Hospitality in the ClassroomBruce Hekman, Calvin College

COMMUNITIES OF HEART

Entrance:Holland Christian High School

Sign Language

What is hospitality?o An open, inviting and safe place.o Making room in your heart for

others.o A desire to learn with and learn

from strangers.o The doorway to community.o An overflow of the heart.o A form of bridging.

Hospitality: Why bother?• “The Lord your God…loves

foreigners residing among you…and you are to love those who are foreigners…” (Deut. 10: 17-19)

• “Be devoted to one another in love…practice hospitality” (Romans 12:10, 13).

• “Keep on loving one another…show hospitality to strangers…” (Hebrews 13:1–2).

• “Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling”

(I Peter 4:9).

Hospitality: Making Room

Christian Pohl, in her book Making Room, makes this observation:

“People view hospitality as quaint and tame partly because they not understand the power of recognition. When a person who is not valued by society is received by a socially respected person or group as a human being with dignity and worth, small transformations occur. The person’s self-assessment, so often tied to society assessment, is enhanced. Because such actions are countercultural, they are a witness to the larger community, which is then challenged to reassess its standards and methods of valuing…

Hospitality: Making Room…Many persons who are not valued by the larger community are essentially invisible to it. When people are socially invisible, their needs and concerns are not acknowledged and no one even notices the injustices they suffer. Hospitality can begin a journey toward visibility and respect.” (p. 62)

Think about the people Jesus hung around with and the people he often dined with.

 

The Inviting SchoolEverything in the school counts, positively or negatively:

o Physical environmento Processes and procedureso Verbal commentso Personal behaviors

But nothing counts more than the person in the process.

The Inviting Person: Levels of Functioning

◦ Intentionally disinviting

◦ Unintentionally disinviting

◦ Unintentionally inviting

◦ Intentionally inviting

The Heart of a Teacher◦“Face to face with my students, only one resource is at my immediate command: my identity, my selfhood, my sense of this ‘I’ who teaches---without which I have no sense of the ‘Thou’ who learns.”

◦“Good teaching comes from good people.”

The Courage to Teach. Parker J. Palmer

Teaching comes from the inside

• Are you in love with Jesus?• The culture of the classroom

will flow from the core values and beliefs of the teacher.

• What is a “core value?”

• What are your core values?

Followers’ Four Basic Needs

Trust

Compassion

Stability

Hope

From Strengths Based Leadership

Inviting Schools“An inviting message is a ‘doing with’ rather than a ‘doing to’ process. It is an effort to establish cooperative interactions. These messages are intended to inform people that they are valuable, able, and responsible, that they have opportunities to participate meaningfully in worthwhile activities, and that they are invited to take advantage of these opportunities.”

(William Watson Purkey, Inviting School Success,

p. 4)

Inviting School SuccessValuable:•“Mr. Toppe cared enough to come to school a half hour early every morning to help me with math.”

Able:•“I remember my science teacher saying I was a careful researcher.”

Responsible:•“Coach asked me to take the equipment out and explain the rules.”

Inviting School SuccessWorthless:•“On the first day of school, the teacher came in and said he wasn’t supposed to teach this class, but that he was stuck with us.”

Unable:•“I was asked if I had enough sense to follow simple directions.”

Irresponsible:•“She said I was worse than my brother, and I don’t even have a brother.”

Inviting School Success

“Everything in the school counts (verbal comments, personal behavior, physical environment, signs), either positively or negatively. Of all the things that count, nothing is as important as the people in the process….Teaching is a way of being with people.”

(Purkey, p. 16)

Inviting school success

◦ Respect for individual uniqueness

◦ Cooperative spirit

◦ Sense of belonging

◦ Pleasing habitat

◦ Positive expectations

Inviting School SuccessStubborn Teacher

My teacher is so stubborn! She is told that I am unmotivated.

But she invites me anyway.She is told I don’t want to learn.

She invites me anyway.She is told I don’t have ability.

She invites me anyway.She is told I just want to cause trouble.

She invites me anyway.She invites me again, and again, and again.

She fills my world with invitations.One day, I’ll take the greatest risk of my life.

I’ll accept one and see what happens.

An Effective teacher is readyfrom The First Day of School, Harry and Rosemary Wong

Has positive expectations for all students

Establishes good classroom management techniques.

Designs lessons for student mastery

Has the room ready Has the work ready Has themselves ready

Positive expectations◦ Know names, use them respectfully◦ Be unflappably civil (please, thank

you)◦ Smile (the universal language of

hospitality, peace, and harmony - “A smile is a light to tell people that your heart is connected to theirs”)

◦ Loving kindness◦ A calm, non-anxious presence

Communities of Heart:Gratitude and Celebration

◦ The ministry of noticing: Where have you seen God at work?

Managing the classroom◦ “Effective teachers MANAGE their

classrooms.”◦ “Ineffective teachers DISCIPLINE

their classrooms.”◦ Management=Everything a

teacher does to organize students, space, time, and materials so that student learning can take place.

Two Basic Philosophies of DisciplineThe Systems Approach Rules are

developed Staff acts when a

rule is violated Specific

punishments for specific infractions

Uniform punishments for every infraction

Consistency in punishment with no consideration of individual circumstances

The Principles Approach Rules are developed Staff acts when a rule

is violated Discipline is based on

an accepted set of principles

Individual discipline for individual infractions, based on principles.

Consistency in values, but regard for individual circumstances.

Restorative DisciplineFor the person who has harmed:

◦ Recognize the life-draining effects of their behavior on another individual, the school, the community.

◦ Take responsibility for their actions by being accountable to the person(s) harmed.

◦ Make a commitment to more life-giving behavior.

Restorative DisciplineFor the person harmed:◦ Satisfies immediate safety

concerns◦ Provides an opportunity speak

about the harm.◦ Provides an opportunity to talk

about their needs and how they can be met.

Crucial Confrontations What do you do when other people

aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do? How do you deal with broken promises, violated expectations, and…bad behavior?

To confront means to hold someone accountable, face to face, so that problems are resolved and relationships grow.

The ability to hold others accountable lies at the very center of a person’s ability to exert influence.

From Crucial Confrontations, 2005, Patterson et al.

Crucial Confrontations:Learning the Skills◦ Effective problem solvers observe an

infraction and then tell themselves a complete and accurate story. They ask, “Why would a reasonable, rational, decent person do that?” In other words, we’re curious instead of boiling mad.

◦ Confront with safety (“Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.” Ambrose Bierce)

◦ What are we confronting? A broken promise, a gap, a difference between what you expected and what actually happened.

Love and LogicFrom: Jim Fay and Dr. Foster Cline, M.D., www.loveandlogic.com

Love…allows children to grow through their mistakes.

Logic…allows children to learn from the consequences of their choices.

The goal is self-directed, responsible behavior.

The Rules of Love and Logic Rule #1

Enforceable Limits• Adults set firm limits in loving

ways without anger, lectures, or threats.

Rule # 2 Choices Within Limits

• When a child causes a problem, the adult hands it back in loving ways.

Rule #3 Consequences With Empathy

Love and Logic at School1. Every attempt will be made to

maintain the dignity and self-respect of both the student and the teacher.

2. Students will be guided and expected to solve their problems without creating problems for anyone else.

3. Students will be given opportunities to make decisions and live with the consequences, be they good or bad.

Love and Logic at School4. Misbehavior will be handled with

natural or logical consequences instead of punishment whenever possible.

5. Misbehavior will be viewed as an opportunity for individual problem solving and preparation for the real world as opposed to personal attacks on the school or staff.

Hospitality “More than words and ideas, the

world needs living pictures of what a life of hospitality could look like.” Making Room. p. 10

The story of Johnny the bagger.

Creating CommunityBruce Hekman, PhDAdjunct Professor of EducationCalvin Collegebhekman@calvin.edu616-392-6417

Hospitality: A Bibliography

◦ Behospitable.com (brief stories of hospitality from around the U.S., sponsored by the Hilton Hotel chain)

◦ Fay, Jim and David Funk. Teaching with Love and Logic. Golden, CO: Love and Logic Press, 1995

◦ Nouwen, Henri J.M. Reaching Out. New York: Doubleday Dell, 1975.

◦ Pohl, Christine D. Making Room. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999.

◦ Smith, David I. Learning From the Stranger: Christian Faith and Cultural Diversity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009.

Hospitality: a bibliography

◦ Purkey, William Watson. Inviting School Success. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Inc., 1984.

◦ Stutzman-Amstutz, Lorraine and Judy H. Mullet. The Little Book of Restorative Discipline for Schools. Intercourse, PA: Good Books. 2005.

◦ Wong, Harry K. and Rosemary. The First Days of School. Harry Wong Publications. 2009