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Share your story of how you came to be where you are in Christian education. Have you shared this story with your students?
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117 Replies
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To be honest, I teach at a Catholic School. I grew up Christian and have been and remain a Protestant Christian. Upon becoming a teacher, I worked at it in the public school system because that is where I got my first job. After not being able to handle it anymore, I looked for Christian school jobs, but the only school that would give me a chance is a Catholic School. I am pretty much the only non Catholic that I see daily, but I do have conversations with everyone, and yes, the kids are aware of my story.
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I grew up as a Muslim in Hayward, CA. The majority of my family is Muslim as well. However, after I left for college at UCSB, I began to fall away from Islam and became involved in the party lifestyle. After a few years at UCSB, I began to explore meditation and Buddhism. Throughout this process, I enjoyed the meditation process of calming my anxiousness in music performance.
One day at a temple, we were doing our meditation walk, and at the end of the ritual, I bowed down to a buddha statue. However, I heard a voice say, “That’s not God.” Since that day, I stopped going to the temple. I soon after began dating this girl in southern California. She invited me to my first church service at the end of 2015. The service really intrigued me and I felt a connection with God for the first time. It was an opportunity to have a relationship with God, not just a routine. From there, I moved to Iowa for grad school. The second day in Iowa, someone invited me to church. I began attending weekly and was given a bible. Through reading, church, and the love of God, I became a follower of Christ. The members at the congregation really shared the love of God with me by patiently discipling me week by week and becoming like my second family. After a year of studying the word and attending church, I felt a nudge from the Holy Spirit to give my life to Christ. I was baptized in a Church of Christ in Iowa, in January 2017. Since then, I have been walking with Christ steadily. God has slowly grown my faith and understanding of His heart over the years.
It wasn’t until 2019 when God called me into teaching. I had been performing music and God really caught my heart to surrender my vocation and to really pursue teaching. To really pour into the next generation of youth. I have shared this with my students as well. -
I began formal Christian education when I enrolled my children in private Christian school. I began Christian education at home with my own children from birth.
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I have taught in public and private schools(Christian and non Christian). I left teaching elementary schools and started teaching preschool. I was teaching preschool for a while in Florida. God relocated us from Florida to Virginia. I was an aide at a Christian school that I stared working at after we moved. They were looking for teachers and they asked me. I prayed and felt that God was leading me to teach again in Christian education.
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I never would have ended up at my school if God had not put all the steps in place. I was working previously in a public school where my daughter attended, and became very disillusioned with some of what they were teaching. My daughter asked to switch to a Christian school, and we slowly warmed up to the idea and enrolled her, though we did not know how we would pay for it. At the same time, I was starting my teacher training program, and noticed a job posting at the Christian school my daughter was soon to be attending, that had been there for a while. The job posting was for exactly the position I would want to be in – middle school social studies. Since the position had been open for months, I eventually inquired as to whether or not they would hire me though I did not yet have my teaching degree. The rest is history! I never would have valued the importance of a Christian education if I had not seen firsthand what was happening in the public schools in my area. So God was working it all together for a reason.
