A word to Christian teachers

Posted by Admin on Aug 23, 2013 in Schools | Comments Off on A word to Christian teachers

To the Christian teacher: You are in the middle of a war zone. You may have a great group of students this year, but the enemy would love nothing more than to undermine your effectiveness as an educator and godly role model and disrupt your students’ learning and positive growth. I want to share with you some strategies that I used during my 32-year career to deal with the devil’s schemes, both in Christian and public schools. (Notice the emphasis for #s 1-4 is on prayer!)

1. Pray in your classroom before the year begins. First Timothy 2:1 declares, “First of all…PRAY.” For many of you, the school year has already started, but it’s not too late to pray over your year. Take the time to walk around your classroom and pray concerning your students, their parents, and all of your interactions with them this year. Pray over each desk or table in your room. They represent the students who will be sitting there. I always brought oil and placed it inconspicuously on or under each desk—including my own—as I prayed for the school year.
2. Pray outside your building before the school year, on a Saturday, or after school hours—and walk the entire campus and pray for the classes and administrators. If you have a like-minded colleague on staff, have them join you, or perhaps you have a prayer partner outside of school who would be glad to participate.
3. Arrive early enough every morning to pray over the desks in your room representing each student and family. Let the Holy Spirit lead you as you pray for each one.
4. Before or after hours, as the opportunity arises, pray inside the building over each classroom and area. I stayed late at school often on Friday nights to plan for the next week, prepare materials, and grade papers (frequently leaving the building as the custodians locked up at 10:30 or 11 PM!) and used that “unpopulated” time periodically to pray through the halls, especially when the school-day atmosphere was tense or chaotic. It bore the fruit of peace for my building. In fact, after I retired, a reading specialist in the building asked, “Did you used to put your hands on the walls and pray when you stayed late here?” I responded, “Guilty.” To my surprise, she replied, “Well, I sure wish someone would start doing it again! We need it!”
5. Treat your students the way you would want someone else to treat your child. Be firm and keep your expectations high, but also be respectful and honest with your students. If you mess up, apologize with sincerity and then keep on teaching.
6. Ask the Lord to give you honest strategies to streamline all the paperwork that threatens to  bury you, but resist any temptation to cut corners in a dishonest way. God will give you wisdom so that you can effectively manage it all with integrity.
7. Watch out for the malicious gossip-fests that play out with many staff members or parents. You are an “epistle read of men” (see 2 Corinthians 3:2) and your words are powerful, and as James 3:10 says, “From the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be this way.”
8. When you are supposed to be teaching, teach! I was amazed during my career that some people, hired to teach, felt comfortable with habitually giving quick instructions, and then, sitting back, just worked on paperwork (and more recently, surfed the net or played with their iPhones) the rest of the time. Don’t let this describe your work ethic! If you have minimal interaction with students, if you provide negligible monitoring of their work, then behavior incidents will escalate. As a result, your students will develop (or master!) an attitude of who cares?. Morale and achievement will deteriorate. But if you want your students to care, act like you care and over time, they will be positively affected by your close involvement. Simply walking the class while you teach or as the students work is an extremely effective tool. And give eye-contact to every kid as you teach. Nothing says I’m afraid of you or I couldn’t care less about you as blatantly as avoiding eye-contact! Yes, you can sit and do paperwork every now and then; just keep interaction with students your top priority. As for surfing the net or using your iPhone—do it on your own time.
9. I’ve had several dream classes; I’ve had the proverbial “class from hell” more than a time or two; and I’ve had every type of class in between. And each year, even with the best of groups, I’ve had the opportunity to get stressed, angry, worried, or wonder what on earth am I doing in the education field?. So will you. And the best strategy at times like that is to cast your cares on the Lord. Even though you’re in charge of a large number of students, He is in charge of you and He cares for you, as the Amplified Bible says, affectionately and watchfully (see 1 Peter 5:7).
10. How do you cast your care on the Lord? Here are some strategies:

• Tell God you are casting your cares on Him and then physically pantomime throwing your burden on Him. Do this as often as necessary.
• Take a quiet praise break during your restroom break.
• Sing and worship God during drive time.
• Recount the good things on your job and in your life and thank God for them.
• On particularly bad days, smile all the way home from school (see blog entry on July 23, 2013).
• Find a Christian on staff and pray about pressing concerns. If there are no believers at work, pray with a trusted friend, being cautious to keep confidential information to yourself.
• If you stay late to get a lot of work done, take a quick brain-break. Walk around the track or go off-campus to get coffee or tea or whatever. Smell the roses (or coffee or fresh air) before you dive back into work.

As simple as these strategies are, they are very powerful. As you implement them in your own way, God will use you to teach and reach the next generation with effectiveness and grace. If you would like me to pray for you as a fellow Christian educator, find my contact form on this website and let me know. It would be an honor to pray for you.

May He use your teaching to His glory this year!

Dorothy

Prayer and a custodian

Posted by Admin on Aug 22, 2013 in Schools | Comments Off on Prayer and a custodian

How do you know if you’re supposed to pray for a school or for the entire educational system itself? A rule of thumb I go by is to pray about whatever grabs my attention or interest or arouses my anger. John Osteen, the father of Joel Osteen, wrote a book called The Divine Flow, in which he taught believers to recognize the flow of tender compassion within them for someone and then to follow that compassion with prayer and/or action.

If you see kids walking to school and sense a tug of compassion, pray for them. As you pass a school, if it catches your attention, pray for the students and staff there. If you feel outraged at some of the news stories you hear or read concerning the educational system today, then pray. Let your life become one of standing in the gap before God on behalf of others. It’s really simpler than we have made it out to be—you don’t have to pray for hours and hours; just pray when your attention is drawn toward the subject, whether your feelings are positive or negative about the issue. As you do this, you will develop greater sensitivity to the leading of the Holy Spirit, and you will increase in your capacity to pray. And fruit will start growing.

If you pray for a school, lives there will be touched by God, whether you see it or not. You may be surprised in eternity at all the interconnected movings and miracles of God on behalf of the souls for whom you prayed and the impact their lives made on others.

Don’t discount a single life for whom you pray; God wants to pull that person out of their sin and use them to His glory.

An old Pentecostal woman prayed without ceasing for her step-daughter Pat who worked as a custodian in my school district. Pat had been running from God and was living a life of full-throttle sin. She started cleaning in my building when she was near the end of her rope. Every time I worked late, we would talk as she swept, dusted, and vacuumed the room, and I could tell she was hungry for God. I shared the Word with her; she told me about her step-mom and how she knew she was praying for her. It wasn’t long until Pat received Jesus as her Lord, and the lifestyle changes happened immediately. Gone were the ungodly romantic interests, gone was the alcohol, and tobacco left a little bit later. Pat was an astonishingly authentic new creation, and the staff, who liked her to start with, were drawn to her all the more.

She confided in me after she was saved that she was desperate to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. Her step-mom had told her she needed the Holy Ghost to live a life of power. With her step-mom on the family end and me on the school end, we talked and prayed and shared with her all that we knew. Still nothing. I told her to relax; enjoy God, worship and praise Him as she went about her way, and she would be filled with the Holy Spirit when she least expected it, sweetly and completely, with biblical evidence.

Not too long after that, one night as Pat was alone, cleaning my classroom, she began speaking in other tongues. She was filled with the Holy Spirit and has remained filled ever since. And in my opinion, Pat became one of the boldest witnesses of Jesus that school has ever seen. The lives of teachers, secretaries, cooks, administrators, parents, and other custodians that have been touched by this one woman is an amazing thing.

So pray. Pray however you are led, because God will touch lives through your prayers in unexpected, interconnected ways. And if you pray for schools, don’t limit God—those prayers just might be the fuel God uses to pull a key individual out of darkness and to use him or her to further His work in this hour.

Keep on praying!

Dorothy

The impact of godly parents on public education

Posted by Admin on Aug 21, 2013 in Schools | Comments Off on The impact of godly parents on public education

Parents: You can have a huge impact on your child’s education, his or her peers, and the adults working with your child. Below are the stories of four moms I met in my career as an educator who powerfully impacted their children’s teachers, their classmates, and the parents of their children’s friends.

Mrs. I. and Mrs. S. These two women both had sons in my class, one year apart from the other. They decided the year Mrs. I’s son was in my room to start praying for the school and their sons’ classes and teachers on a weekly basis. They didn’t tell me about it until much later.

Things flowed so smoothly those two years; the fourth graders were almost angelically cooperative; they loved coming to school and learning, and the ease with which I was able to witness about my faith in Christ was astounding. I read several books aloud to both classes from the Chronicles of Narnia series, and one boy who had never been to church told me he had asked Jesus into his heart one night after I finished reading the last book in the series. (This book revealed that the beloved lion Aslan was Jesus in our world, and the class was amazed and insisted on talking about it at length.) I attribute the success of those two years to these praying moms.

Mrs. C. At another school where I taught, one of the moms who left a lasting impression on the entire staff was Mrs. C., a Pentecostal lady who always wore a dress, never wore make-up, and had long uncut hair. This woman poured love into her children’s teachers. She often wrote encouraging notes to us, made sure we had cake or some other type of goody frequently in the staff lounge, and let us know that she was praying for whatever needs we might have. My public school colleagues always looked forward to a visit from Mrs. C.; her kind, thoughtful ways disarmed the gruffest, most skeptical ones among them. One of my fond memories at that school was conference time with Mrs. C. She always set up her conference appointments at noon on conference day so she could bring lunch to whoever was her child’s teacher that year.  When I taught her son Matt, she brought a feast for me to enjoy during the autumn and the spring conferences—lots of homemade soup, rolls, salad, and one of her mouth-watering desserts. Her kindness and servant’s heart touched everyone’s lives, Christian and non-Christian alike.

Mrs. H.  I never had the privilege of having any of Mrs. H’s three sons in my class, but her godly ways were well known among the staff and parents of the other children. She subbed in our building from time to time, and because she subbed for me, as well, I got to know her a little better. One of the boys in her oldest son’s class, Thomas, had developed a life-threatening infection and was getting worse quickly. Mrs. H. organized the parents and others to pray round the clock for Thomas, and whenever his parents received more bad news, Mrs. H. was there to encourage them and pray for them. She fought the good fight of faith for Thomas and never wavered. Against all odds, Thomas pulled through and is now a healthy young man, full of life and ambition. His parents attributed Thomas’ recovery to the power of God working through the faithful prayers of Mrs. H.

Mrs. H, full of the love and grace of God, died suddenly in a car accident a summer or two after Thomas was restored to health, along with her two youngest sons and her teen-aged brother and sister, on their way to a day at Six Flags. The outpouring of love and tribute for the four young people and the godly mother still touches my heart today whenever I think about it. The lives of the parents and kids Mrs. H. touched stand as a testimony to her authentic witness and abiding faith in her Lord, Jesus Christ. Though she is dead, her life still speaks. She left behind an imperishable legacy.

Parents, you have so much more impact riding upon your words and your life than you can imagine. Don’t be afraid of being yourself—a godly mom, a faith-filled dad—in the midst of what may be the less than desirable environment your child attends daily. You do make a difference—even in public schools—and armed with prayer, wisdom, and love, don’t be afraid to let your light shine on the teachers, children, teens, and other parents in your child’s life.

Dorothy

Channel your passion

Posted by Admin on Aug 20, 2013 in Schools | Comments Off on Channel your passion

I have read and heard many reports about the educational system in the U.S. Let’s face it. We all know that our school systems are, to a great extent, sadly lacking; we know that they have been hijacked in great part by those who care more for their pet political agendas than for your child’s ability to read with comprehension and enjoyment or his capacity to calculate math with proficiency and ease.

However, as I read these articles, the comments that follow are becoming more and more insulting, accusatory, and malicious—and many of them are from conservatives and even those who identify themselves as Christians. The outrage against the educational systems in our nation is escalating.

A huge divide has been forming within our nation—a divide of ideology and morality and vision. Unfortunately, Satan has put our children in the crosshairs of it all, and they go about their childlike and youthful pursuits, oblivious to the warfare raging around them.

And like I said, we know that our educational system is sadly lacking and has been increasingly guilty of undermining traditional values. But the animosity that you feel in response to what appears to be the purposeful destabilization of academics and culture must be channeled in the right direction in order to accomplish any meaningful reform.

You need to know what your child is being taught. You need to make yourself known and available to his or her teacher and administrator. You need to talk to your teen about our nation, our culture, our history, and right and wrong. You need to work daily on fine tuning their moral compass—and your own.

And you need to pray. Every single day. Pray for his teachers. Pray for her peers. Pray in the Spirit. Pray the Word and let the living God move through you on behalf of the schools in your area and the nation.

The Lord understands your frustration with the agenda of darkness that your children and teens are exposed to daily; He understands the intensity of the outrage you may feel. But you must pray. You must pray with as much passion in the Spirit as the passion you feel boiling up in your disgust with this system—or with specific people in the system—who appear to twist truth and teach lies.

Take every bit of your concern and angst to the Lord in prayer daily on behalf of the schools and your children. Pray for all those involved on the school scene and pray for all you are worth.

God will hear your prayers and use them to create questions that only He can answer in the hearts and minds of children, teens, and adults. He will use your prayers to protect your children, their friends, and their schools. He will take the substance of your prayers and use it to transport laborers to a reckless teen, conviction to a hardened teacher, or the revelation of truth to an administrator wrapped up in political agenda.

Don’t fall into the fatalistic despair of those who lament the undermining of our educational system. Yes, you must assess clearly its current dismal state, but be persistent and bold as you pray in faith and by the Spirit of God about all that He leads you to pray. And do not let up.

The soul your son’s teacher may be mere weeks or hours from coming to Christ. Your daughter’s classroom may be just this side of a move of God. Linchpins holding the entire ungodly system together may be closer to falling apart than you dare think.

Pray, and do not stop praying.

Dorothy

Pray for educators

Posted by Admin on Aug 19, 2013 in Schools | Comments Off on Pray for educators

I had a conversation in July with a Christian woman who was a librarian in a local public school. She told me about the squeeze being put on her and the other librarians concerning books they stocked on their shelves. Some parents actually came in and counted the number of books with reference to Christ, Christmas, and Christianity and compared that to how many books were available containing favorable references to other religions.

As we parted ways, I was struck with what I believed to be a warning and a mandate from the Holy Spirit. I sensed that now, more than ever, believers were to stand guard in prayer for our brothers and sisters in the education profession.

Things have changed a bit in the realm of the spirit since school doors closed in May or June. Tensions have increased all over the nation. In my area, children and teens are now being bused into other school districts due to the lack of accreditation of their home districts. Anxiety exists on both the sending and receiving ends. Pressure to accept lifestyle choices that go against biblical tenets has ramped up and is even a key component of curriculum in some places. Common Core, a government-sponsored, nearly nationwide, K-12 curriculum, is being introduced this year in schools all over the U.S. And we taxpayers, who foot the bill for all of this, have been told there is nothing we can say about it.

Within the ranks of educators exists a strong majority who embrace without question agendas of social justice. In a nutshell, social justice is the philosophy which insists that certain races, ethnicities, religions, and sexual orientations are always the oppressed (the good guys), whereas other races, ethnicities, religions and sexual orientations are known to be the oppressors (the bad guys). Because of this, all laws, regulations, rules, and behaviors must be modified and then enforced to correct the injustice of the oppressors. The lines of distinction in this worldview are rigid and more dogmatic than the Ten Commandments ever could be.

And yes, this philosophy is being taught to teachers and future teachers across the nation in universities, workshops, and professional development curriculum. I, myself, sat in on such demagoguery to find out that I, by virtue of being female, was among the oppressed, yet I was also an oppressor, an evil white American heterosexual Christian. Guess they were hoping I would rise up as an angry woman against my male oppressors, while at the same time genuflect and cower at the feet of non-Christian, non-American, non-white, gay folk whom undoubtedly I had so arrogantly oppressed. I spoke out at the time that I was not oppressed as a female, and the leaders of the professional development looked at me with stern pity. “Oh, but you are,” they maintained. “You’ve been oppressed all your life.” I guess my oppressor side had bludgeoned my oppressed side into supposing I was happy and content with my femininity. Go figure! And people wonder why mental disorders, confusion, and depression are on the rise in our time!

This is the philosophy permeating every lesson and program in most public schools and classrooms. It has even sneaked quietly into some private and Christian schools as well, tweaking curriculum to “keep up with the times” and to be socially relevant.

Into the mix traipse our unsuspecting little ones and youth all around the nation. Their minds and hearts are like blank slates upon which others will seek to write their agendas.

But not all instructors are blind adherents of the prevailing worldview promoted in public education. They are men and women called by God to make a difference in the lives of those young ones who they teach. These instructors may be in the system, but they are not of the system. Many are Christian; others are deeply patriotic Americans with a respect for traditional values; and all are concerned educators, seeking to right a capsizing ship, throwing out life buoys of honesty, integrity, sound instruction, and high expectations to the young ones under their training.

And I sensed strongly in my spirit, a few weeks ago in July, that these educators will need our prayer coverage. Pray for the teachers you know who attend your church or other churches. Stand in the gap for them to make wise decisions, to walk closely with the Lord, and to make a godly impact in their schools. Pray for the teachers and administrators in the lives of your children, grandchildren, and neighbors. Ask the Lord to move on their lives and hearts to hunger for truth. Pray that these adults will start to see through the philosophy dominating their profession and to have the boldness to reject its debilitating stereotypes of victimization. Pray for custom-made laborers to enter into their lives and to minister to them on a deep level. Know that every case in which light enters into the heart or mind of a teacher is one more defeat for the enemy. Recognize that every situation in which a believing teacher prays, behaves, and instructs according to the will of God, the purposes of Heaven will be promoted.

God may not be welcome in our school systems, but He cannot be kept out. When the people of God stand on behalf of our schools and their leaders, He will move.

I challenge you to pray for educators and to ask God to move in our schools this year. Through your prayers, may He frustrate the agenda of the enemy.

Dorothy