Centre for Christian Education
Youthworks College Dean of Women interviews Principal Mike Dicker
Ruth: What's the Centre for Christian Education?
Mike: The Centre for Christian Education (CCE) is a way for Youthworks College to dedicate some of our resources to raising up more Christian teachers and helping Christian teachers to become better at applying the gospel into their school classrooms and their teaching contexts.
Ruth: Why do we need the Centre for Christian Education?
Mike: Well, while the national teacher shortage might be big news at the moment, our Christian schools have been looking for and needing more Christian teachers for a long time. If you don't have a groundswell of Christian teachers on your staff in your Christian school, then it's quite difficult to maintain the Christian culture of a school. You can have a Christian headmaster, and you can have a Christian chaplain, but if most of your teaching staff is not Christian, that makes it much more difficult to bring the Christian faith to bear on your non-Christian students, and also to mature the Christian students that you have.
So we're beginning with Christian schools because they're deliberately and intentionally looking to employ Christian teachers, but I would love to see it overflow into Christians teaching in our state schools as well.
Ruth: How is the Centre for Christian Education different from the courses that other colleges offer?
Mike: Well, there are other Christian institutions that are offering a teaching degree and a theology degree at the same time. And I think, you know, that's a good path forward for some people. But what I'm a little bit worried about is that if we have Christians who go to Christian schools, who graduate from Christian schools, get their theology and their teaching degree from a Christian institution, and go back into a Christian school, then there is a danger that we're going to end up with a cloister of people that haven't thoroughly engaged with the world around them.
What I think of as the strength of this program is that the student will receive good theological foundations at the Centre and then they will go to a secular university and attend lectures where their ethical stances and views of the world will be challenged. In that environment, they will be able to bring their theology to bear on what they think and believe. This will make them really sharp as teachers, they then go back into schools equipped and ready to engage with those same ideas.
We have values in our culture that are moving in the opposite direction to churches and Christian schools. We are going to see more clashes of worldview and front-page news stories in the mainstream media. We need teachers who are really sharp and can think critically and theologically in their classrooms.
Ruth: What will the Centre for Christian Education look like in 2023?
Mike: It looks a lot like our Youthworks College program that has raised up children and youth ministers in a parish church context. It's the same type of model but applied to a school. There are three pathways. You can do your study before, during, or after your teaching degree at university through the Centre for Christian Education. In 2023, the main pathway we are focusing on is the ‘before’ pathway. For students who are heading into a teaching vocation, to give them a good solid theological foundation.
These students will come to College on Monday, Tuesday and half of Wednesday. Here they will study Theology, New Testament, Old Testament, Personal Formation (college tour), Ethics, Sexuality and Identity and a new unit called Formative Christian Teaching.
What we want is PE teachers, science teachers, math teachers, history teachers, English teachers, music teachers, all teaching their subjects and doing it well, but doing it as Christians. How is that any different from say, a non-Christian teaching those things? That’s what students will learn through the course, and especially in our new unit ‘Formative Christian Teaching’.
The students will also spend two days working in a school as an intern. They will be able to get some classroom experience and see what being a teacher is like. It also helps to integrate what they are learning at Youthworks into practise.
Ruth: We have lots of graduates who are teachers and chaplains, are there ways they can support the CCE?
Mike: Many of them are the pioneers of this program because they studied at Youthworks College, building good theological foundations and ministry skills, and then went and did teaching degrees and ended up as teachers. This is formalising what they've already done before. So hopefully they'll be really excited about it and keen to participate. I think if they're working in a school as a teacher, whether it's a Christian school or a state school, they should be thinking about who are the Christian kids that they know and can see, and how can they very intentionally tap them on the shoulder and say, ‘Look, what are you doing after school? Do you want to be a teacher? Well, why don't you go do this program?’ They may also have the chance to set up internships with their Principal so that students could intern at their school. There will be other opportunities for them to come onto campus and share their story and their experience of being a Christian teacher.
Ruth: When will CCE be open?
Mike: The website is up already https://www.youthworkscollege.edu.au/christianteachers and students can apply for next year. We will have an official launch on November 2nd with Bishop Chris Edwards inviting all the heads of all the independent Christian schools as well as the chairs of all their councils, and Peter Fowler from Anglican Schools Corporation.
We need to answer the desperate call from schools for more Christian teachers and look deliberately in our churches for the young people that might be suited for this vocation. Recruiting in the Christian schools is also very important. If you've got 1,000 students from year seven to year 12, why not be thinking about what Christians in that cohort might have the gift of teaching?