If you are a teacher at home with your children, teaching in a state or Christian school this is an important question to ask.  Teaching Christianly – what does it look like?

John Van Dyke is an incredible inspiration to Christian education in the home and school , and one who has considered this question deeply.

Below is an overview of a part of one of his journal entries, the full entry can be read at ICCTE Journal, “Teaching our Education Students to Teach Christianly, John Van Dyke, http://icctejournal.org/issues/v8i1/v8i1-dyke/. There is certainly some thought provoking ideas here.

Here is a brief description of what he outlines.

What does it mean to teach ? There can be no doubt that the calling of teacher education in Christian post-secondary institutions is to prepare students to teach Christianly, whether in public or Christian schools. But how do we do this? I shall address this question by considering four themes:

1. current conceptions of what it means to teach Christianly,
2. an alternative model,
3. the context of teaching Christianly, and
4. some implications for our teacher education programs.

1.  Current conceptions of what it means to teach Christianly

Some time ago the Dordt College Center for Educational Services conducted a survey of some 200 teachers in Christian schools in Iowa and surrounding areas. One question asked was, “What, in your opinion, does it mean to teach Christianly?” The responses were surprisingly, even disturbingly diverse. Interestingly, what was central to one teacher seemed peripheral to another. No uniformity could be detected.

It was especially worrisome to note that some of the teachers—among them some who graduated from Christian teacher education programs—bluntly admitted they had no idea of what teaching Christianly really means. “I know it’s an important issue,” they acknowledged, “but, frankly, I am so busy teaching, I have no time to think about it.” Yet there are at least six commonly held even if implicit conceptions of teaching Christianly, each of which I describe below.

• Conception #1. A teacher who is a sincere, Bible-believing Christian will automatically teach Christianly. 
• Conception #2. Teaching Christianly is essentially the modelling of Christian love, virtue, and morality.
• Conception #3. Teaching Christianly consists of devotional exercises such as prayer, Bible reading, and the singing of appropriate hymns (along with the study of Bible as a curricular subject), to be added to a standard, more or less objective curriculum and teaching practice).
• Conception #4. Teaching Christianly means to imprint truth on impressionable minds.
• Conception #5. Teaching Christianly means to imitate the way Jesus taught. 
• Conception #6. The essential of teaching Christianly is to impart a Christian perspective on subject matter. 

What shall we say about these six conceptions? Are they misconceptions? Are they wrong? I would be very hesitant to make such a judgment. After all, we all see through a glass darkly. So, I see these views of teaching Christianly as incomplete. They are reductionistic: they recognize an important dimension of teaching Christianly, but overlook others. Needed, it seems to me, is a more holistic view of teaching, one that takes all the aspects mentioned into account and integrates them into a totality view. To such a totality view of teaching, I now turn.

To read the full article, please read by clicking the following link.   http://icctejournal.org/issues/v8i1/v8i1-dyke/.