The following Teacher Blog post is brought to you in conjunction with our partners, Seven Steps to Writing Success.
‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made…’
In his ‘Saints for all Seasons’ column in the latest edition of Australian Catholics, Peter Fleming writes about the astounding opening of the Gospel of John, which places Jesus – the human figure of Christ – in the context of a cosmic story involving the whole of creation.
‘The peerless vision of the power behind the entire universe in the first sentence lifts the reader to the heavens; then, John shocks us back to Earth with the simple masculine pronoun – ‘He’ - commencing the next sentence’, writes Peter.
‘Jesus is a mystical divine force beyond time, all-encompassing; the very next moment, He is a person, somebody we can know.’
In faith education, we know the power of stories. They can uplift, they can inspire, they can penetrate barriers, and open us up to experience God’s love. But if we can’t capture people’s attention with our stories, then we’re not going to be able to reach them.
As educators, we are also tasked with helping young people find the right way to tell their stories. In a world where everyone now has the ability to publish their stories for everyone to read, the ability to capture people’s attention with the right words is more important than ever.
As John illustrates – a good opening is essential. We know from our own favourite books that getting people into the story at the right moment ensures that they’ll be with you for th entire journey.
To help you learn how to better understand how good story openings work, our friends at Seven Steps to Writing Success have made a free resource available to Catholic teachers, exploring what makes a ‘sizzling start’.
The resource includes a short video about what makes a good opening, and tips for breaking writing down into manageable chunks. There are also some engaging and collaborative classroom activities to help students develop their own skills in these areas.
You can sign up and access the resource here.
One of the interesting things for us in this resource is how it speaks about opening at a ‘moment of change’. In the example from John’s Gospel above, we see a point of divine transformation – from the Word immaterial to the Word made flesh.
Faith education and formation is essentially about bringing people to that moment of change – a place where their understanding of themselves and the universe is transformed by the Christian story.
It’s helpful then to think about how we can, in our work, engage students and staff at these moments of change. One way to do it of course is to start with some rich questions as prompts: How does the Christian story change our idea of family? How does it change our idea of society? How does it change our idea of the economy? How does it change our idea of happiness/sadness?
The idea of asking rich questions that lead to learning insights isn’t a new one in education. But seeing this process in the light of how we tell stories helps us understand why they can be such a powerful educational tool, and perhaps point us to the sorts of questions that might better engage with our students’ and staff’s own stories.
Australian Catholics staff