Commencement Address 2022

 Last week, I had the honor of delivering the commencement address at the Christian Academy in Japan, at the Class of 2022's selection. It was the fourth commencement address that I've given in my lifetime: the first was at my own high school graduation in 2004, and the rest have all been at CAJ (2012, 2016, and 2022). With my family moving to the States next month after more than 13 years in Japan, I was grateful for the opportunity to send the graduates off, but also say "farewell" to them, and to this community that has been home to me for more than a third of my life so far.

Photo Credit to Linnea McGlothlin

Here is the video of my speech (starts from 37:40), and below is the text:

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen of the class of 2022!

Before I launch into the heart of my speech, it occurred to me that we have some unfinished business to take care of.

You see, if you think back to last May, you were busy working on dares for your Junior Charity Event, then we had the CAJ Olympics, and then we had our final deb-scussions in Humanities, and do you know what we didn’t do in the hustle and bustle of the end of the year?  

One final SOAPStone!

So, I figure it’s only fair that we take care of that right here, right now.  Consider this your final assignment before you graduate.

It’s okay, though, I’ll help you out–you just need to follow along.

First up, we have the Speaker.

That’s me.  Pretty easy so far? 

Next, we have the Occasion.  Well, of course, the immediate occasion is CAJ graduation, but broadening it out a little bit, this is the first graduation ceremony with relatives other than parents in three years.  That’s noteworthy, I think.  And it also gets at the exigence, which is that I’m speaking to you in the context of you finishing a turbulent high school career, one in which it seems that all of history conspired to rhyme with itself, all at once.

The Audience?  That’s you guys.  The Class of 2022.  Known alias?  The Un-Shushables. Ranging alphabetically from Abe to Yamaguchi. Interesting fact: you were the very first class several of your teachers ever taught at CAJ–Ms. Johnson’s first 1st grade class, Mrs. Prevatt’s first 4th grade, and later 5th grade class, and Mrs. VanDruff’s first 6th grade class. Another fun fact–because your class had a reputation for blurting out whatever you were thinking, unfiltered, Mrs. VanDruff made you write what you were thinking in a classroom diary instead, so that you could express your ideas silently.  

Also, as a class, you volun-told Hikaru, who you chose to speak on your behalf just now, to have his head shaved as a dare last year–who can forget?  Hikaru took it all in stride, though I’m fairly certain he went through the five stages of grief in the span of about 40 seconds when he realized the rest of you weren’t kidding about the idea.  

And then I think he went through the five stages of grief again while getting his head shaved in front of everyone on the auditorium stage.  I mean, who’d have thought that a partially charged beard-trimmer wouldn’t get the job done?  Or classroom scissors, when that failed?  Who can forget the look of panic on Hikaru’s face when he realized the razor had broken?  Or the look of resignation when he thought he was going to have to finish the school day and go home with large chunks of his hair missing?  Or the look of longing as he wished that your class had just gone with “Dress-like-Kenshin day” as the dare instead?  Or the heroic image of Mr. Willson dashing into the auditorium with a proper working razor?  

I think it was Mark Twain who once said, “A man who carries a cat by the tail learns a lesson he can learn in no other way.” But you live, and you learn.  And what I always loved about your class was how joyfully you lived and learned together, and how you would often look back on the living and learning you’d done, and then laugh together.  That was community.  That is redemption.

One last interesting fact, and I guess this ties back to the Speaker category, too.  We both started our time at CAJ in 2009–at least those of you who are OGs–you as Kindergarteners in August, and I as a short-term volunteer in the LRC, fresh out of college, several months earlier.  And we now end our time at CAJ together in 2022, you as you graduate, and I, as my family prepares to move to the U.S this summer to start a new chapter in our family’s story.  So, in many respects, I’ve had a full K-12 CAJ education along with the Class of ‘22.

Which leads me to my Purpose.  How can I possibly say all that needs to be said?  To give you a send-off befitting the last couple of years?  Ten years ago, I stood on this stage and challenged the class of 2012 to think about their legacy.  Six years ago, I told the class of 2016 that they were all living teacher’s drafts, constantly being revised by the Author of all things.  I still believe these were important parting words to those classes, but this afternoon, I am going to keep things far more simple and far more personal.  I’m going to remind you one final time of what I hope you took away from my Humanities class; what I hope you’ll remember not only in 60 minutes or 60 days, but in 60 years.  

No, I’m not talking about how big John Adams’ forehead was… or should I say fivehead, am-i-right? And no, I’m not talking about the lyrics to Hamilton, or the Toulmin Model, or the checks and balances of the U.S. government, or the proper way to eat a piece of pizza, or which basketball player really was the GOAT.  

I’m talking about my mission–my deep and abiding desire for all of you as you leave this place–which I include in my syllabus and post in my classroom, and hope from the bottom of my heart: that each of you will grow to be compassionate agents of change who glorify God by discerning wisdom from foolishness, noticing the needs of others in a broken world, and then pursuing justice, both in word and deed, engaging and navigating complexities and tensions between various perspectives. 

You have lived history these past few years.  That’s not unusual.  We’re all living history, constantly.  What was unusual is that you likely had some awareness that you were living history.  You knew you were living history on a global scale as you watched the headlines unfold each day, and you may have known that you were also living history locally–the first Senior class to enjoy the new cafeteria and field, the last Senior class to graduate from CAJ with Mrs. Foxwell as Head of School.  

History is all about things staying the same until they don’t, and big changes are on the horizon for all of you, for me and my family, and for this school from which we will soon venture away.  

Change can be exciting when it’s planned, expected, and wanted, as the new field and cafeteria have been.  Perhaps that’s how you’re feeling about graduation, too.  But when it’s unexpected, unwanted, or unpredictable, change can feel about as scary as being on a ship tossing at sea, or standing outside in a typhoon.  Or, holding on for dear life as the earth shudders beneath us.

So, I ask you, as you prepare to depart this gym not as students, but as graduates: on what do you stand?  On what foundation do you feel the most sure-footed? 

The past several years have been the story of so many beloved things–things we might normally take for granted–suddenly disappearing out from under us.  As freshmen, how many of you were looking forward to getting to travel to Korea or Okinawa for FarEast? Or going to a VEX world championship in person, not online in the middle of the night?  Or regularly performing for the community in band, orchestra, or choir?  Or maybe just hanging out in the plaza with friends after school?

How did it feel when these things went away?  

These are all good things, but none of them is a load-bearing thing; none can support the sum total of our search for identity or meaning. 

Then of course, there are bigger things that vie to serve as our foundation–politics, money, fashion, fame.  And again, none of these are inherently bad, but how stable a foundation do any of these provide?

Perhaps you may not fully know on what you stand.  In his book You Are What You Love, philosopher James KA Smith writes, “you might not love what you think.”  To illustrate this possibility, he cites a film by Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, The Stalker.  The Stalker is the name of the film, not a description of Tarkovsky, just to clarify.  In the movie, three men are on a journey to a room, which they are told will grant their hearts’ deepest desires when they enter.  The promise of such a room spurs them on in their journey, and yet, when they arrive at the threshold to the room at long last, they hesitate.  The room, after all, will grant what their heart actually desires, not just what they think it desires.

Perhaps today, what you think you are standing on is not what you are actually standing on.  

Given this uncertainty, let me suggest to you an important truth before we depart: you are beloved. Let that be your foundation.

You are beloved by your family, your teachers, your friends, yes–but more importantly, you are beloved by the King of all creation.  

In Psalm 62, David writes, 

5 Yes, my soul, find rest in God;

    my hope comes from him.

6 Truly he is my rock and my salvation;

    he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.

7 My salvation and my honor depend on God;

    he is my mighty rock, my refuge.

And the familiar words of John 3:16 tell us something crucial about God–that He loved each and every one of us so much that He sent His son to step into our human story and die for us that we might believe in Him and live eternally. 

This love is unconditional.  It is not subject to pandemic restrictions.  It is unswayed by the chaos of current events.  It abides when we mess up.  It stands firm, steady, and secure even as the earth itself gives way beneath our feet.  

My speech is drawing to a close, and so too, is your final SOAPstone.  I’ve used anecdotes, anaphora, triads, rhetorical questions, invocation, allusions, and probably other strategies, too.  It’s okay if you didn’t notice them.  In fact, no speaker wants the seams to show so much that they call attention to themselves in the moment.  At the end of the day, those strategies are more of a “60-minute thing” anyway.  

As you prepare to leave this familiar place that has been a constant over the past few years, as change looms large, and as the vain things that compete to be your foundation show themselves to be rickety things indeed, I hope this knowledge that you are beloved by God Himself will only grow more clear with each passing day, filling you with peace and joy.  That, I hope you will hold onto for 60 years and beyond. 

As all of you–and I, too–conclude our time at CAJ and go our separate ways, I’d like to leave you with a traditional Irish blessing:

May the road rise up to meet you,

May the wind be always at your back.

May the sun shine warm upon your face,

The rains fall soft upon your fields.

And until we meet again,

May God hold you in the palm of his hand.

Amen.

A Running Total

 Three years ago, I was in the middle of a stressful school-year, realizing that what I'd assumed were seasonal allergies were in fact year-round allergies.  To keep a step ahead of the stress and to feel healthier in the face of a constantly scratchy throat and stuffy nose, I started running regularly.

This wasn't the first time I'd tried to make a habit of running: I had run Cross Country and Track back in school.  

I ran track half-heartedly from 7th grade to 12th grade, with a year off in 11th grade.  I enjoyed (and still enjoy) watching track meets, but I had never much cared for competing as a long-distance trackster.  The 1600m (4 laps around the track) and the 3200m (8 laps around the track) were repetitive and not terribly exciting.

I'd enjoyed Cross Country more due to the changes in scenery within each course, and from week to week as we tried different courses.  Not that I'd been a particularly disciplined runner--as an 8th grader and freshman on a relatively big Cross Country team, I'd been able to fade into the background somewhat, and a few friends and I would routinely run to the nearby convenience store when we were supposed to be doing a long, slow distance run and buy junk-food, which I suspect was pretty much the polar opposite of what our coach wanted us to be doing.  

Then, my sophomore year, a growth spurt had made me naturally fast enough for the coach to take notice.  Suddenly, I was under more scrutiny during practice, and it turned out that when I actually did the workout that I was supposed to do, I improved quickly.  Another friend and I, both unable to fly under the coach's radar any longer, spent each meet vying for the coveted 5th place spot on the team--the last runner who could qualify for varsity.  My 5k time dropped from 23 minutes down to 20 minutes flat, and I suspect I could've hit the low 19s, if I'd been on the right course.  My season ended with two back-to-back meets on the same course, a week apart.  The first week was my best performance yet, and qualified me to join the varsity team for the finals on that same course the following week.  But the minute the pistol went off a week later, I knew something was different.  

I felt sluggish, like I was running through molasses.  I couldn't catch my breath, and I came through the first mile checkpoint a minute behind the previous week.  The cheers of my coach, my dad, and the spectators from my school who'd come to watch felt like daggers: "Come on, Nate, you can pick up the pace!  Try to catch the Mt. Baker runner just ahead of you!"  Except I couldn't--I physically couldn't.  My final time was nearly two minutes slower than the week before.  It was the most physically and psychologically punishing run I'd ever been on.  The next day, I found out that I had strep throat.  I then resolved to quit Cross Country, and quit I did.  I regret my choice now, but I still have some recollection of how defeated I felt.  

When I moved to Japan, I must have tried to start running regularly again six or seven times over the years, making some headway while coaching cross country, but never sustaining the habit for more than two or three months. 

So when I started running regularly again in February of 2019, my expectations for myself were fairly low.  I just knew that I needed a way to de-stress and try and feel above-the-weather.  These motivations, as well the help of a few key technologies, turned out to make all the difference in the world.  

The first bit of technology was a Garmin watch, a birthday gift from my wife several weeks after I started running.  I suppose part of me felt compelled to keep running, given that I'd received a watch specifically for the purpose of tracking my runs.  Regardless, I don't believe I've ever received a gift that I've gotten so much active use out of.  

The second bit of technology was my discovery of podcasts.  I don't consider myself a good multitasker, but I discovered that I can run and listen to a podcast at the same time, and since I often have more podcasts than time each week, I look forward to my runs as an opportunity to keep up--or more often, catch up--with my favorite podcasts. (As a side-note, this is the same reason why I look forward to washing the dishes every evening after dinner).

I started with daily two-mile runs, and it didn't take long for me to pick up the pace.  However, I was frustrated that I couldn't seem to crack under a 17-minute two-mile, and the harder I tried, the more I experienced pulled muscles or dry-heaves.  

I'd been thinking of two miles as a long-distance run--it feels long while running it on the track.  But on a hunch, I upped my regular runs to three miles in May.  Then four miles in July.  Then five miles in August.  I tried a six, then a seven-mile run in September, but those often took more time than I had.  So, my sweet-spot became four or five-mile runs.  I was still running five or six days a week without significant breaks, and I started to pay for it with pulled muscles that necessitated week-long breaks from running.

So, I eased back to three runs a week, with a day or two of rest between each, and learned to dedicate more time to stretching before and after running, and giving myself at least ten minutes of walking to cool down after my run.

Although 2020 brought a nasty six-month bout with plantar fasciitis from spending so much time at home, barefoot, due to COVID isolation, I managed to run at least once or twice a month and resume regular running in September 2020 after returning to in-person school--that had never happened before.  In the past, when I'd had to take more than two or three weeks off from running, I had fallen out of the routine.

This week marks three years of regular running.  In that time, I have run 1400 miles (2253km) .  I haven't kept track of how much I have walked during that time, but I can conservatively estimate that I'm walking 8 miles a week (not counting day-to-day walking around school, to the store, to the coffee-shop, etc).  That's more than 2600 miles (4184km)!

My best run by the metrics of both distance and speed was an April 2021 5 mile run which I completed in 39:56, averaging under 8 minutes per mile.  I'm not sure I could've done that even at the peak of my conditioning as a high school sophomore!  And frankly, I'm not sure I can do it again.

My longest run was 10 miles in 97 minutes in December '21.  I paid for this run with about five days of stiff, sore knee joints.  I need to figure out how to better prepare myself for really long runs.  

It's amazing how quickly running went from being a chore to being a habit, and more than that, a routine that I truly depend upon.  My allergies haven't eased up--if anything, they've gotten worse--but regular running keeps me feeling healthy and keeps me a step ahead of the stress.  I am grateful that I've been able to keep this up for three years, and grateful for freedom from injuries over the past six months.  I hope I can keep up this routine for many more years to come!

Finding Our Balance

 The first elements of Teaching for Transformation that we learned in our training were "Deep Hope" and "Storyline".  

The "Deep Hope" is effectively a mission statement for our classroom--the "why" or "so-what" of the subject at hand; what we hope students will have taken away from our class when all is said and done.  

We used the idea of 60-60-60 several times during Teaching for Transformation training: what do students need to know for 60 minutes (long enough to complete a given lesson or activity in class)? 

What do students need to know for 60 days (long enough to complete a unit of study, or a major assessment in a particular course)? 

And, what do students need to know for 60 years--what do we hope will stick with them long after they've left our classroom?  

The deep hope challenges teachers to think on that 60-year level and articulate that hope to the students.  Here is my deep hope for Humanities 11, my blended U.S. History and English class:

It is my hope that each of you will grow to be compassionate agents of change who glorify God by discerning wisdom from foolishness, noticing the needs of others in a broken world, and then pursuing justice, both in word and deed, engaging and navigating complexities and tensions between various perspectives.

The "Storyline", by contrast, is a pithy tagline inviting students to live and engage in the major narrative framing your class.  TfT training focuses a lot on the idea of competing narratives and stories, and what makes a Christian narrative distinctive in the midst of so many other stories.  The storyline needs to be applicable in the day-to-day, the here-and-now; after all, it's a distillation of what we as teachers, and our students are actually doing in our class.  For the past two school-years, I tried out the storyline "Doing Justice, Loving Mercy, and Walking Humbly with God", drawing on Micah 6:8.  While I still absolutely believe that these are important goals, and while I am committed to giving my students opportunities to practice these things in my class, they are more the destination than the journey.  On a day-to-day basis, I simply was not referring back to this storyline, and if I had, it would not have been organic, save as a constant reminder of "here's why we're doing this."

So what is the storyline in my Humanities class?  What have I actually been inviting my students to do on a regular basis?  I realized in February of this year that what I kept coming back to in every unit and nearly every lesson was the idea of "navigating complexities and tensions" from my deep hope.  This is intimately tied to the goal of pursuing justice, but has much more bearing on what actually happens in the walls of my classroom.  My storyline is--has always been (though I didn't realize it)--Finding Our Balance.

As students quickly realize, justice is not easily defined, and there are indeed competing narratives about what justice is or isn't in our world today.  Is justice primarily about promoting individual liberties?  Fairness?  The "greater good"?  The toppling of oppressive power structures?  

If mishpat--the Hebrew word for "rectifying justice" that shows up frequently in Scripture--is defined as "giving people their due as image-bearers", what does that mean in practice?  How do the major competing narratives about justice gel or clash with this definition?

Or consider another tension that comes up in my Humanities class, individualism and paternalism.  What does it mean to love our neighbors?  Is leaving them entirely to their own devices loving?  Is taking the reins from them and telling them what to do and how to do it loving?

Or the tension between government and civil society: at what point should government get involved in addressing an issue in society, and at what level of government?  How much autonomy should the institutions of civil society have in addressing issues?

Or what about the tension between socialization and agency?  To what extent are we the products of culture, society, upbringing?  Are these forces more powerful than our will and ability to chart our own course?

The list could go on.  The reality is, my Humanities course is heavy with these tensions, and actively wrestling with these tensions is crucial to being a good justice-seeker.  

Sometimes, wrestling with a tension will mean seeking the middle path between two extremes, but not always.

Sometimes, wrestling with a tension will mean synthesizing differing perspectives, but not always.

Sometimes, wrestling with a tension will mean picking one side to the absolute exclusion of the other, but not always.

Always, wrestling with a tension will mean figuring out what values and principles will provide us with a firm foundation to stand on as we question, wonder, and engage in a world that seems to shift and shake beneath our feet. 

These tensions are nothing new; they've always been present in my Humanities curriculum.  What will be different this year is that I will be repeatedly, insistently inviting my students to find their balance by facing these tensions head-on, not shying away from them or pretending they are not there. 

As I look ahead to summer curriculum work, I'm excited and energized by the possibilities that embracing this storyline will open up!

Learning to Serve and Service Learning

 Our school's vision statement reads "Equipping students to serve Japan and the world for Christ."

Much of what we teach can be assessed and measured with relative ease: we have accurate, helpful rubrics that tell us how students are writing or delivering speeches relative to our standards.  We have well-designed assessments that tell us whether students can solve for 'x', whether they can identify the relationship between populations in an ecosystem, whether they can engage with the tension between dual federalism and cooperative federalism in U.S. civics, and so on.  

Service, though--well, service is a little different.

In my role on our school's Research & Development Team (the RAD team for short), I'm currently serving on a committee that has been taking a close look at how we teach service.  One thing we realized early on is that unlike knowledge, understandings, or skills, genuine service cannot be assessed and graded in any meaningful sense because the way in which we talk about service is inextricably bound to attitude and even more deeply, a heart-level motivation fully visible only to God.  

So, then, where do we start?  How do we hold ourselves accountable for the lofty, but oh, so important vision of "equipping students to serve"?

Our committee, interested as we are in figuring out what we can teach and assess, is focusing on the concept of service learning. 

Vanderbilt University defines service learning as "a form of experiential education where learning occurs through a cycle of action and reflection as students seek to achieve real objectives for the community and deeper understanding and skills for themselves."

This definition caught our eyes because it is so strikingly similar to the FLEx (Formational Learning Experience) portion of Teaching for Transformation, the Biblical worldview integration training that our staff is currently undergoing. Here's how Teaching for Transformation explains the purpose of FLEx:

Formational Learning Experiences (FLEx) are opportunities for the learner to engage in “real work that meets a real need for real people”—opportunities to practice living the kingdom story.

If we can provide students with opportunities to participate in real work that meets a real need for real people, helping the students to build skills of reflection and self-assessment as they do so, we will go a long way towards teaching them to serve.  

Of course, neither Vanderbilt nor TFT's FLEx claim to teach or assess attitudes about service; rather, they are both about providing authentic opportunities to apply and build skills, understandings, and habits of mind by doing something that meets a need in the community. 

These opportunities are crucial, however, and hoping that students will seek or create such opportunities for themselves leaves a lot up to chance.  Yes--it's wonderful when our students search out avenues for service without our prompting, and even better, when their passion is so contagious that their classmates buy in and get involved because they care.  Weaving service learning into our classrooms--making service projects an expectation--won't take away from that.  In fact, I firmly believe that by regularly asking students to go through the process; by teaching them the skills and habits that service often requires on-the-job; by encouraging them to reflect on their learning during and after the process, we will empower more students to independently seek and take advantage of opportunities to serve.  After all, how often do we give up on an idea because we don't know where to start, who to talk to, or how to turn an exciting idea into a feasible plan?

Allow me to share my own observations: for more than ten years, there has been an unwritten tradition at our school that the 11th grade class is responsible for organizing some kind of large-scale service project or charity event.  The first class to do a project had been inspired by a guest speaker who presented to the class about the issue of human trafficking, and a core group of kids felt so strongly about doing something that they organized a a festival on campus to raise awareness and funds for a rescue organization.  This happened the year before I started at our school, but I first heard about it shortly after I arrived, such was the impression it had left on my colleagues and underclassmen.

And so a tradition was born, with the 11th grade class voluntarily putting together a service project each year.  The trouble with tradition, though, is that soon enough it can become an expectation and not truly voluntary.  When something is an unofficial or unwritten expectation, there can be a lot of tension and grief over whether or not to meet the expectation in the first place, followed by no shortage of bitter feelings, regardless of what the class decides.  Moreover, the process can get awfully muddy as each new class comes in tempted to start their planning with an event in mind before they have even settled on the cause for which they are serving. Talk about putting the cart before the horse!

So, this year, I adopted the 11th grade service project into my curriculum as my FLEx activity: no more tense debates or waffling about whether or not to even keep the tradition going in the first place and no more event-first planning.  Following our third unit, which was about toxic charity, and our fourth unit, which was about the role of civil society in addressing issues in the world, I asked students to develop and present proposals for a civil society response to an issue in the world today in groups.  If students wanted their classmates to consider their group's proposal, they had to present it publicly.  Four groups threw their hats into the ring, and their classmates voted to adopt two of the causes: raising funds for TELL Japan, an organization “dedicated to providing effective support and counseling services to Japan's international community and its increasing mental health needs", and creating an artistic display for our town's city office, thanking and encouraging medical professionals.  

With some initial trial and error, the students formed an event committee and several sub-committees, filling such vital roles as president, secretary, treasurer, public relations coordinator, art and design coordinator, and fundraising coordinator.  Though these projects are not "voluntary" in the same way that past classes' have been, I have already seen far more buy in, and it has been a joy to coach the students through conflict resolution, committee structure, delegation and division of labor, and logistics.  It has also been a joy to watch as the students apply understandings about solidarity, good charity, and the relationship between government and civil society as they plan, not to mention applying skills of debate and persuasion. These projects may be a requirement for Humanities class, but I hope that students will emerge from them with a greater capacity--and desire--to serve those around them.

Now, if we as teachers were to be more intentional about structuring service learning opportunities in our curricula throughout the years--even on a small-scale--or simply carving out more time for students to reflect on the many service opportunities that we already have, I wonder how much more quickly students would feel comfortable seeking out chances to serve on their own?  I wonder how much more smoothly the planning process would go each year, with each new service opportunity?

We may never be able to truly assess whether or not our students are serving Japan and the world for Christ, but I think we can increase the odds that they will!

Serving a Suffering Savior

Every year while I was growing up, my church held a Tenebrae service on Good Friday. As we read and reflected on Jesus’ words on the cross, and sang such plaintive hymns as “O Sacred Head Now Wounded”, “Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted”, and “Were You There (When they crucified my LORD?)”, the lights in the church would gradually dim until after “It is finished”, the sanctuary would be dark and everyone would exit and wordlessly make their way to their cars. No post-service fellowship, no refreshments, no conversations with friends--just a silent twilight departure.

From a young age, this struck me as odd. Conditioned as we are as consumers and tellers of stories to wait for the happily-ever-after--to look for the glimmer of hope--a service that so conspicuously ended on a down-beat stood out.

Unlike Advent, the season of joyful expectation leading up to Christmas, Lent and especially Holy Week can feel more somber as we take time to think and sing specifically of Jesus’ suffering and death. Why do we do this? Isn’t the whole point to just get to Easter and the empty tomb? Wouldn’t it be best to press fast-forward and skip to the good part?

To answer these questions, we must first ask another question: what do we gain from dwelling on Jesus hanging on the cross? Or put another way, what kind of Savior is Jesus, if His death is indeed a necessary chapter of the story?

In reading Jesus’ words on the cross, in singing mournful minor-key hymns, in remembering His death, we are reminded that we serve a Savior who knows what it is to suffer.

And why is this important?

We need look no further than this past year. Even if you were fortunate enough not to have lost a loved one to COVID, to avoid serious illness, or to have kept your job, chances are you know somebody who was not so fortunate. And chances are, you experienced disruptions that distressed you: social isolation, struggling to work or study remotely, restrictions on gathering to worship, and many more. Perhaps you were already struggling with anxiety or depression, and the challenges of this past year felt at times like just one damn thing too many to bear. Perhaps you still struggle to see past the daily case and death counts, or disruptions to your daily life to the day when this, too, shall pass. Perhaps you are enduring what poets have called the “dark night of the soul”.

You see, we who live shackled by sin in a hurting, broken world--“groaning, as in the pains of childbirth”--know what it is to suffer. And what could Jesus’ resurrection possibly mean if He knew nothing of our suffering? Would it be the equivalent of a spiritual Hallmark card? Well-intentioned, but impersonal and cheap?

Instead: Jesus endured betrayal not only by the adoring throngs who had welcomed Him with palm branches mere days earlier, but by His closest friends. Jesus endured the humiliation of a sham public trial followed by the agony of a slow public execution. Then, Jesus endured what our sins warrant, but which we have never experienced ourselves: true separation from God.

When the earth shook and the curtain to the temple tore in two, the situation appeared to be hopeless. His disciples scattered and hid--it must have seemed like their world had crumbled around them.

Could they see past the grief of that day to the joy that was soon to come?

Can we see past our present suffering?

We know, of course, that two days later, the disciples' mourning would turn to rejoicing. In that sense, it is impossible to detach Good Friday from Easter.

Yet when we do remember Good Friday and reflect on Jesus’ suffering and death, we bring with us our own suffering, which may seem permanent, insurmountable. And as we read, sing, and meditate, we remember that Jesus in that moment took our sin and suffering onto Himself. Whatever you are enduring at the moment, joy will come in the morning. But for now, let us take comfort in the knowledge that we serve a Savior who knows--and bears--our suffering.

My Favorite Classroom Routine

A million years ago, when school was something that happened in person, and not through our screens, I never started class on Tuesdays through Fridays.  Instead, as the bell rang, I would sit quietly at my desk as a student called their classmates to attention.  The student would present for a minute or so on a current event or news story, summarizing the story for their classmates, before posing a provocative statement, asking their classmates to agree or disagree with the statement, then discuss why they agreed or disagreed.  15-20 minutes later, the student would move to wind down the discussion, and yield the floor to me, at which point I would introduce whatever plans I had for class that day.

What I've just described is my favorite classroom routine, News Circles.

News Circles were born out of a conversation I had with my principal three years ago in my capacity as Social Studies Department Chair.  We were discussing ways to increase student awareness of--and engagement with--current events, particularly global issues, before their Senior year, at which time we ask them to do a major research project on a global issue of their choice.  

What we came up with was a classroom routine in which students would share news stories each day, low-stakes to the extent that even if a student forgot and did not bring a news story to class, it wouldn't matter in the long-run because they and their classmates would at least be exposed to other news stories.  

I decided I wanted to pilot this idea with my Humanities class the following year.  

News Circles have morphed and evolved with trial and error over the past three school-years.  I realized early on that I needed to give my students ownership of the routine, and so formed a voluntary News Circle committee who would decide what, exactly, News Circles would look like, and then oversee it on a day-to-day basis.  

This year, the News Circle Committee took the ownership I'd been looking for.  Whereas the previous two Humanities classes had run News Circles as a 5-10 minute routine in which four or five students would briefly share news stories each day, this year's committee decided that the quality of engagement with a news story was more important than the quantity of news stories their classmates would hear each day.  So, they decided to assign one student to present each day, with the majority of the time going toward facilitating a discussion on their news story.  The committee asked me if they could have 15-20 minutes rather than 5-10, and I was happy to oblige if they genuinely felt they needed the time.  

Under the leadership of the current News Circle Committee, News Circles have become my favorite classroom routine.  Here are a few reasons why News Circles have been such a rich part of our Humanities class:

1. Student Leadership

The News Circle Committee has emerged as a respected leadership group this year, to the extent that all of them ran either for Student Council or Senior Council for next year, all citing News Circle Committee as relevant leadership experience, with most being elected in the end.  In addition to heavily changing the format of News Circles to introduce a discussion focus, the News Circle Committee members in both sections have worked to design a master schedule, assigning classmates to come prepared to share a news story and lead a discussion each day.  They have been dutiful in reminding their classmates when their assigned day is coming up, and in the rare event that a classmate has forgotten, they have been prepared to step in and present, themselves.  They have coached their classmates on how to effectively facilitate discussions, introducing a routine that I now use, myself, the Four-Corner Discussion (in which students must physically go to a designated corner of the room based on whether they Strongly Agree-Agree-Disagree-Strongly Disagree with a given statement or proposition).  In January, my committee in one of the Humanities sections even took a day to share other types of discussion formats they had researched, and talked the class briefly through how each could work.  And if all of that had not been enough, the committees in both of my Humanities sections have voluntarily kept News Circles going during our 45 minute GoogleMeet check-ins each day since we returned to online learning after Spring Break.  I have seen these students emerge as leaders in ways that would not have been quite as clear or dramatic were it not for News Circles.

2. Student Choice, Engagement, and Ownership

Obviously, this is a classroom routine designed by students, for students.  That alone increases buy-in.  But within the structure of News Circles, the committee has given their classmates a high degree of choice in what they bring to the table when they present and lead a discussion.  We have had stories on sports, on politics, on business, on entertainment, on fashion, on health, on human rights, on science and technology... students find what interests them, and it often shows in the way they tell their classmates about their news item.

3. Critical Reading and Media Literacy

This does not come up all of the time, but occasionally, the student leading will ask their classmates to read the article, or a pair of articles themselves to highlight contradictions or biases within the article. Sometimes, the discussions have ended up being less about the issue at hand in the article, and more about the way in which it was reported.

4. Presentation and Facilitation Skills

Although it is an informal, low-stakes routine, it provides every student with an additional opportunity to practice their presentation skills and become more comfortable speaking in front of their classmates beyond our more formal class speeches and presentation assignments.  Perhaps even more beneficial is the challenge of facilitating a discussion--figuring out how to rephrase questions if necessary, or break big questions down into smaller, more manageable parts.

5. Critical Thinking

Coming up with discussion questions themselves is a worthwhile activity.  Something the students started to do without prompting from me, but which I plan to make an expectation in future years was to ask bigger-picture essential questions that pick up on the implications of a specific news story.  In other words, most students are not asking simple or factual discussion questions based specifically on the story they shared, but rather larger, more foundational or philosophical questions raised by their news story.  For instance, today a student shared an article about how some anti-vaxxers have changed their minds about vaccines in light of the COVID outbreak.  Rather than asking questions about her article specifically, she instead posed the following questions to her classmates in a discussion that lasted about half an hour: 1) Should vaccinations be mandatory?; and 2) Is communal good more important than individual freedom?  I love it when my students are able to see the forest through the trees.  In fact, my fellow high school social studies colleagues and I have been reading a book on essential questions by Wiggins and McTighe (the same duo who wrote Understanding by Design), and although this book is designed to help teachers create better essential questions to drive their units in class, we realized that we can and should be teaching similar skills to our students, and encouraging them when they do ask good essential questions.

6. Debate Skills

So far, I haven't even mentioned the discussions themselves.  Because of the nature of the Four-Corners discussion, which has been by far the most popular discussion format this year, students cannot hide and must decide where they stand on an issue--literally.  Few statements this year have yielded unanimous results, and even in the rare cases where every student is on the agree side of the room, or on the disagree side of the room, there is disagreement about degree with some students standing in the "strongly" corner, and some not.  After students have gone to the corner that represents their stance on the issue, discussion and disagreement are inevitable.  Not every student speaks up, but everyone is a part of the back-and-forth by virtue of having taken a stand.  Students will question one another's faulty logic or point out a lack of evidence, or qualified sources as they rebut one another's positions, and it's not uncommon to see the "bystanders" in these discussions physically change their minds as they listen to the debate, walking to a different corner to show that a particular argument had convinced them. Sometimes, the different sides concede or compromise, and on several occasions, they have even recommended rewording or qualifying the statement/question at hand to reach common ground and agreement.  Sadly, this school-year will end without a formal debate in Humanities class, an unfortunate but necessary casualty of COVID-19 and the limitations of emergency online learning.  However, I believe that this class is in many ways more advanced in their debate skills than previous classes because they participate in debate informally each day through News Circles.

7. Awareness of Current Events

It's funny to me that this original purpose for News Circles was the very last thing that I thought of as I listed out the benefits for this blog-post.  This does not mean it's an after-thought, by any means.  The students are coming away with a broader and deeper awareness of what is happening around the world, why it's happening, what the implications are on a smaller more immediate scale, and a wider long-term scale, and what they, themselves, think about what is happening.  Inevitably, they are learning about history, sociology, psychology, politics, economics, culture, geography and so much more as they lead and participate in News Circles.  None of this is formal, and it's hard to quantify, but it's exciting!

Nobody would have wished to spend the final three months of the school-year doing emergency distance learning instead of regular schooling.  On my end, I have assigned the students work that they are to do independently, and the vast majority are keeping up with our end-of-year assignments.  Using our 45-minute Google Meets to lecture seems to me an ineffective use of both my time and my students' time, and initially I was skeptical of having set, required GoogleMeet times each day, but when it became clear to me that my News Circle committees were not only willing, but genuinely eager to use that time to continue News Circles, I knew that important learning would continue to happen in my classes.  This was not what I would have expected or chosen for my students, but in this difficult time, News Circles have given my students a way to show initiative and rise to meet such unique challenges.  I'm glad that I have this as a classroom routine, and grateful for a group of students who have shown me just how good News Circles can be.  I won't soon forget. 

Life and Learning in Disrupted Times

When Prime Minister Abe announced on the evening of Thursday, February 27 that all schools would be closing until April, he took a difficult decision out of our school's hands--the complexities and challenges of determining when to shut down campus due to the spread of COVID-19 were no longer ours--or our fellow international schools'--alone.  We may have been surprised at the timing of the directive, but our leadership team had prepped us for the possibility of a shift to online schooling as early as the beginning of February.  I do not believe any of us were caught off-guard.

The next day, our final day with the students on campus, we mobilized to give our students the proper instructions and preparation for the shift to online schooling.  Instead of giving the students one final day to finish up their essays from the previous unit, which I had been planning to do, I moved up our introduction to the next unit, which I had originally been planning to do the following Monday.  As luck would have it, I had decided to totally revamp the final stretch of my U.S. History/English-blended Humanities course in response to Teaching For Transformation training on February 10 and 11.  At the time, I wondered if I was crazy for dismantling the three units I had already planned, and which I had taught before, combining, revising and editing to create one entirely new large and untested unit.

In hindsight, I can only say that the timing was providential.  As I planned this new unit, online schooling was constantly in the back of my mind, and although I planned on the assumption that we would be on campus, in class, I also consciously developed plans that I knew I could adapt to an online platform easily if I needed to.

So, on Friday, February 28, the last time I saw my students in person, I had detailed plans ready to go for them. In addition to a broader unit overview--something that I share at the start of each new unit, outlining our standards, essential questions and summative assessments--I also shared a document titled "Online School Emergency Plan" which contained a checklist of the main tasks students needed to be working on, as well as a preview of the activities and materials that I wanted the students to stay tuned for on Google Classroom.

My Online School Emergency Plan (or at least part of it)

This mega-unit concludes a year-long study of justice, using U.S. History, literature, essays, and speeches as case-studies, and will (hopefully) culminate with a student-organized relief trip to Tateyama in the Chiba prefecture at the end of May, to assist in ongoing clean-up following the devastating typhoons from this past fall.  The students have been planning this relief trip since November, and part of my reason for so drastically adjusting my plans was so that I could adopt this service project into my curriculum, affording students with an authentic and intentional way to apply the principles we have been studying in class.

I realized that introducing all of this online would not be terribly effective, so took time on that final regular class-day to explain my thinking on this to the students, and get them started in reflecting on what good charity does and does not look like with a four-corners discussion (in which students stand in a corner of the room corresponding to Strongly Agree-Agree-Disagree-Strongly Disagree) on the old proverb "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

When the bell rang at the end of class, I felt confident that we were ready to go online; that we had successfully laid the groundwork for the weeks to come.

For any of my teacher friends at schools in the States who are now facing, or are likely to face, a shift to online schooling, here is what I have done for the past couple of weeks, for what it is worth:

I have posted a Weekly Check-in Video every Monday in which I recap what we have been studying, look ahead to the plans for the coming week day-by-day, remind the students of upcoming deadlines, and simply check in, asking for questions or feedback.

Me rolling into frame to start my weekly check-in video

I also informed the students that I would post three short rhetorical fallacy videos each day (the final portion of our study of rhetoric for the school-year), each one defining a rhetorical fallacy, providing an example, and explaining what makes the example a fallacy.  This took a lot of time to put together, and I spent four-five hours in total over the course of that first week planning, recording, then editing 23 videos that all ended up being about two minutes apiece.  For my examples of the fallacies, I had some fun using my daughter's Anpanman, Thomas, Mickey Mouse, and Shimajiro toys.  I posted three new videos each day, asking the students to keep up with the fallacies in their notes, and also asking them to comment on the post on Google Classroom with a "got it"; "thanks"; or a specific response/question based on the videos, simply to confirm to me that they had at least seen the post.  Through these comments, I learned that many students really enjoyed and looked forward to the fallacy videos each day, and that some were even invested in the ongoing storyline and relationship drama between several of the Anpanman and Thomas characters in my examples.  I actually planned my final sets of fallacy videos accordingly to give those characters a clearer arc.  Also, from the comments, it soon became clear to me who was tracking with me--even on a superficial level--and who to watch more closely.

The owl-teacher (a fan favorite), about to launch into a lengthy slippery slope fallacy about the consequences of playing video games in the middle of class.

Why did I choose to go through the fallacies using daily videos?  I felt like it was important, especially getting started, to provide students with a daily routine--something short but consistent that they could plan to do for Humanities.

I also assigned to them several longer-term tasks:

Of course, they had been working on a unit essay when we were still in school, and while this had been due on Friday, Feb. 28, originally, I gave the students a few extra days to finish in light of the general chaos of that Friday.  This was the first major due-date of online schooling, and I realized that not being physically present at school freed me up to give several pointed reminders about the due-date during the day on Google Classroom--something I would not ordinarily have had the time to do.  In the end, only one student submitted his assignment late (by 12 minutes), and he proactively contacted our principal, in accordance with our late-work policy, to explain that he'd gotten caught up playing the piano and lost track of the time.  As this was a teacher's draft, one of my ongoing projects (and more time-consuming tasks) these weeks has been to read and provide feedback on the essays.  I am still in the process of reading and commenting on these essays, though I hope to have them finished by late next week.

I also assigned the students to read a chapter from one of our core texts, Healing for a Broken World, by Steve Monsma, regarding the Christian call to solidarity, and the problems with an overly individualistic approach to poverty and suffering on the one hand, and a paternalistic approach on the other hand.  We discussed this chapter in an online video conference using GoogleMeet on the Thursday of that first week, with most students in attendance.  Students who were not comfortable speaking up in the video conference were able to type and post their responses or questions on Google Classroom.

In the next long-term assignment, I asked the students to apply what they had learned about individualism and paternalism as they researched Native American History using a large selection of resources that I had culled for them, ultimately evaluating the federal government's Indian policy over the course of time.  As there were three separate questions to which I wanted students to respond, I broke this assignment down into two checkpoints and the final due-date, with the first checkpoint on Tuesday, March 10, the second checkpoint being on Thursday, March 12, and the whole assignment being due on Friday, March 13.  Yet again, not being in school freed me up to take 20-30 minutes from 4:30 pm on the checkpoint days to quickly click through the students' documents on Google Classroom to see who was on track and who was not, providing brief feedback in their online grades.  I was impressed that most students responded to this timely feedback and their responses for the second checkpoint seemed much more cohesive and complete.

In addition to all of this, my student-led News Circle committees have planned activities to keep their classmates plugged into current events, with the committee in one class asking their classmates to look at both sides of several issues of their choice on debate.org and fill out a short document summarizing what they found, and the committee in the other class holding Google Meet discussions each Friday, discussing the North Korean Missile Launch the first week, the Australian bushfires this past week, and media coverage of COVID-19 this coming week.  In this, I have been thoroughly impressed with the leadership and initiative of my students on the News Circle committees, who volunteered to do this job at the start of the year, and who have consistently gone above and beyond to facilitate awareness and discussion of current events with their classmates, even in the midst of a disrupted online schooling schedule.

Coming up: 
Having finished the rhetorical fallacy videos, students must now go on a scavenger hunt for five fallacies of their choice, finding an example of that fallacy in the news, in political debates, or in movies or TV shows, then explaining how their example shows that particular fallacy.  This scavenger hunt will be due next Friday, before Spring Break.

The students are also reading a selection of Native American poetry, and will write their own poem in response to Diane Burns' "Sure, You Can Ask Me a Personal Question", responding to the assumptions and stereotypes others may have about each of us based on our culture, appearance, gender, hobbies, etc. We will share our poems in a GoogleMeet poetry read on Tuesday.

Finally, the students will have an opportunity to hear from my brother about his two years teaching on the Pine Ridge reservation, and his insights about Indian policy as he finishes law school, in a GoogleMeet question-and-answer session on Thursday.

Online schooling is not without its bumps, of course, and I do have a few students who seem to be struggling mightily in the absence of the structure and accountability that a school-day offers.  Importantly, it has become clear quickly who is struggling or falling behind.  The challenge moving forward is to find ways to encourage, support, and hold these students accountable virtually.

By contrast, I have also had a few students tell me that they prefer online schooling to regular school and that they have thrived at budgeting their own time, accomplishing much more than they ordinarily would.

I think in either case, online schooling is holding up a mirror to the students, that would not have otherwise been held up, revealing something to them about their own strengths and weaknesses as both learners and workers.  I know that I definitely would have struggled with the lack of structure when I was in high school, and also that I definitely would not have been able to recognize that for myself at the time.

We are soon to start our third week of online schooling, and while I admit that I am tired and that I miss the regular school routine, it has been reassuring to know that life and learning can go on even in a disrupted and disruptive time such as this.