You want to help your students develop a Christ-centered worldview. So, you want to help students connect what they study and what the Bible teaches. You think that having a guaranteed, viable Biblical perspective curriculum will help you:

• Guaranteed: All teachers at a given Christian school teach specified Bible content in each subject they teach.
• Viable: All teachers have sufficient instructional time to teach the specified Bible content.
• Biblical perspective: The specified Bible content is formatted as Biblical principles. Each Biblical principle is supported by at least 3 Bible passages.
• Curriculum: The specified Bible content is documented in the curriculum.

 Question: What’s a next step?
 
Answer: Determine where you/your school are in terms of having a guaranteed, viable Biblical perspective curriculum. Be brutally honest.
 
Here are responses from Christian school educators like you:

1. Teacher: I think we’re motivated to develop a Biblical perspective curriculum—I say this because I’m part of many conversations about teaching students a Biblical perspective. I think we sort of are at the beginning stage, though. While we have a Biblical perspective standard for each subject (as in, make sure kids can apply a Biblical perspective), we don't have benchmarks, a scope/sequence, or documentation regarding what our students are supposed learn in our classes—only 29 of 1077 unit maps have a Biblical perspective enduring understanding identified in them. While I know our students don’t experience a guaranteed Biblical perspective curriculum, I’m encouraged with the progress my school is making.
2. Professor: I’m not aware of a K-12 Christian school that has Biblical perspective scope and sequence in all subject areas.
3. Teacher: Last year, the staff was really hit-and-miss about integrating. Most of the staff didn’t really have a strong understanding of what Biblical integration really looked like. Last year, we did several workshops, and now we all have a common language and understanding. We now know how and feel comfortable with integrating—teachers feel competent. But we are at the beginning stages of writing curriculum and putting in the Biblical integration points. We don’t have standards and benchmarks, we don’t have a scope and sequence, but we do have a general set of Biblical principles that we should be implementing. Teachers are documenting Biblical principles in unit plans.
4. Trainer: There isn’t very much in place. I talked with teachers about this, and they said they were so busy they didn’t have time to develop a Biblical perspective scope and sequence. Teachers work on Biblical perspective in terms of teachable moments, not intentionally through the curriculum.
5. Curriculum coordinator: We’ve made a good start—we now have the expectation that Biblical principles will be embedded in our curriculum. We’re not ready to talk about standards and benchmarks. In curriculum development, you need to start by developing shared understanding about worldview and a Christian philosophy of education. For example, we need to define what we mean by Christian worldview, what our mission means in terms of educating our children, and what we believe about teaching children. Once we’ve developed more shared understanding, we’ll be able to move forward on developing standards/benchmarks and scope/sequence.

Remember: Be brutally honest about where you/your school are. Next, consider you/your school’s level of motivation and training.
 
Question: Regarding developing a guaranteed, viable Biblical perspective curriculum, what’s your/your school’s level of motivation?

Target Biblical perspective. Today.

*This blog entry addresses Biblical perspective teacher training standard #4: To help students love God and impact the world for Him, teachers develop a curriculum that targets students understanding and then applying a Biblical perspective to course content and skills, and ultimately to their lives.