Why Some Parents Go to School with the Kids

Public schools are a slice of every Christian’s mission field.

My Daughter Jenny and her sister Ellen walk five blocks to the oldest brick school-house in our city. It is a public school. Their experience there is much different from my own. Surely I have a “delightful inheritance” (Ps. 16:6, NIV) because of the sacrifice my parents made to give me a Christian school education. But now, one generation and one state removed from my school years, that same opportunity is not available to my children.

When I look back on my own superb education and then on the ills of the American public school of the last decade, one factor stands out: my education was so good partly because of the high degree to which parents were involved. And the public school is in a fix today partly because parents have asked it to take over more and more of their functions, and have increasingly withdrawn their personal involvement.

I want to argue for Christian parents to get involved in the public school. And I want to suggest to those I convince some ways they can go about it. In urging this involvement, I am actually arguing only for Christian involvement in the world. It is the hurting world, daily showing one of its most vulnerable faces in the classrooms of the public schools: children who have been abused, children who have had no breakfast (or little attention), children batted back and forth between divorced parents, children who have physical and mental handicaps, children of a scorned minority or with a halting foreign accent. Of course, laughing, eager, bright, well-washed, and well-loved children attend too. The image of God is not obliterated in any of these children, and it sparkles in some. The classroom of a public school is a microcosm of the world.

I admit it gives me great pleasure when a small, black boy shyly asks me to read again The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, or when a scrawny girl peers through her bangs to tell me that her grandmother is going to crochet a Christmas gift “for my teacher, and the mother that reads to us.” And I know the joy of children crowding around to show me their cuts or special rocks or racing cars. But besides the delight that comes from such personal touches, I want to suggest three reasons why Christian parents should be seen frequently in their children’s public school: first, it is right; second, it will encourage the children; third, it will open up opportunities for sharing our faith.

Our Jerusalem

Even if there were no benefits for our children or their classmates or parents, it is right to become involved. If the public school is a slice of the world, then it is a slice of what Jesus plunged into and died for, and also a slice of that in which he commanded us to be salt and light (Matt. 5:13–16). And not only is that so, but during those years that our children march off to school, it is more specially that Jerusalem to which we are called. It is not different from our college dorm, our office, our current neighborhood, or our future retirement village, which are also parts of our Jerusalem at other times in our lives. If we never venture out into it, men will not see our good works and praise our Father in heaven.

As many other parents abandon to the public school the raising of their children, opportunities there abound even more. Our saltiness and light will be both disproportionately needed and noticed, though perhaps at the same time the task will seem more lonely and formidable.

I do not dismiss lightly the legitimate concerns over whether an alternative religious system is being taught—though perhaps not consciously—in the public schools. On the contrary, that very concern should make our presence in the public school even more imperative. In any type of classroom, the salt and light of Christian character, purpose, and values are needed. Obeying Jesus’ command, aching for his hurting world—these are reasons enough.

We need also to recognize that our children are encouraged when we become involved. Make no mistake: it is a battlefield that our youngsters go off to every day. Dirty words are scrawled on bathroom walls. Deskmates swear. Fights break out on the playground. A few boast of real or imagined sexual exploits. Many have as their constant frame of reference those TV shows our children are not allowed to watch. And most important, God is not publicly acknowledged as the Lord of learning. Our children need to know that we care how they live in such an atmosphere, for they are the vulnerable front-line soldiers in the battle of world views. The more thoroughly we are acquainted with the actual situations, therefore, the better we can help our own children respond in a godly way.

What should Jenny do when Christina uses foul language? Do others laugh at Ellen when she prays silently before eating her lunch? Is my daughter being pressured to believe that all values are equal as she sits in the circle during story time? How do dinosaurs, those favorites of children and their teachers, fit into God’s creative scheme?

Without even going to school, we can encourage our children by means of a simple note tucked into their lunch boxes every so often. A funny picture, a joke or riddle, poem or Scripture verse, along with a brief reminder that we love and pray for them, can be a tremendous pick-me-up in the middle of the lunchroom chaos. Last year Jenny discovered that Nathan was a Christian, too, because he was curious about her notes, and “Now, Mom, we think about God sometimes at our talk times.” Such encouragement multiplies.

While formal occasions that parents can attend are important, think how much more it would mean if we went to school on some sort of regular basis in a service role. “I’m not abandoned; you care enough to get to know what’s important in my life” is the message the children will get. They can also see us doing something for their teachers and classmates, expecting nothing in return. They know we will understand (or call them up short) when they complain about Jason or Shane or Amy—again. They may not verbalize their appreciation, but we can surely trust our service to bear fruit at the right time.

How To Get Involved

I want to describe just how parents can get involved in the schools before going on to explain how this parental involvement can lead to opportunities to share the gospel. It is the doing that has led me to this conclusion.

Actually, opportunities for involvement are as varied as the volunteers themselves. My next-door neighbor, a summertime state park naturalist, brings small or unusual animals into the first grade, and helps with nature hikes and craft projects that follow. Two other neighbors, who made themselves available to their children’s teachers for one or two hours a week, found themselves working with individual children who needed help mastering math or reading skills. The mother of a former missionary kid supplemented the tutoring of some newly arrived Laotian refugee children. A chemist dad set up a science minicourse during January noon hours. A model-railroad devotee, a Civil War buff, a quilter—any person with a hobby—would certainly be welcomed by teachers planning units of study.

What I have done personally has ranged from canvassing the neighborhood in favor of a school bond tax levy, to helping organize the parent-teacher organization’s carnival, to putting on an assembly to celebrate Black History Month with Jenny and Ellen and five black students (our family lived in Liberia for a year). Each was a onetime affair.

My continuing project, the one I love best, is reading to my daughters’ classes. To the first-graders, I read once a week—a whole picture book at a time. To second- and third-graders, I read twice a week, taking up to three weeks to finish a book. Often we will talk about the story afterwards, and therein lies the way of evangelism.

Francis Schaeffer’s term “preevangelism,” or speaking God’s truth into a situation, may be a more accurate term, for there are legitimate restrictions on what others might view as proselytism. But if God is the Author of all truth, then stating it in an attractive way is revealing some of his nature. The content of what a volunteer parent shares—whether the intricacy of a snowflake or the joy of reflecting God’s creativity through music, art, or computers—can be the vehicle for expressions of faith.

But since Christianity is a religion of the Book, stories lend themselves especially well to truth telling. I read funny stories, scary adventures, and silly poems, too, but interspersed are stories from Greek myths, historical fiction, and fantasies that have powerful themes of sacrifice and courage, love and faith.

C. S. Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles are favorites of all children whether or not they grasp the allegorical message in them. When the White Witch plunged her knife into Aslan, sorrow cracked the tense silence of the second grade. When Jenny’s class studied Indians last fall, they focused on a Revolutionary War settlement in Delaware not far from our home. This group of Indians was unique, however, in its Moravian beliefs, and so I read Janet Hickman’s Valley of the Shadow, which tells how two boys survived the massacre of these Christian Indian pacifists.

Christmas stories are an especially lovely vehicle for the truth. The best story of all has generated a host of others. The short month of December cannot do justice to them all—without so much as a bow to Santa Claus, and without quoting Luke 2. First-graders appreciated Emmett’s desire to get his mother a nice present (Emmett Otter’s Jug Band Christmas, by Russell Hoban). They knew instantly that the old juggler had given the Madonna and Child the best gift (The Clown of God, by Tomie de Paola).

I don’t think the second-graders were ever convinced that the Ingalls sisters were wealthy beyond measure with their red mittens, tin cups, and sticks of candy in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie. But at least one boy was convinced that mute Jamie had found the Baby Jesus after the Appalachian blizzard (A Certain Small Shepherd, by Rebecca Caudill).

Third-graders roared at the antics of the Herdman delinquents in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, by Barbara Robinson, and clapped at the end of the Russian legend about the old woman who refused sanctuary for the three kings on their way to Bethlehem (Befana, by Anne Rockwell).

Content is only one part of evangelism, however. Solid relationships is the other, for truth and people must meet. Most important, we must relate to our children’s teachers and principal. Suppose we are concerned over some specific educational issue or the secularist milieu. When will teachers be more likely to hear us out—even to make the changes that will protect our children? Will it be when we have given ourselves with no strings attached, or when we show up only to complain?

One of the strengths of my girls’ school is that in a fairly homogeneous town, the school is not itself homogeneous. Its district reaches from a quiet college campus to the downtown’s above-store apartments. Racial, economic, lifestyle, and educational barriers among its families beg to be crossed. The school becomes the bridge, the common factor.

I cannot say that my evangelistic results are spectacular, but I have had opportunities to share my faith that I would not have had otherwise. Two cousins have come to our church’s vacation Bible school for three summers because of an outwardly unlikely friendship I struck up with the mother of one. A neighbor I only knew because of a shared parent-teacher organization assignment opened up her hurt and confusion when a favorite teacher was stricken with leukemia. As we talked of the teacher’s faith in the midst of her suffering, I invited her to our neighborhood Bible study, which was looking at that same topic in I Peter.

Another school pal joined my girls and some neighbors in their Advent activity, performing an English miracle play. Her mother was exposed to the beautiful, true Christmas story when she came to the performance. I can only pray that these examples will multiply and bear fruit as the years pass.

Perhaps my girls’ school is unusual with its Christian principal, excellent teachers, and mixture of children who warmly accept parents who want to be part of its life. But surely it is not unique. Opportunities wait behind every schoolhouse door. God has not abandoned his children in the public schools of America. He is still Lord of all the subjects they study and the relationships they form. He still holds Christian parents accountable for both demonstrating and encouraging their sons and daughters toward increasing Christlikeness in their schools. He still calls us to the joy of serving in that needy mission field just down the street.

A former Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship staff member, Barbara J. Hampton is now a homemaker living in Wooster, Ohio.

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