The Dock School Leader Podcast

Sustaining Vision Across the Generations (Edwin Eby and Mark Miller)

One generation starts it, the next enjoys it, the third loses it. There’s some truth to this. We’re over three generations into the Christian school movement in North America. Of course, at the level of individual communities this is very uneven. Maybe you’ve just started a school. Regardless of where you are, it’s important that you ask yourself: am I content with a 3 generation Christian school movement? If not, you have some challenging work cut out for you to bridge whatever generation you’re in, to the one following you and the one before you.
This episode has 2 parts: perspective of an older man and the response of a younger man on what it takes to continue a vision for education across generations. How can an older leader effectively hand over his responsibility and a younger leader take it up?
Edwin Eby has served on the CASBI committee and also speaks as a pastor. Mark Miller has experience in the school board and administration at Legacy Christian School in Ohio.
Speaking for the older generation, Edwin emphasizes that each generation must in some sense start over. And while an older person can’t just package his values and vision in a neat bundle and give it to a younger person, he believes that one generation can purchase the values of another through their own labor and investment. This transfer of ownership is vital to the continuity of a vision and leadership. To say this another way, we can’t repeat another’s experience or just assume their sense of responsibility; each man must hold his own baby before he knows the meaning of being a father.
Edwin outlines a process for older men to walk ahead, walk beside, then walk behind leaders in training. For younger men it’s reversed. They first walk behind, then walk beside, and finally walk ahead, taking the lead into the future.
Mark responds by recognizing that owning responsibility and vision as a younger person requires overcoming selfishness and gaining a perspective larger than your own. Become a student of history, both of your organization and the wider history of the world, says Mark. Without this you run a high risk of leading in the wrong direction. In addition to understanding the history of your organization, you need to understand the people you’re leading. You need to know their culture. Once again, this calls for attentiveness and patient learning in a young leader. Mark highlights servant leadership as key to both the effective transfer of leadership and to the fruitfulness of any leader. In addition, there are numerous issues that Mark sees as important for school leaders to tackle including working with homeschooling families, business as mission, and excellence in academics.
 
Links
This talk was first published as “I Must Decrease; You Must Increase”: https://www.thedockforlearning.org/content/i-must-decrease-you-must-increase
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Special Q & R Feature: Healthy Families (Gerald Miller)

In the last episode, we heard from Gerald Miller about the central role of the family. For this special question and response feature, I sat down with Gerald Miller, administrator at FBCS for a related conversation about the role school leaders have in growing healthy families in their communities. We talked about the current parenting scene, tried to paint a picture of what could be, and thought about the opportunity at hand.
We’re delving into this topic because it’s vitally important and often complicated. Messy, as we often say. How do teachers and school leaders avoid trespassing onto the territory of the parents? What do we do with all the knowledge we gain about families and parents? What do we do with problems in the home? How do we hear and respond to the concerns, frustrations, and aims of parents? In short, how can you as a school leader work to care for the families in your community? What is your role in growing healthy homes?
 
Links
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School at the Heart of the Church (Gerald Miller)

What if we understood school as part of the heart of the church rather than a useful arm? Would this change the way we did school? What if we saw teachers as working in close collaboration with the ordained leaders of a church, as extensions of that ministry?
The New Testament points to the church established by Christ as the essential basis of the kingdom of God. In this episode, Gerald Miller says, “The church is where the kingdom of God finds its expression. And the local body of believers is the heart of the kingdom.” What does this mean for the school?
Gerald, a long-time teacher and school leader sees the school as a servant of the church. There’s at least two things to emphasize here, the work of education is essential, more like a heart than a hand. Secondly, the work of education is a corporate responsibility and never the exclusive domain of the school. Gerald describes the role of the individuals in a school as raising up young people that love God with everything and serve others and as transmitting the values of the church. In sum, this is a vision of educators working closely alongside of the church.
That’s the first half.
In the second half, Gerald offers basic practical outlines for roles that must work at pulling together if the church and school will be effective partners. He gives valuable advice for each one. Those roles are church leaders, board members, parents, teachers
A key idea you’ll hear in this talk is the critical importance of communication and of investment in people.
 
Links
This talk was first published as “It Takes a Community to Educate a Child” https://www.thedockforlearning.org/content/it-takes-a-community-to-educate-a-child
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Becoming a Storytelling Teacher (Steven Brubaker)

Description
Drop us a question for the special, upcoming Q & R episode with Gerald Miller.
What does it take to cultivate love in our students? As teachers, we don’t just want to transfer important information to our students. We want to change their lives. We want them to love God with their heart, soul, mind, and strength. In Steven’s words, “Stories are one of the most powerful tools available to us as teachers for shaping loves.”
If you want to shape your students’ loves, carefully choose your stories. Steven Brubaker is the administrator of Faith Builders Educational Programs. He began his work in education as a principal and teacher in a grade school. In this talk, Steven implies that, in fact, there’s no avoiding the reality that you will shape the loves of your students by the story of your life and the stories that leak out of you or that you reference or approve. As you evaluate the loves of your students ask yourself how you’ve contributed to those loves, good and bad, by the stories that you’ve given to them. You are in a position to bend the desires of your students. Stories wield powerful influence in shaping and nurturing the hearts of your students.
Steven addresses numerous practical questions related to infusing your teaching with stories.
How do you use stories across the disciplines
How can you become a collector of stories?
Where do you find stories?
How do you use the stories that you’ve collected?
 
Included in Steven’s advice are systems for recording, organizing, and retrieving stories and tips for collecting stories through book sales, your personal experience, your reading, and our history.
 
Book titles referenced in the talk:
The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal
The Rest of the Story by Paul Harvey, Jr.
Let Me Tell You a Story, by Tony Campolo
Two Brothers One Mission by Mary Fretz
Chariots in the Smoke by Margaret Epp
Coals of Fire by Elizabeth Bauman
They Loved Their Enemies by Marian Hostetler
Annie Funk by Sharon Yoder
Small Man of Nanataki by Liam Nolan
Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour, David Hazard
The Brigade by Howard Blum
The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
Dragon’s Gate by Laurence Yep
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Les Miserable by Victor Hugo
God Spoke Tibetan by Allan Maberly
Twenty and Ten by Claire Huchet Bishop, Janet Joly
Henry’s Freedom Box by Ellen Levine
Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Coles
Faith the Cow by Susan Bame Hoover
 
Links
This talk was first published as “Practices That Nurture God Love” https://thedockforlearning.org/lecture/practices-that-nurture-god-love-steven-brubaker/
Other recordings from Teacher’s Week 2013: https://www.thedockforlearning.org/series/teachers'-week-2013
Questions for the Q & R episode:https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/KQnYsYgPAq
Contact us: https://thedockforlearning.org/contact-us/
3-minute feedback: https://forms.office.com/r/1G564EGQkn
library.upenn.edu
CAM Books
Christian Learning Resource
Christian Light

[Updated Audio] Effective Student Discipline (Glendon Strickler)

Drop us a question for the special, upcoming Q & R episode with Gerald Miller.
As principals and administrators, it’s your responsibility to guide your teachers in effectively disciplining students and to get involved in handling the toughest cases. Many of you also teach and are on the first line of discipline yourselves. In this episode with Glendon Strickler, you will hear an overview of how to discipline students that will enable you to better equip your teachers as well as grow in your own approach to discipline.
Glendon’s ideas have been formed through his experience of some very challenging teaching assignments and through his experience as a principal. He backs up his points with numerous stories from those experiences. Throughout the talk you’ll hear him unpack lessons he’s learned such as: effective discipline takes time, why students misbehave, approaching discipline through a student’s perspective, building a strong defense, and more.
There are three main sections in the talk.
Basic discipline techniques (6:25)
The steps in a discipline session (28:00)
Techniques to avoid (41:15)
 
Links
This talk was first published as “Modeling and Teaching the Anabaptist Christian Faith in a Practical Way Through Discipline” on The Dock: https://www.thedockforlearning.org/content/modeling-and-teaching-the-anabaptist-christian-faith-in-a-practical-way-through-discipline
Other recordings from Teacher’s Week 2010: https://www.thedockforlearning.org/series/faith-builders-teacher's-week-2010
Questions for the Q & R episode: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/KQnYsYgPAq
Contact us: https://thedockforlearning.org/contact-us/
3-minute feedback: https://forms.office.com/r/1G564EGQkn

Great Opportunities (Stephen Gingerich)

Drop us a question for the special, upcoming Q & R episode with Gerald Miller.
Sometimes problems come to us disguised as great opportunities. This episode with Stephen Gingerich addresses the challenge of working with high needs students. We’re not exploring specific learning disabilities here. That is sometimes part of the picture and deserves attention. This is more general and establishes a baseline for how we engage a high needs student.
Drawing on his years of experience in education, much of it gained through his work in Guatemala, Stephen develops his approach around the three great virtues: faith, hope, and love. He reminds us that our goal is to prepare children for life. And for that they need well-formed skills but they need well-formed character more. And this character they absorb from their role models. This means they will take a part of us with them through their life.
Stephen’s talk is generously sprinkled with stories of what relating to needy students looks like.
 
Links
This episode was first published as "Working with High Needs Students" on The Dock: https://www.thedockforlearning.org/content/working-with-high-needs-students-(stephan-gingerich) 
Questions for the Q & R episode: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/KQnYsYgPAq
Contact us: https://thedockforlearning.org/contact-us/
3-minute feedback: https://forms.office.com/r/1G564EGQkn
[book] The Five Love Languages: https://a.co/d/03ROxKG0

How to Build Rapport and Why It Matters (Glendon Strickler)

Drop us a question for our special, upcoming Q & R
 
We have different strengths and emphases as educators but probably none of us would deny the critical importance of having strong relationships with our students. Glendon Strickler brings a wealth of experience to this topic and conveys the mindset, some of the methods, and a illuminating stories of how he approaches student relationships. Glendon has taught and administrated at several schools including Ephrata Mennonite School and Faith Builders Christian School.
A key word here is rapport. Building a positive rapport is one of the most important things a teacher can do. Glendon argues that it looks like putting excellence and competence over likableness, leveraging the fact that students unconsciously imitate people that they like, ensure safety for all students, and patiently angling for loving influence. How do you earn rapport? Breaking the ice, wielding the rubber sword of humor, opening the door to connecting with students—hear Glendon reflect on how these and more have enabled powerful relationships with students.
Glendon also works to develop our understanding our generation of students by considering the impact of individualism, the generation of “me,” the priority of feelings over truth. He reminds us that: “Rules without relationship leads to rebellion.” But Glendon argues that in this climate Jesus doesn’t need to be modernized. Instead, what modern people need is spiritual mentors that bring Jesus to life. Living, breathing examples that put flesh on cold concepts and life into ideas.
There’s no replacement for experience, making a bunch of mistakes, and humbly learning from them. Next time you bump into a teacher you admire, ask them how they connect with student or how they wield humor in their teaching. Bring this up with your staff. Talk about mistakes you’ve made. Think together about how to build rapport. Keep listening for a bit of bonus content on a few more tools in Glendon’s toolbox.
 
Links
Contact us: https://thedockforlearning.org/contact-us/
3-minute feedback: https://forms.office.com/r/1G564EGQkn
[book] The Last Christian Generation by Josh McDowell: https://a.co/d/bdYEiZe
[book] Already Gone by Ken Ham and Britt Beemer with Todd Hillard: https://a.co/d/2BDJwgs
Airzooka: https://www.flinnsci.com/airzooka/ap6657/#variantDetails

What Are You Showing Them? (Stephen Gingerich)

You can say it in different ways, but a Christian school isn’t worth the time and effort it takes unless it’s helping form disciples of Jesus. That doesn’t mean you’re practicing child evangelism or replacing the essential work of the church. It does mean that we are partnering with our churches and families and that we as school leaders and teachers are fully devoted to following Jesus ourselves. Like Stephen says, we should think of ourselves as wearing signs that say, “Follow me.” This is a call to evaluate and refocus our personal vision and witness in our relationships around schools that most definitely shape our teaching and our students.
 
Stephan Gingerich has been on this show before and brings a range of experience in teaching and school leadership, some of which he gained while growing up and teaching in Central America. He brings refreshing perspective and challenges us in this talk to be concerned with what’s beyond our school fences.
 
Stephen invites us to ponder with him.
Great opportunities are often disguised as problems.
Perhaps we witness the most when we don’t know that people are watching us.
How can our schools bring light to the world?
What does the Sermon on the Mount have to say about Christ-like community relations?
What are practical ways you can connect with your community?
 
Links
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Is Your School Swimming or Floating? (Steven Brubaker)

“Genuinely Christian schools will not always fit what everyone else is doing in education. We need to give ourselves permission to go against the flow.” But it’s not sufficient to seek difficulty and resistance. We need a goal. A mission. A burning love. A beautiful vision. As Steven emphasizes in today’s episode, “Nonconformity is not enough. We need something to be conformed to. And for us, that something is a Someone.”
 
Educational orthodoxy. What is it and how does it impact us? You’ll hear about this in today’s episode, but basically, it’s the body of assumptions and principles that unify the majority of educational efforts around us. This orthodoxy shapes the way we describe a well-trained person and the educational experiences we dream of offering. Steven Brubaker, speaking from a long history in teaching and school leadership submits that the educational orthodoxy in north America is inadequate as a source of guidance for our schools and maybe even dangerously misguided.
But we will need a solid basis for doing something different, for swimming against the current. “Every nonconformity is a conformity to something,” Steven reminds us. Every resistance is a defense of something. What’s worth defending? Worth conforming to?
Drawing penetrating insights from the analogy of salmon, Steven lays out a challenge for Christian schools to identify and relentlessly pursue a worthy homing instinct.
 
What is a compelling and worthy final end for Christian education? The end beyond which we stop looking for some further fulfillment?
Schools conformed to Jesus. How could you and your staff make a practice of asking and seeking, “Jesus, how do I teach in my school?” And what would your school look like if you then boldly followed his leadership?
 
 
Links
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Stories with Jonas and Ken (Jonas Sauder and Ken Kauffman)

It’s Christmas season and here on the Dock School Leader Podcast we’re running a special episode featuring a collection of stories chosen and read by two experienced educators that have appeared before on this show—Jonas Sauder and Ken Kauffman. Their selections range from fables to short stories to poems and all convey a timeless truth through the penetrating power of story. Take a break from the heavier content and enjoy these selections with us.
What we read often sticks with us at a subconscious level. Stories have the power to embed their message deep within us. They shape our worldview and affect our actions even after we’ve forgotten the details.
See below for the titles of the selections and the timestamps for each one.
Perhaps you’ll find something here for an upcoming devotional or a story time with family over the holidays.
[2:30] Wellspring of Wisdom – read by Jonas Sauder
The free lunch
The magic sticks
Practical sympathy
Community
 
[7:45] The King and the Seeds – read by Ken Kauffman
[16:30] George Washington Carver – read by Jonas Sauder
Selection from a biography
Testimony in Congress
 
[25:00] Dear Mrs. O’Neil – read by Ken Kauffman
[34:20] The Blind Man and the Elephant – read by Jonas Sauder
[37:30] The Church Walking With the World – read by Ken Kauffman
 
Links
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3-minute feedback: https://forms.office.com/r/1G564EGQkn