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Dave Brown

Education 302-303
Professor Leo/Keeley
Statement of Faith-based Teaching and Learning
Worldviews are funny things. For me, my worldview shaped me to be a truth-seeker,
which eventually brought me to God. I had not believed very much in a god, except kept an open
mind that it is a possibility. Still for some reason, I dedicated a lot of my life to figuring out what
was true. I always enjoyed this thought that there is a true way to live and act. Sure, this was not
math, but I did enjoy math in a similar fashion. Math always led to a true answer to the problems
we are given, why should life not? I approach these processes similarly, and would like to bring
this into my teaching. I shall explain how I should approach my content in accord to my
worldview, and how I have implemented such into my unit.
With my unit, I should incorporate that deep understanding of math and truth for every
concept. I could do this in any unit though, so I need to focus on this functions unit specifically.
How can I include my faith into teaching functions in a public high school? Maybe if I were in a
Christian school, I could talk about how functions can consist of and contain all variables, just
like God does. And yes, it can be shown in an unlimited amount of ways, the same amount that
God can show himself to us. The thing is, East Grand Rapids High School is a public school so I
should stick with explaining how continuous functions can contain all variables of the axes. I
could even stick with the notion of truth in the functions unit, because when working with
function representations, I can emphasize that it comes in different ways but speaks the same
truth. This example could influence the connections that the truth comes in diversity. Truth can
be seen and experienced in multiple lenses, but still tells the same story of one function, the story

of one God. I could also weave in function trinity with the three representations of a function,
tables, graphs and mapping diagrams, if it were a Christian school. As a Christian teacher, my
worldview should be visited in the functions unit.
While these are things that should be incorporated into my unit on functions, my
implementation these past two months has not matched such. It is not that I have not been
embodying Christ in all that I do and think, as much as that is possible for me. I just have not
welcomed Gods deep questioning and truth-seeking to the students. During my unit and when I
have been teaching, I have taught for a deep understand of the material, but have not emphasized
why what the students are learning is important. I think that is a crucial part to being a Christian
educator, and I hope that I can weave that into my classroom in the future.
So, although the latter explains what happened in my teacher aiding experience, it does
not explain why I chose that. There are two main reasons why I did not take that leap into
emphasizing why functions are important to the students. First, I did not focus very hard on why
functions are important because Ms. Edison does only touches upon it. She likes to throw in a
few examples of how what she is teaching is seen in the real world, but just gives an example
every other day. I still could have done better at modeling that, though. I also saw how well her
students were doing in her class, and heard during parent-teacher conferences that her style of
teaching was reaching students. Because of this, I thought it would be morally right to stick with
her methods and strategies, rather than taking the chance of losing the students interest and
success. The second reason is simply that I am only human. God is perfect, and I have fault.
Being a student, an RA, a tennis player, a social advocate (promoting events and going to
panels/discussions) and having a social life can constrain the time and effort I put into this unit.
While I am to be confident in the gifts I can share with my students and neighbors, I am also

called to humble myself before the L ORD. I still incorporated who God made me to be when
leading the students, and stretched myself to make lessons that would engage the students. While
there are still more things that could have brought God into this unit, I always had Jesus on my
heart and in my mind.

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