Education

In a remarkable story of perseverance and hope, a 47-year-old mother of five from Cookeville, Tennessee, has graduated from Tennessee Tech University after losing her sight in 2020. Despite the challenge of blindness, Amanda Juetten graduated magna cum laude, refusing to let her condition define her or limit her aspirations. “I want people to know that blindness doesn’t have to stop you from pursuing your dreams,” said Juetten.

Throughout her studies, she relied on assistive technology, the support of her family, and her own determination to overcome obstacles. “There were days when I felt overwhelmed, but I kept telling myself, ‘You can do this,’” she said. One professor remarked, “Her dedication to her education and her family is truly extraordinary.” Another classmate added, “She’s shown all of us what’s possible when you refuse to give up, no matter the circumstances.”

Now a proud graduate, Juetten plans to use her degree to advocate for the blind community and help others facing similar challenges. “I want to be a voice for those who feel unseen,” she explained. Her story is a testament to the power of determination and the importance of never losing sight of one’s dreams, even in the face of overwhelming odds.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Even when we refuse to let our limitations define us, we are called to trust that God’s purpose for our lives remains—He can use our greatest challenges as platforms for His glory.

It would surprise many Americans, regardless of their race, to know that 2.5 million American Black men are in the financial upper class, according to an exhaustive report produced by the Institute for Family Studies (IFS):

Our new report, Black Men Making It in America, finds that despite the burdens they face—from residential segregation to workplace discrimination to over incarceration—more than one-half of Black men have made it into the middle or upper class as adults. This means that millions of Black men are flourishing financially in America. We find that slightly more than one-in-five (or about 2.5 million) Black men ages 18 to 64 have made it into the upper-third of the income distribution.

In fact, Black men have made marked progress over the last half-century in reaching the upper ranks of the income ladder. The share of Black men who are in the upper-income bracket rose from 13% in 1960 to 23% in 2016. Moreover, poverty among Black men has dropped dramatically over the same time, with the share of Black men in poverty falling from 41% to 18% since 1960. A majority of upper-income Black men in their fifties today were from low-income homes. Half grew up in one-parent families. How did they succeed?

We identified three major factors that are linked to the financial success of Black men in midlife today: education, work, and marriage. Black men who have a college degree, a full-time job, or a spouse are much more likely than their peers to end up in the upper-income bracket as fifty-something men. Included in this group are Black men who attended church regularly as young adults or served in the military. Having a sense of "personal agency" and believing they are responsible for their lives were also major indicators of success.

When the media only focuses on the negative, rather than revealing the facts and stories of accomplishments and prosperity, real harm is done. "First, it renders millions of successful Black men, and the paths they have taken to the American Dream, invisible. Second, it can lead to a sense of hopelessness for young Black men. With so much talk of 'Black failure' today, Black boys may start to feel 'why even bother when the odds are stacked against you?'”

In an article for The National Review researchers Wendy Wang and Brad Wilcox reveal the irrefutable evidence for instilling in youth the values of personal responsibility over blame and victimhood.

The program is called the “success sequence.” Black and Hispanic young adults who have followed it are "markedly more likely to be flourishing financially today, according to a recent report. The sequence entails three steps: (a) getting at least a high-school degree, (b) working full-time, and (c) marrying before having children. Young men and women who follow all three steps are flourishing financially by the time they hit their thirties."

While some object that disadvantaged youth from poor families have inherent obstacles that prevent success, the hard facts prove otherwise:

Although we do not minimize the importance of continuing to tackle these structural barriers, we also think young adults deserve to know the truth about the sequence. Stunningly, racial and ethnic gaps in poverty are basically nonexistent among young adults who followed all three steps. If they follow the sequence, only 4 percent of blacks and 3 percent of Hispanics are poor by their mid-30s, and the share is 3 percent for whites.

The authors conclude with sage advice: "All children in America deserve to know the path to a successful life. Rather than teaching (children) the narratives of 'blaming the system' or 'blaming the victim,' we should focus on helping young adults follow the sequence and achieve success in life."

If you’re a young parent, you’re probably used to hearing “Why?” a lot! With that in mind, a new survey finds moms and dads field an average of 11 questions from their young children each day.

A new poll of 2,000 parents of kids under six finds that between being asked “What?” (37%), “When?” (22%), and “Why?” (11%), parents are always on call when their kids get curious.

Children most commonly ask questions to better understand the world around them, such as asking about animals, nature, current events, and home experiences. When asked about the most interesting question their child has ever asked, parents mentioned “Why is the sky so high?” and “Why can fish keep their eyes open in water?”

Children’s questions may be frequent, but they aren’t always easy, as parents admit they can confidently answer an average of only 42% of their child’s questions. Poll results also reveal that 81% of parents learn just as much from their child as their child learns from them. The average parent learns something new from their child about five times per week, and four in five parents are surprised by their child’s knowledge of certain topics.

By now you’ve probably heard about the Alaska Airlines flight in early January that experienced a sudden loss of pressure when a mechanical failing in the Boeing Max 9 caused a door plug to pop out midflight. Many consider it a miracle that the flight was able to safely land without any fatalities or even major injuries.

For the FAA and the NTSB, the crisis did not end when the flight landed safely back at Portland International Airport. Both agencies needed to get to the bottom of how and why the door plug flew off in the first place. This required locating any of the debris that flew off midflight, including the door plug, which is the size of a normal airplane exit door.

Enter Bob Sauer. Sauer works as a science teacher in the area of Portland in the plane’s flight path. Sauer heard that NTSB authorities were searching for debris in his area. So, on a rainy Sunday night, he took a flashlight into his dark backyard to see if he could spot anything that seemed out of place. Sure enough, dangling midair among a small grove of cedar trees, was something that didn’t belong.

Sauer told a reporter, “It was definitely an airplane part. It had the same curvature that the fuselage has, and had a window in it.” Sauer called an NTSB hotline, and sent a few photos of his discovery. Within a day or so, investigators descended on his property, excited to confirm that it was indeed the door plug.

It turns out the plane was not directly overhead when the door plug failed, but landed in Sauer’s yard because of the several scientific factors. In light of this, Sauer used the incident as a teaching moment, and spent the first fifteen minutes of his astronomy class Monday morning explaining the discovery and relating it to the principles of terminal velocity, such as the plane’s airspeed, and wind speed, and air resistance during its descent.

Sauer was glad it hadn’t landed on his house; something that size moving at that velocity would’ve punched a hole in his roof.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Christian parents can follow this example and find teachable moments in life and use them to instruct their children. Teachable moments involve using everyday situations to illustrate biblical principles and teach children about God and faith. These moments can be tailored to the child's age and comprehension level, showing them the biblical relevance to their lives.

In his book Adrift, Scott Galloway details how America is losing its strong middle class:

In 1965, the chiefs of America's largest 350 companies by revenue made 21 times the average compensation of their industries’ workers. In 2020, the CEO-to-worker compensation ratio shot up to 351 times that of their workers. Since 1960, corporate profits have gone up 85 times; employee wages have gone up only 38 times. Between 1979 and 2013, the bottom 99% of Americans saw their wages go up about 18%. The top 1% of Americans saw their wages go up 140%.

The result is that kindergartners with good grades from poor families are less likely to graduate from high school, graduate from college, or earn a higher wage than their affluent peers with bad grades. At 38 colleges, including five of the Ivies, there are more students from the top 1% of the U.S. income scale than from the bottom 60%.

A burst of recent editorials have criticized AI tools like ChatGPT as a threat to educational goals over concerns that students would abuse the technology. However, educators are beginning to come around to the value of artificial intelligence – not for students, but for the teachers themselves.

Kansas high school teacher Mike Harris said that normally, designing a 16-week drama class that adheres to state standards would take him at least a full workday. He asked ChatGPT to engage the task, however, and he said he had a workable outline in a few minutes. He also used it to break down the class into daily lesson plans. The 10-year veteran drama teacher said, “To me, that’s the wonder of the tool. This is one of those once-in-a-millennia technology changes.”

Experts recommend using caution when applying AI tools to complex tasks, particularly in the field of education, because the technology is still prone to making errors. Still, many educators would rather use their time rigorously fact-checking the output of an AI rather than starting from scratch.

Sarah Alvick is a social studies teacher who says AI is also helpful for teachers having difficulty engaging students with the task of writing. She said, “You’ll have a kid who sits for a whole week, saying, ‘I don’t know what to write about.’” With AI, she tells students to use it “to assist you, not to do it for you.” She is concerned about the loss of critical thinking, but seems to feel that the positives outweigh the negatives.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Technology constantly brings changes to the way we do things. We need to wisely put it to use as a tool, without it becoming a crutch or a way to avoid hard work.

55-year-old New Jersey school bus driver Herman Cruse noticed that a kindergartner seemed a little sad and out of sorts during one morning ride to Middle Township Elementary. When Cruse asked the kindergartner what was wrong, the boy explained that he couldn’t complete his reading assignment because his parents were busy with his four siblings at home to help him practice reading.

Cruse said an idea popped into his mind, since normally he just napped between his morning and afternoon routes. “I told him, ‘Listen, I have some free time, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to come to the school and read with you.’”

Cruse received permission from the six-year-old’s teacher, Alex Bakley, to show up at her kindergarten classroom the following week. When he walked in, the boy shouted, “Hey, that’s my bus driver!”

Cruse said, “We went into a quiet corner and began reading together, and it took on a life of its own. Then a second student wanted to read to me, then a third. All these kids were going to the teacher asking, ‘Can I read with Mr. Herman?’”

He and Bakley decided to call his reading circle “Mr. Herman’s Kids.” Bakley said, “He’s a bright light at our school who makes every child feel loved and heard—they’re all drawn to his energy.”

LaCotia Ruiz said her five-year-old son Kingsly is more excited about books since he started reading with Cruse. She said, “Kingsly had a rough time with reading at the beginning of the school year, but he’s doing much better because of this fun one-on-one time. In the morning he wakes up excited and says, ‘I’m going to read with Mr. Herman!’”

Cruse’s enthusiasm for his new role has caught on with his colleagues. “There’s now another bus driver who wants to help me out between his routes. What started out as a way to kill time has now blossomed into a way to make a difference in the heart of a child.”

When people like Maria Garza are released from the Logan Correctional Center in central Illinois, the staffers there don’t usually want to see them return. But in Garza’s case, they were willing to make an exception.

During her time there, Garza was enrolled in the Northwestern Prison Education Program, earning a bachelor’s degree. But since they didn’t want her release to interfere with her education, she was allowed to return to the classroom via Zoom. In her chemistry class, she’s the only one doing the experiments from home.

According to NPEP program director Jennifer Lackey, Maria was their first student to earn early release while in the program. The Illinois Department of Corrections says that most prison education programs like NPEP are so new that the directors have yet to figure out protocols for re-entry because so few of the inmates qualify for it.

One of the few other prison education programs that address re-entry is North Park University and Theological Seminary, which offers a master’s in Christian ministry through the Stateville Correctional Center. Program director Vickie Reddy says of the four students who have made re-entry during the program.

Garza is grateful to maintain the connection with her classmate. She said, “To me, it’s kind of like a comfort. There are people who would say that once they leave [prison] they detach themselves from everything. But it’s hard to detach yourself from the people that understand what you’re going through.”

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Loving others; Loving the Unlovely - When we do our best to care for incarcerated people, we are demonstrating God's love for the lost and broken. 2) Perseverance; Overcoming – Through perseverance it is possible to overcome failure and achieve goals.

In June, a group of students were honored in an off-campus commencement ceremony, being conferred with degrees from a neighboring educational institution. But unlike many pandemic-era distance learning arrangements, these students were not doing their learning from home. On the contrary, these men were residents of Statesville Correctional Center. But despite their institutional disadvantages, they earned master’s degrees in Christian Ministry and Restorative Arts from North Park University in nearby Chicago.

Michelle Clifton-Soderstrom is the former dean of faculty at North Park, and says she helped start the program because most Statesville inmates have never had access to quality education. The Statesville Restorative Arts program examines Biblical theology and history, but also includes courses on trauma, race relations, nonviolent communication, conflict transformation, restorative practices, and transformative justice.

Cook County State’s Attorney Kimberly Foxx was in attendance as the commencement speaker, and praised the graduates for their initiative. She said, “We achieve our highest calling as a community when those who have the least among us are leading the charge to get us there.”

Perhaps the best summary of the program’s significance was uttered by one of its participants, Jamal Bakr: "Our potential is not defined by our worst mistakes. Let today's event be an example of what happens when opportunities are created, potentials are unignored and complete restoration is always the aim of justice."

Possible Preaching Angle:

No one is beyond God's redemption. Even those who've done wrong can still find roles to participate in God's service.

Author Meghan O'Gieblyn, explores meaning, morality, and faith. She recalls the role of thinking and reason during her days at Bible College:

When I was a Christian, I had a naive, unquestioning faith in the faculty of higher thought, in my ability to comprehend objective truths about the world. ... People often decry the thoughtlessness of religion, but when I think back on my time in Bible school, it occurs to me that there exist few communities where thought is taken so seriously. We spent hours arguing with each other—in the dining hall, in the campus plaza—over the finer points of predestination or the legitimacy of covenant theology.

Beliefs were real things that had life-or-death consequences. A person’s eternal fate depended on a willingness to accept or reject the truth—and we believed implicitly that logic was the means of determining those truths. Even when I began to harbor doubts…. I maintained an essential trust in the notion that reason would reveal to me the truth.

Today, no longer a believer, she has her doubts:

I no longer believe in God. I have not for some time. I now live with the rest of modernity in a world that is “disenchanted.” ... I live in a university town, a place that is populated by people who consider themselves called to a “life of the mind.” Yet my friends and I rarely talk about ideas or try to persuade one another of anything. It’s understood that people come to their convictions by elusive forces: some combination of hormones, evolutionary biases, and unconscious needs. Twice a week I attend a yoga class where I am instructed to “let go of the thinking mind.”

Researchers calculate that about 530,000 fewer public school students are learning about intelligent design in 9th or 10th grade biology classes today, compared to 2007. The amount of class time science teachers spend on human evolution has also doubled in those 12 years, according to scholars at Penn State University and the National Center for Science Education. The changes come from a new generation of teachers, new textbooks, and updated education standards.

Science teachers who teach intelligent design is a valid alternative:

2007 – 8%

2019 – 5%

Science teachers who discuss intelligent design:

2007 – 23%

2019 – 14%

Science teachers who teach evolution is established science:

2007 – 51%

2019 – 67%

Many middle-school boys have memories of barbershop haircuts. But for one boy, his most memorable cut happened elsewhere. Anthony Moore is a student at Stonybrook Intermediate and Middle School, and like many boys his age, he occasionally struggles with his confidence. This explains why last February he was confronted to remove his hat, a choice that placed him in defiance of the school’s dress code.

Moore caught the attention of Jason Smith, the principal at Stonybrook. Smith said, “I sat across from him and asked, 'What's wrong? Why are you being defiant, why are you refusing to take your hat off? It's a pretty simple request. And he explained that his parents took him to get a haircut and he didn't like the results."

What Moore didn’t know is that his principal, Mr. Smith, moonlights as a barber. "I told him, 'Look, I've been cutting hair since I was your age,' and I showed him pictures of my son's haircuts that I did and some of me cutting hair in college. And I said, 'If I run home and get my clippers and fix your line, will you go back to class? He hesitated but then he said yes."

After getting his parents’ consent, Smith retrieved the clippers and fixed Moore’s haircut. Smith said, “He didn't say straight out, but I feel like he didn't want to be laughed at. The barbershop and haircuts as Black males are very important in the community and looking your best and being sharp--it's just a cultural aspect."

Smith said he followed up with Moore and verified that he was abiding by the rules, learning in the classroom, sans hat. Smith said, “All behavior is communication and when a student is struggling, we need to ask ourselves what happened to this child instead of what's wrong with the child. What need is the child trying to get met and really, the future of urban education rests on that question."

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) When we encounter someone in distress and we have an opportunity to meet that need, we honor God as Creator, both of the person with the need as well as the creator of the talent that could meet that need. 2) When we encounter rebellion, especially in a young person, we must look deeper than the superficial.

Writing systems are thousands of years old and are found in ancient Sumer, China, and Egypt. But even in the most literate ancient societies only a small fraction of people ever learned to read, rarely more than 10 percent. So, when did people decide that everyone should learn to read?

The move toward mass literacy began in the 16th century with the belief that every person should read and interpret the Bible for themselves. This belief began to rapidly diffuse across Europe with the eruption of the Protestant Reformation. It was initiated in 1517 by Martin Luther’s delivery of his famous 95 theses. Protestants came to believe that children had to study the Bible for themselves to better know their God. In the wake of the spread of Protestantism, the literacy rates in Britain, Sweden, and the Netherlands rose. Motivated by eternal salvation, parents and leaders made sure the children learned to read.

Religious beliefs also helped spur the beginning of state-funded schooling. As early as 1524, Martin Luther emphasized the need for parents to ensure their children’s literacy and placed the responsibility for creating schools on secular governments. In the 16th century, reformer John Knox pressured the Scottish government to initiate free public education for all children. One of his reasons was that everyone should have the skills to study the Bible.

Over the course of several months, Peter Skillman conducted a study pitting the skill of elite university students against that of the average kindergartner. Groups of four built structures using 20 pieces of spaghetti, 1 yard of tape, 1 yard of string, and 1 marshmallow. The only rule, the marshmallow had to end up on top.

Business students began by diagnosing the task, formulating a solution, and assigning roles. The kindergarteners, by contrast, got right to work, trying, failing, and trying again. Author Daniel Coyle explains the outcome, “We presume skilled individuals will combine to produce skilled performance.” But this assumption is wrong. In dozens of trials, the kindergartners built structures that averaged 26 inches tall, while the business school students built structures that averaged less than 10 inches.

We see smart, experienced business school students, and we find it difficult to imagine that they would combine to produce a poor performance. We see unsophisticated, inexperienced kindergartners, and we find it difficult to imagine that they would combine to produce a successful performance . . . individual skills are not what matters. What matters is the interaction.

The kindergartners succeed not because they are smarter but because they work together in a smarter way. They are tapping into a simple and powerful method in which a group of ordinary people can create a performance far beyond the sum of their parts.

The son of a scientist and a doctor, Jad Abumrad, is co-host of Radiolab one of public radio’s most popular shows today. In a TED talk in 2020, Abumrad talked about his approach:

From 2002 to 2010, I did hundreds of science-y, neuroscience-y, very heady, brainy stories that would always resolve into that feeling of wonder. And I began to see that as my job, to lead people to moments of wonder. Now, I love science, don't get me wrong. But there was something about that simple movement from science to wonder that just started to feel wrong to me. Like, is that the only path a story can take?

Around 2012, I ran into a bunch of different stories that made me think, No. One story in particular, where we interviewed a guy who described chemical weapons being used against him and his fellow villagers in Laos. Western scientists went there, (tested) for chemical weapons, (but) didn't find any. We interviewed the man about this. He said the scientists were wrong. We said, “But they tested.” He said, “I don't care, I know what happened to me.” And we went back and forth and back and forth, and make a long story short, the interview ended in tears.

I felt horrible. Like, hammering at a scientific truth, when someone has suffered. That wasn't going to heal anything. And maybe I was relying too much on science to find the truth.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This same misplaced reliance happens in the arena of faith and science. Some trust so heavily in man’s scientific wisdom, which can soon become outdated, that they fail to see God’s eternal truth. As Romans says, “professing themselves to be wise, they became fools (Rom. 1:19)

A single mom was heartbroken after her teenaged daughter was sentenced to Juvenile Hall. What was the offense that warranted such a punishment? Failing to finish her homework. ProPublica reported that Charisse and her teenage daughter Grace were given a strict warning from Judge Mary Ellen Brennan of Oakland County after Grace was placed on probation following theft and assault charges.

Brennan said, “I told her she was on thin ice and I told her that I was going to hold her to the letter of the probation.” She required that Grace submit to GPS monitoring, counseling, visits from a case worker, restrictions on phone and internet access, and keep up with her schoolwork.

The problem arose after Grace’s school responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Charisse, Grace’s mood disorder and ADHD required an individualized education plan that mandated extra teacher support to help keep her on track with assignments. Once classes went online, that support went away.

Nevertheless, new caseworker Rachel Giroux heard in a check-in that Grace had fallen asleep during class and failed to turn in an assignment. Giroux filed a violation of probation report on Grace, despite failing to check in with Grace’s teacher to verify her progress. After the violation was filed, Grace’s teacher told Giroux that she was “not out of alignment with most of my other students.” But that failed to change her mind. Giroux asked the judge to place Grace in detention because she “clearly doesn’t want to abide by the rules in the community.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

In our effort to train up our young people, our punitive actions should be guided by grace and mercy as acts of restoration, not retribution, lest we sentence punishments that make things worse in the long run.

Robert Coles, a former professor at Harvard published an article titled “The Disparity Between Intellect and Character.” The piece was about “the task of connecting intellect to character.” He adds, “This task is daunting.”

His essay was occasioned by an encounter with one of his students over the moral insensitivity—is it hard for him to say “immoral behavior of other students, some of the best and brightest at Harvard.” This student was a young woman of “a Midwestern, working class background” where, as is well known, things like “right answers” and “ideology” remain strong. She cleaned student rooms to help pay her way through the university.

Again and again, she reported to Coles, people who were in classes with her treated her ungraciously because of her lower economic position, without simple courtesy and respect, and often were rude and sometimes crude to her. She was repeatedly propositioned for sex by one young student in particular as she went about her work. He was a man with whom she had had two “moral reasoning” courses, in which he excelled and received the highest of grades.

This pattern of treatment led her to quit her job and leave school—and to have something like an exit interview with Coles. She reviewed not only the behavior of her fellow students, but also the long list of highly educated people who have perpetrated the atrocities for which the twentieth century is famous. She concluded by saying to him, “I’ve been taking all these philosophy courses, and we talk about what’s true, what’s important, what’s good. Well, how do you teach people to be good? What’s the point of knowing good if you don’t keep trying to become a good person?”