CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) AND SCSBC’S RESPONSE: Find the lastest updates here for students, faculty and staff.
CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) AND SCSBC’S RESPONSE: Find the lastest updates here for students, faculty and staff.
Talking about faith formation in schools often focuses on chapels, devotions, or Bible classes. These are important moments where faith is explicitly named and practiced. Yet, as Christian educators, we know that formation is not limited to the “spiritual” parts of the school day. Pedagogy—the everyday choices teachers make in the classroom—plays a quiet but influential role in shaping how students understand themselves, others, and God.
Faith is not only taught; it is practiced through daily rhythms, interactions, and relationships. Seating charts, attendance routines, and even classroom jobs may look like mere management strategies, but they carry deep theological weight. They tell students what we believe about belonging, dignity, and responsibility. When practiced thoughtfully, these decisions become small liturgies—repeated habits that orient students toward Christlike living and connect them to the broader Christian community, reflecting Christ to everyone they meet.
Where a student is seated tells them something about their place in the community. Thoughtful seating arrangements can create opportunities for inclusion, collaboration, and mutual support. By intentionally mixing abilities, personalities, and backgrounds, teachers signal that everyone has a role, and no one is on the margins. This practice cultivates empathy and reminds students that they are members of one body, designed to learn, develop, and grow together. Students grow up experiencing that learning and belonging are factors of their development best done in community where all members look out for others’ best interest.
Reflection Questions for Staff
When I make a seating chart, what story am I telling students about who belongs and how they are valued?
How might I use seating to foster community and mutual care, rather than only classroom order?
How might I create processes in class for seating to change based on the type of learning taking place in the classroom?
Taking attendance is often treated as a bureaucratic necessity; more importantly it can be an act of recognition. Each called name is an affirmation: You are here. You matter. You are part of us. When teachers greet students personally at the start of class, the practice becomes pastoral—an echo of how God knows and calls each of us by name. Whether a teacher takes attendance with a “would you rather” question or as part of “name, game, frame” in an opening circle, students are seen and known by their teacher and their peers.
Reflection Questions for Staff
How do I take attendance in a way that communicates belonging rather than obligation?
In what ways do I personally recognize each student at the beginning of the day or class?
Assigning jobs to students may seem like a way to keep the classroom running smoothly, but it also teaches responsibility, service, and stewardship. When a child cares for plants, hands out supplies, or leads a line, they learn to take responsibility for the well-being of others. When one of the classroom jobs is to look around the room for those that need help or have a larger job than others, students are learning awareness of others and are invited to be the hands and feet of Jesus in small ways that impact the heart of a young believer over time. These small acts of service model what it means to live as disciples—those who use their gifts to bless others and care for God’s world.
Reflection Questions for Staff
Do classroom jobs emphasize efficiency or formation—or both?
How do I connect classroom responsibilities with the deeper call to serve others?
How can I use classroom jobs as a tool for awareness that invites students to be others-centred throughout the day?
How we structure group work can either encourage competition or foster cooperation. When group tasks are designed so students must rely on each other’s strengths, they learn that their gifts matter for the good of the whole. This models the interdependence of the body of Christ. When the work we have students do at school matters beyond personal achievement, group work and collaboration become a necessity rather than a perceived barrier getting in the way of the “A student” getting 100%. By ensuring that work has meaning beyond the classroom, achievement becomes a byproduct of important work that the students get to do.
Reflection Questions for Staff
How do I design group learning to help students practice generosity, patience, empathy, and reliance on one another?
How do I ensure that the value of the work being done in class extends beyond the classroom to support needs and people in the world today?
Simple routines—lining up, transitioning between activities, or closing the day—can be opportunities for formation. Repetition in our bodies supports shaping our minds and desires as humans. Humans don’t always think their way into doing; often, actions have more impact on thinking than we care to recognize as Christians. Practicing gratitude consistently at the end of the day, or pausing to recognize beauty in a student’s work, teaches attentiveness to God’s presence in the ordinary.
Reflection Questions for Staff
What daily classroom liturgies could be reimagined as moments of worship?
Where are our routines emphasizing prioritizing self over collective celebration? What changes can we make to demonstrate celebration of others’ successes?
Discipline and correction are profoundly formative. When teachers address relational problems in love, demonstrating grace in how they interact and truth in understanding natural consequences, students learn that failure is not final and that restoration is possible. When classrooms are places where academic mistakes are expected, not penalized, but instead used for further development, students understand that mistakes do not define them and that Christian communities model that God loves them as they are with their foibles and follies. This mirrors God’s redemptive love and invites students into a community shaped by forgiveness.
Reflection Questions for Staff
How does the way I handle mistakes reflect the character of Christ?
How do discipline processes in my class show grace and empathy to the developing brains of the students in my classroom?
The power of pedagogy is that it transforms ordinary moments into formative ones. A seating chart becomes a lesson in hospitality. Attendance becomes an act of recognition. Classroom jobs become training in discipleship. Group work becomes a rehearsal of community. Discipline becomes a practice in grace. These seemingly small decisions are not neutral; they shape students’ imaginations. They show that following Jesus is not just about grand gestures of faith but also about daily practices of love, service, and community.
Leaders have the unique opportunity to remind teachers that their pedagogy is not just about efficiency or classroom control. It is ministry. By encouraging reflection on these everyday choices, teachers see how their classrooms are already spaces of faith formation.
Faith formation is not confined to explicitly religious moments; it is woven through every pedagogical choice. When teachers see their routines as opportunities for formation, they invite students to learn content and practice reflecting the Creator as they learn to live faithfully in the world.
Darren Spyksma
SCSBC Associate Executive Director
