A professor once challenged a class by asking if asking if the idea of

teaching Christianly was the same as asking if there was a Christian way of
boiling water. Truly it is clear that from the content of lessons to the
pedagogical approaches one uses in the classroom, worldview affects every
aspect of teaching. My worldview has two main components in relation to the
classroom, all of which are informed by my Christian faith.
The first of these pieces is that I find the central teaching of the
gospels to be a law of love. This love is Gods eternal wish for all of creation.
He has loved this creation, and especially every human. With these two facts
in mind the language of others and their culture is something that should be
valued. Moreover, this conviction has farther reaching applications when
paired with the Jesus exhortation to welcome strangers (Matthew 25:35).
Traditional language teaching stressed simply memorizing paradigms
(Grammar-Translation Method), and even the more modern approach just
underscores learning effective skills for communication (Communicative
Language Teaching). While these are both important aspects of the
language, they fail to invite students to love the stranger or to engage with
them about topics of serious importance like beliefs. In fact, I was once a
strong proponent of simply using the paradigm method, but I came to realize
that this did not love a human as a complete person but only as a rational
mind. So, with this perspective of the law of love and its relation to language
teaching, I aim to present students with opportunities and skills for engaging
in language that will offer others beliefs that will challenge their own, and

invite them to defend or change what they know. This clearly has effects on
the content that I would choose to work with in the classroom. Thus, the
language and culture taught in my classroom will be charged with a sense of
concern for others. This can be manifested in the Latin classroom by working
with sources and readings that present material that offers new perspectives
to the reader. Furthermore, these ideas will be approached in my class, and
time will be given to discussing and evaluating them. The same approach
applies to cultural lessons as well. For while one might simply teach the
religion of the Romans, the law of love that I believe in invites one to take a
closer look at these beliefs to see how we can respect them, but also how
they can challenge us be welcoming and loving to others. Thus, taking a law
of love into the classroom brings an attitude of truth-seeking and hospitality
into content selection and classroom activities.
The other part of my worldview is my belief that justice seeking is the
imperative of the followers of God (Micah 6:8). I believe that God is in the
process of restoring this broken world, and that we humans are the means of
working towards this goal. What this means in terms of content selection is
that materials should be selected that have to do with power inequalities or
justice issues. This, luckily, is easy to do because very few aspects of any
culture are divorced from power relations. Thus, once this content is chosen
it will be presented in a way that students can discuss the justice of power
balance, where improvements can be made, what they believe about it, and
how this has or has not affected their views. These kinds of questions and

evaluations differ from the more student-centered approach of humanistic

language teaching. Humanism aimed to make students fully autonomous
and comfortable with themselves. The critical perspectives that arises from
my beliefs about justice seeking works to support students in self-image, but
challenge them at this place to see what is wrong and seek what is right. So,
my worldview shaped by these views greatly influence and inform my
interactions in the classroom as I strive to present content in ways that assist
students in shaping their own worldviews through the love of the stranger
and to discover what is right.