A few students immediately identified each part of the Toulmin model correctly, but most students struggled, particularly with the warrant, and distinguishing the backing from the reasons and evidence behind the claim itself, not to mention identifying qualifiers.

So, we spent a class period reviewing and analyzing that passage together.  The next day, I offered another chance to analyze a passage, this time, arguing for a ban on smoking in public places.  The improvement was astounding: all but a few of the students correctly identified the warrant and the backing.  The greatest area of difficulty lay in the qualifiers: while many students did identify qualifying words such as "if", "few" or "sometimes" during the passage, they failed to identify how the writer qualified the claim itself.

Still, it was incredibly exciting to see something as complex as warrants and backing click with the students--the students now understand the importance of examining, identifying and defending their own assumptions as they make arguments, and identifying and critiquing the assumptions in arguments that they encounter.

This is a part of my curriculum that I hope to develop and deepen in coming years, and I regret that I did not recognize the importance of teaching logic and argument structures sooner.  As the debate season starts up in the next week or two, I am looking forward to seeing how my 11th graders on the team apply what they've learned!

A News Routine

We are now three weeks into the school-year.  As a former cross country runner, these first few weeks have felt like the start of a long race where the pistol goes off and a period of chaotic sprinting follows as each runner seeks to find a good starting position in the pack before settling into their race pace.

For me as a teacher, some of the chaos (and I mean that in the best way possible) has come from putting into action plans which only existed on paper (or at least on GoogleDocs) until three weeks ago.  I made some big adjustments to what a typical week of class looks like in an effort to utilize the time more effectively, and introduce a clear routine.

Already, I can tell that one of my ideas is a keeper: news circles.

I first had this idea after a conversation with my principal near the end of the previous school-year, as we and one of the Senior teachers were brainstorming ways to improve the Senior Comprehensives process.  We realized that if we could get the kids to follow the news before their Senior year, that habit would go a long way towards preparing them to choose a global issue for their Senior year which they had some level of investment in.

So after no shortage of brainstorming, tooling and retooling over the summer, I came up with the idea of starting class on Tuesdays through Fridays with a 10-15 minute news circle time.

I divided the students into seven regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, Middle East, North America, South America and Oceania.  We simply rotate through the regions on a day-by-day basis--for example, this past week, we heard from Africa on Tuesday, Asia on Wednesday, Europe on Thursday and the Middle East on Friday.

The students assigned to a particular region must coordinate to ensure that they are all reporting on different stories.  Once they have found a news story to report on, they must read about it from at least two different news sources, and then prepare a one-minute (ish) summary to share with their classmates, hitting the basic journalistic questions--who, what, when, where, and why.  They must also talk about what differences, if any, they observed between the news sources they examined.

The catch?  The students are not allowed to read from a script.  They must prepare a note-card using the template below:

While their classmates share their stories, the rest of the class takes notes on a note template I put together for them, and they may ask questions at any time during the activity.

We have now made it through one full cycle--each region has presented once.  Though there were some bumps and glitches the first few days (no note-card, students forgetting to mention the differences between the news sources, students reporting on the same story), it went tremendously well over all, and I have been pleased to see how engaged the rest of the class is, diligently taking notes on the news they receive each day.

This is a formative assessment--in other words, its intent is not to measure student understanding or skill, but build it.  For this reason, it is not a big grade in the grade-book, and it is binary (either they submitted a notecard to me, or they did not).

However, the purpose I hope it will serve (and which it is already starting to serve) is profound:
1. I hope that it will keep the students up-to-date with the news around the world this year.
2. I hope that it will make following the news into a habit for my students.
3. I hope that it will make them more cautious as they read the news, and more aware of the various biases inherent to different news sources (and even which news sources to avoid entirely).
4. I hope that it will boost their confidence as public speakers to have a near-weekly, low-stakes chance to practice speaking to their classmates.
5. I hope that it will sharpen their presentation skills to regularly practice speaking from notes and not a script without the fear of me marking them down for their expression.

I'm excited and invigorated by what I've seen and heard so far, and am looking forward to watching my class' global awareness deepen as the year goes on--I'll definitely write an update on this later in the year!

Opening Day Activity

How do you use your time when the first day of class is a half day, and each class only lasts for 25 minutes apiece?

For most teachers, that is just enough time to talk through the syllabus and field questions.

This is often the first time in the year, of many, that I feel so fortunate to have the students for two periods a day.  25 minutes may not be much time, but 50 minutes allows for more flexibility.

This year, for the first time, I tried an activity instead of just talking at the students about the importance of our class theme.

I posted six images around the room: a photo of four hands, each gripping another around the wrist; an equal sign; a shot of the barricades from Les Miserables; a drawing of Lady Justice holding up her scales; a photo of a Black Lives Matter rally; and a clip-art of a stick figure in a jail cell, behind bars.

When the bell rang, without any other sort of introduction or fanfare, I instructed the students to walk around the room and look at each of the images.  As they took in each image, I asked them to think about which image most closely matched their understanding of the word "justice".

After deciding, I asked the students to spend five minutes journaling on scrap paper I'd distributed, stating which image they chose and why.

After five minutes, I asked the students to stand by the image they had chosen.

In both sections, there was at least one student standing at every image, though some had larger groups crowded around them than others.  The students then needed to find someone who had chosen a different image from them, share their reasoning and hear the reasoning of their classmate for why they had chosen the images they did.

When the students had shared and returned to their seats, I briefly explained the point of the exercise.  We today hear the terms "justice" and "injustice" almost constantly.  We hear them in the media, used by politicians, used in movies and TV shows, and the challenge is, the terms seem to have very different meanings depending on the setting.

Is justice unity?  Is justice equality?  Is justice revolution?  Is justice law?  Is justice activism?  Is justice punishment?

I neither praised nor condemned the definition of justice implied in each image, but simply pointed out that these definitions are all around us, and that whether or not we are aware of it, they shape how we view (and attempt to pursue) justice.

We also hear a lot about justice in Scripture.  In Generous Justice, Tim Keller states that some form of the Hebrew word for justice, "mishpat", occurs more than two hundred times throughout the Old Testament.  If we are to take Scripture's repeated call to do justice seriously, with the ultimate goal of "serving Japan and the world for Christ" (as CAJ's mission statement reads), we absolutely need to have a good grasp on what Scriptural justice means.  Each of those images reflect a cultural definition of justice, and while each has elements of truth to be found, none of them tells the complete story, and if each becomes an idol unto themselves, they can actually cause quite a lot of damage.

Justice is a rich and complex subject, worthy of a year's worth of study and time in class.  Moreover, we need to understand that those who we work with as we pursue justice in the future may have a completely different operational definition of justice from us, and we need to know how this may affect our pursuit of justice--how to find common ground while also holding firm to truth.

Next week, we will start reading chapters from Steve Monsma's Healing for a Broken World and Tim Keller's Generous Justice, which taken together present us with a thoughtful, Scriptural definition of justice.  Monsma defines justice as protecting that which is due to others as bearers of God's image.  Keller connects this act with mercy and generosity on a basic and intimate level.

My hope is that by having examined their own impressions about justice, the students will be in a better position to engage with these readings and think through the implications of a rich, textured, Scripturally-based definition of justice.

This activity and the follow-up took about 20 minutes.

I spent the second half of the class introducing myself in a way that has become a tradition six years running, by telling the tragic (but also humorous) story of my attempts to raise ducks when I was in elementary school.

If you haven't heard the story, ask me some time.

The Coming School year in Numbers

Over the past two weeks, I have put in about 60 hours of intensive planning and preparation for the coming school year (and yes, most of those were spent at Tully's).

This seems to have been the magic number--over the past few days in particular, I'm feeling more and more ready for classes to start so that I can test out the revisions I've made to my curriculum; to put my plans into action.

Tonight, I couldn't help but think about some of the other numbers which the coming year represents:

This will be my...

• 10th school year at CAJ (I came halfway through the year in January 2009), which in turn means it will be my...
• 10th time to advise a community group, and my...
• 10th time to watch a Senior Talent Show, and my...
• 10th CAJ graduation, and my...
• 17th time to attend Thrift Shop at CAJ this October (my 18th time next April)

This will also be my...

• 9th full year of teaching.
• 8th year teaching 11th Grade Humanities and AP English.
• 8th time to go on the 11th Grade Wilderness Camp.
• 3rd school-year as a department chair, and member of the Research & Development Team
• 2nd full school-year after finishing my Master's.
• 4th season to co-coach debate.
• 4th full school-year as a married man.
• 1st full school-year as a daddy. 

By the end of this year, I will have taught somewhere between 450 and 500 CAJ students in the course of my career so far, and will have clocked about 5,400 hours in the classroom. 

That number is a very rough estimate, and only includes class periods.  It does not include the prep and grading I have done during the school-year, or the planning and curriculum work I have done each summer (I'm not sure how I'd even go about calculating that!).

One week from tomorrow, the students will come back to campus for book check-outs, fire-drills and class mixer games.  Summer will officially be over.  While this summer felt like it went by more quickly than usual, I can confidently and enthusiastically say I'm ready for school to start up again.

Year number ten, here we go!

Here's my tentative weekly schedule for my Humanities class.  After writing my previous blog-post, I had the brainstorm to divvy up and spread out the news circle and reading times throughout the week, favoring a more varied agenda each day compared to what I'd originally planned. 

The Challenges & Opportunities of a Two-Period Class

One of the greatest blessings of my teaching career has been the flexibility to teach U.S. History and American Literature as a two-period Humanities block, instead of teaching them as separate subjects.

The challenge is to use that time wisely; to make the most of it; to ensure that there's a rhyme and reason to the way in which the time is allotted.

Sometimes, it makes sense to have several completely different activities in a single day, for the sake of variety.  Other times, it makes sense to focus on completing one single lesson.  I've long-since learned that two full periods of lecture (heck, even one full period of lecture) is not a good use of the time available to me.  Even within a single lesson, there needs to be some level of variety.  The two periods a day are a gift, and this summer, I want to be more intentional about structuring the time as best I can.

My schedule for the coming year looks like this:

1st period: Prep
2nd period: Prep
3rd period: Humanities A
4th period: Humanities B
5th period: Humanities B
6th period: Humanities A
7th period: Prep

To clarify, it's the same group of students 3rd and 6th period, and the same group of students 4th and 5th period. The Humanities A group doesn't quite get a block class in the way that the Humanities B group does, but scheduling has its limits.  It worked fine last year, so I'm not worried!

Here are a few things I have been thinking about as I have planned this week, including something I tried last year, and a few new things I'd like to try this year!

Something I tried last year:
Last year, for the first time, I set aside one class period each week for silent, sustained reading.  I did this every Friday, during 5th period for one of my Humanities sections, and 6th period for the other.  While there was something I really liked about ending the week with quiet reading time, it did mean that Friday basically became a one-period day, and regardless of what we were working on during 3rd or 4th period, respectively, we'd drop what we were doing and head down to the library for our weekly reading time.

Meanwhile, due to the late-start schedule each Wednesday, the fact that Wednesday classes are only 35 minutes long, and the fact that 4th and 5th period are separated by lunch that day, Wednesdays always felt a little too choppy; a little too start-and-stop to carry on a single lesson through both periods.

My idea for Wednesdays this year:
3rd and 4th period will serve as a weekly news circle--students will come prepared to discuss current events from different regions in the world in order to stay informed about global issues.  This was something I was planning to try anyway, and it just happened that Wednesday emerged as the natural day for it!

5th and 6th period will serve as our silent, sustained reading time, just as they had been on Fridays last year.  While this means that I will lose the relaxing feeling of closing out the school-week with reading time, this shift will make Wednesdays far more worthwhile than they ever were in the past.

Plus, this will give the students a weekly routine--something they can count on every week.

Another routine I want to try out:
Rhetoric has been a big part of my curriculum, at least on paper.  In practice, however, teaching rhetorical analysis skills has tended to take a back-seat to my unit themes and understandings.  Plus, it has always felt forced and awkward to try and include a different rhetorical analysis skill in each unit map, and justify why that skill fit with the themes and focus of that particular unit.  To remedy this, I'm creating an ongoing year-long unit dedicated entirely to rhetoric, to helping the students grow as critical consumers and effective communicators.  I am planning to set aside at least one period each Monday, at the start of the week, to teaching and practicing rhetorical analysis skills.  While each rhetoric lesson will be distinct from the unit we are studying in class at any given time, we will look for ways to use readings and materials based on the themes we are studying as we practice and apply rhetorical analysis skills.

This leaves me with Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays for substantive lessons that will take advantage of the two-period arrangement.  I am going to try to plan each lesson more consciously around the 90-100 minutes I will have on those days to make sure all of that time is well used.

Three days each week may not sound like a lot of time, but this will force me to focus my curriculum more than I have in the past--to make sure my lessons are concise and easy to follow, and that they are accomplishing what I want them to accomplish.

It may be that I'll emerge on the other side of this school year resolved never to try this again, but the only way I can grow as a teacher is to be willing to try new things!

Grinding the Lens: Developing My Perspective and Pedagogy of Justice

My professional summer reading started with two books that had nothing to do with teaching at face value, and yet upon finishing them, I find myself with a much clearer sense of purpose as I set in on my annual curriculum revisions.

Healing for a Broken World: Christian Perspectives on Public Policy by Steve Monsma, and Generous Justice: How God's Grace Makes Us Just by Tim Keller functioned as complementary texts, which taken together, helped me to develop a more solid theological framework for understanding justice, as well as a more solid framework for teaching my students about justice.

In Generous Justice, Keller offers a sound Biblical defense for the importance of social justice, one which is intertwined with (rather than separate from, or opposed to) an evangelical outlook.  Keller acknowledges in his introduction that many orthodox Christians have resisted earnest discussion about social justice due to the way in which the term has been politicized, perhaps even dismissing it out of a perceived connection to a broader decay in doctrinal soundness in particular, and societal morality at large.  Keller does not deny that popular perspectives on social justice are problematic, but is emphatic in his contention that Christians simply must have a heart for social justice, in fact, that a true understanding of grace will inevitably lead to a life spent pursuing social justice.

In Chapter One, Keller explores the definition of justice as it appears in the Bible, and particularly the link between "chesedh" (mercy), "mishpat" (justice), and "tzadeqah" (righteousness).  In Chapter Two, he examines the role of justice throughout the Old Testament, and the abiding validity that laws of release, gleaning, and jubilee can and should have on our social consciousness today.  Keller demonstrates in Chapter Three that justice is not merely an Old Testament concern, and examines how Jesus' life and ministry fulfilled and clarified Old Testament teachings about justice.  Chapter Four focuses in on the parable of the Good Samaritan, considering "who is our neighbor", and drawing extensively from Jonathan Edwards' commentary in responding to common objections/excuses for not helping the poor.  Chapter Five asks why Christians ought to have a heart for justice.  Keller touches on the human dignity due each person as image-bearers, but spends most of the chapter discussing how a genuine understanding of grace and redemption will inevitably result in a lifestyle marked by justice.  Chapter Six deals with how we are called to do justice, looking at different levels of action (relief, development, social reform), the importance of preserving the agency of those in need, and the need for racial reconciliation to ensure diverse leadership in addressing matters of injustice.  Chapter Seven emphasizes the need for Christians to work alongside others who may not share a Christian perspective on justice, in order to see justice done, emphasizing both the importance of empathy and cooperation, as well as the willingness to boldly and firmly bring our Scriptural perspective to the table, to engage rather than avoid conversations about how our faith informs our understanding of justice.  Chapter Eight, the final chapter in the book, connects justice back to shalom--the peace and beauty of the world as God intended it to be.

As I mentioned earlier, Keller's examination of justice helped to sharpen my own personal framework for understanding justice--what it is, why I should care, and how I should proceed.

Healing for a Broken World by Steve Monsma offers a practical application of justice to issues in the world today, and therefore serves as a natural companion piece to Keller's more philosophical examination of justice in Generous Justice.

The first half of Monsma's book digs into key principles for Christians to consider as they seek to do justice.  Chapter One explores some basic traps into which Christians and churches can easily fall, from failing to recognize how cultural, non-Biblical factors can and do shape our perspectives on contemporary issues for better or worse, to the fallacy of equating the United States to Old Testament Israel, to the trap of despair that may set in when we fully grasp the brokenness of the world, along with our own limitations.  The second chapter offers a concise overview of the creation, sin, redemption framework, focusing in on the role that government and its citizens ought to play.  Here again, Monsma warns against the extremes of triumphalism (the idea that we can, by our own efforts and gumption, make the world perfect) and pessimism (the idea that we can't truly change anything for the better).  Chapter Three defines and outlines justice from a Biblical perspective, focusing in particular on the ways in which government may contribute to injustice, either directly or by its inaction.  Monsma also explores what a thoughtful, Scriptural approach to justice ought to look like, revealing it to be much broader than the short-list of moral issues that automatically come to mind for many Christians.  Chapter Four explores solidarity--what loving our neighbors does and does not look like.  Here, Monsma warns against individualism, advocates for a division of labor among and within churches to address problems that "hit closer to home" (in consciousness, if not in geography), and cautions against paternalism, advocating, as Keller does in Generous Justice, for preserving the agency of those being helped.  Chapter Five examines the role that civil society ought to play in pursuing justice--families, churches, non-profit organizations, sports leagues, etc.  He discusses the Kuyperian notion of sphere sovereignty (the idea that each sector of society has its own distinct responsibilities which it, and no other, is best equipped to carry out), and the Catholic notion of subsidiarity (the idea that "social tasks should be performed on the lowest level consistent with a just order and the common good"--in other words, the federal government should not try to do what the state government is best equipped to do, and the state government should not try to do what local governments are best equipped to do, and so on).  Using these principles, Monsma attempts to offer a framework for deciding when an issue in society is best addressed on a policy level, as well as a framework for how the different levels of society can work in tandem to address issues in the world.

The second half of Monsma's book applies these principles to specific contemporary issues, from church and state issues, to life issues, to poverty, to caring for creation, to violations of human rights, to disease and poverty in Africa, to war and terrorism.  Monsma's perspective, as with Keller's, seems to transcend partisan lines.  Monsma himself served as a political science professor at Calvin College and later Pepperdine, with a decade-long career as a Democratic Michigan state senator in between, but his perspectives, including a nuanced pro-life approach and a thoughtful and active environmental record, defy binary partisan definition.  In every case, Monsma encourages careful and deliberate thought about the role of individuals, communities, churches, local, state and national government in prioritizing and addressing injustice.  I should note that while Monsma is up-front with his own perspectives, he is far more interested in asking questions and encouraging earnest thought in his readers than he is in pushing a specific political agenda.

Monsma's book is shorter, and while no less valuable than Keller's, it does lend itself more naturally for use in a high school humanities classroom by virtue of its structure and its frequent connections to tangible and pressing world issues.  The second half of the book, with each chapter focusing in on a particular issue, has the feel of a menu--a selection from which students can choose to read about issues that particularly resonate with them, while letting others be.  This is consistent with a point Monsma makes early on, that we as individuals cannot (and should not) try to address every global issue--some will land closer to our hearts than others, and it is these that we are called to address.

Keller's book was instrumental in "grinding my lens"--deepening and developing my theological framework for justice.  I would certainly recommend the whole book to any students who are interested in the theology of justice, but given the time constraints of the school-year, I plan to use only two chapters (Chapter One: What is Justice? and Chapter Six: How Should We Pursue Justice?) as required classroom readings.  I plan to check out some of the commentaries and writers that Keller cited, and hope to continue to deepen my understanding of justice itself, something that will inevitably come out in my teaching, my conversations with students, and in the feedback I am able to provide.

Monsma's book, on the other hand, has sharpened my understanding of how I teach about justice on a very practical, structural level.  I think my Humanities curriculum will have a stronger internal sense of logic and sequence having read Monsma's book.  One of my projects for the summer is to re-organize my units to highlight key ideas from Monsma's book more naturally.  Tentatively, this is my unit guide for the coming school-year:

Unit One: Imago Dei and Human Dignity
(Setting the foundation, distinguishing between human rights and civil rights, formulating a working definition of justice and how it connects to being image-bearers)

Unit Two: Triumphalism and Fatalism
(Exploring the ways in which worldview shapes our understanding and pursuit of justice, and the pitfalls that so many can and have fallen into.)

Unit Three: Solidarity and Agency
(Wrestling with what it means to "love our neighbor", the dangers of paternalism and the importance of respecting the dignity and agency of those we are seeking to help)

Unit Four: Stewardship and Technocracy
(Recognizing that our calling as stewards is vital, as it has bearing on not only the way we love our neighbors now, but future generations as well.  This unit will also explore some of the unique issues raised by rapidly developing technology in our world today, and what what it means to pursue justice as stewards at a time when so much is changing so fast.)

Unit Five: Citizenship and Civil Society
(Reflecting on what it means to be a citizen on a variety of levels, the workings of organizations, communities and governments, and the proper way to pursue lasting, substantive change).

Unit Six: Becoming People of Justice
(Tying it all together--articulating a personal plan for pursuing justice and actively debating contemporary policy issues with respect to the principles we've discussed throughout the year).

To do this, I do not need to reinvent the wheel--I can keep many of my lessons, resources and assessments with fairly minor adjustments.  What will change is my ability to connect each lesson, each activity, each assignment, back to the bigger theme of justice in more substantive ways.

Now I get to start in on my summer planning in earnest, and I am excited by the clearer sense of direction I have, having finished these books.  To anyone interested in thoughtful Christian perspectives on justice, I cannot recommend both of these books highly enough.  To any teachers looking to develop their own curriculum, what guiding principles can you read up on over the summer to help "grind your lens"?