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How do you imbed the fruit of the Spirit into your classroom? Or, if you haven’t previously considered this, how might you go about it now?
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One simple way our school encourages students to practice the fruit of the Spirit, is by giving out the Christian Character award at the end of each semester. Each classroom picks one boy and one girl who really showed the fruit of the Spirit and we recognize them before the school. One way I do it in my classroom is at the beginning of each year we write out actions the students want to be rewarded for and I tell them it must be an action of the fruit of the Spirit. When I see that action throughout the year I may give them a piece of candy or verbally recognize them.
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I try to keep coming back to a society people want to live in will be a biblical society. We all want to be treated with kindness, courtesy, compassion, patience, and humility. We don’t like when there is not trust, love, forgiveness, and it is just harsh criticism. No one likes to be bullied or scorned or hated. We all want to live in a society where we are accepted and embraced with human dignity and respect. These are biblical values. I try to get students to get outside the idea that there are all these rules that they have to follow, but what would it look like for them if there were no rules. Would they really like being picked on, beat up and put down. Christian values, the fruit of the Spirit does not allow those things. It precludes them by treating people with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, always trusting, always forgiving. Proverbs repeatedly exhorts us to be people of thought. We don’t just act out of emotion. We act out of the knowledge of God’s principles he has set in place so we could live free.
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One way I imbed the fruit of the Spirit into my classroom is by repeating, repeating, and repeating. Our theme verse and song for the 2nd grade is 1 Corinthians 13 4-7. We learn and sing it the first day of school, we learn the sign language and motions to it. And, we reference it frequently throughout the year. When students are acting out in course, good and bad, I will start humming the tune and all 20 sweet voices will immediately start singing the verse. I like how Katie was showing love. How was she doing this? By showing kindness to Joe. Thanks Katie, and everybody says “thanks Katie”. Or. Group #4, I was hearing something that was not very Loving. What was it? I heard Amy be rude to Auri. What can we do differently? I wait for a few responses, then say, “thanks group #4”, and everybody says “thanks group 4”. Eventually, all I have to ask is, was that showing Love? When the student answers yes or no, I ask why? They learn to reference 1 Corinthians 13 4-7 with specific examples from God’s Word.
