General
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Beyond the Grade: The True Purpose of a Good Book As a teacher, my most frequent advice to parents is simple: Give your children the time and space to read good books. Guide them toward them, discuss the stories with them, and—perhaps most importantly—model the habit by reading good books yourself. We often justify reading…
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Whether you are a parent, teacher, or grandparent, we have all faced the same dilemma: How do you start—and sustain—a meaningful conversation with a child? The answer is simpler than you think: You have to trick them. I don’t mean this in a deceptive way, but in a “pedagogical” way. Most children (and, let’s be…
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“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible… all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” — Colossians 1:16-17 Lately, I have been convicted of a quiet failure: I have stopped practicing the discipline…
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Four years ago, I had the surreal experience of whitewater rafting the Nile River in Jinja, Uganda. Over a six-hour journey, our group navigated twelve Class 4 and 5 rapids. I was thrown from the raft or flipped over entirely on four of them. It was exhausting, terrifying, and ultimately transformative. I walked away with…
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“An open mind is really a mark of foolishness, like an open mouth. Mouths and minds were made to shut; they were made to open only in order to shut.” — G.K. Chesterton In my first year of university, a professor opened class with a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s essay The Crack-Up: “The test…
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Educators and parents alike have a reliable tool for Friday afternoons: the sugary incentive. I still remember Mrs. Crow in Grade 1 treating us to popsicles after a good week, or the “penny jar” in Grade 2 that led to a class party. As adults, we often expect children to exhibit intrinsic behavior (doing right…
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During my first year in a Master’s program, I was a “deer in the headlights” who happened to stumble into a course on George MacDonald. I knew he was admired by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, so I gave him a shot. Little did I know that three years later, I would be finishing a…
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Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers is a brilliant, bitter examination of the reality of WWII. By following the six men who raised the flag at Iwo Jima, Eastwood navigates the delicate balance between truth and propaganda, gently deconstructing the “American Hero” without villainizing the soldier. Growing up in America, I was taught the incomprehensible…
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Our modern culture is fascinated—some would say obsessed—with the fantastic. Vampires, magic wands, and mystical worlds pervade our media, often creating a “zombie-like” following. When we hear the word “fantasy,” a kaleidoscope of images pops into our heads: for the young, perhaps unicorns and Care Bears; for older audiences, the gritty werewolves of The Walking…