Classroom Oikos: Information, Imitation, Innovation: Teaching

   In teaching, there is a strategy we use to model new ideas to students called "I do, we do, you do". This follows the information, imitation, innovation discipleship triangle. It is not only important to go through these steps for your own discipleship but also to help those you are discipling through these stages as well.

"I do"

       When I am teaching a new concept to students, I need to not only show them how I work through the concept but I have to share with them my thought process as well. When we want to introduce a new idea to those we are discipling, we have to show them how it looks in our lives and be open with our thought processes. 

"We do"

       After I have showed students how to do something, then it's their turn to practice. They practice in a safe environment where I can help them if they get stuck. It also helps me to see their thought processes so I can clear up misconceptions. When we are discipling, we have to let those we are leading practice what we teach. We need to be there while they practice so we can help them if and when they stumble. 

"You do"

       Once the students have seen me do something then had some practice with me there to help them, they are ready to work on their own. In discipleship, our goal is to make disciples that make disciples. At some point, we have to be ready to let them go and make disciples on their own. 

       If you aren't discipling people yet, what's stopping you? If you are, what stage are your disciples in? Do they need you to show them a living example of what you want them to know? Do they need guided practice? Or is it time to let them go?  Comment below!

Classroom Oikos: Information, Imitation, Innovation: Becoming a Teacher

One of the best things about the teacher training I had was that it followed the discipleship triangle of information---> imitation---> innovation. Discipleship is kind of like apprenticeship, learning to become like someone, do what they do. This is how I became a teacher.

Discipleship Triangle

Information

In college, I was majoring in elementary education. I had professors at Valparaiso University that introduced me to guided reading, professors at Joliet Junior College who taught me the psychology of children and professors at University of Missouri- St. Louis that introduced me to teaching philosophies. Then I went to graduate school and had professors that taught me behavior management strategies, strategies for working with students with special needs and strategies for working in urban environments. I was chock-full of helpful teacher information and ready for the next stage. 

Imitation 

In my last year of graduate school, I had a practicum where I worked with small groups of gifted fifth graders on math and a small group of second graders on reading. I observed their teachers to learn how they put strategies into practice. Then I had my student teaching. I watched a second grade teacher in her room, watched her pacing, her questioning and her organization. Then I took over her class to do what she did. After that, they said I was ready for the final stage. 

Innovation

I was given my own first grade classroom starting Fall 2013. I used my knowledge of guided reading, behavior management, and working in an urban environment coupled with my experience of building student-teacher relationships, lesson pacing and organization to start teaching the group of 18 six-year-olds. I had many questions and several mentors. I was able to go to them to get information or watch them to imitate them with things I had never done until I could start doing it in a way that fit me and my classroom. 

Doing missional community requires the same three stages. Get information about missional communities, what they are, how to do them and where to start them. At this point there are two common mistakes. One is that in our information-saturated world, it is easy to stay in the "information" stage. There are many people in the education that have a lot of information about classrooms that make decisions about how classrooms should be run without any of the imitation or innovation and that cause a lot of damage for the classrooms they oversee. Information is important. However, it is impossible to make effective changes with just knowing a lot about something. 

The other mistake we tend to make is to go from information to innovation without doing any imitating. Any teacher that I know that didn't do student teaching, did not survive a year. These are intelligent, strong, loving people that did not have the proper support to succeed. No one showed them how to do it. With that said, find someone who is doing missional communities and follow them. We do coaching huddles, partake in a learning community and are a part of TOM to network with other people "doing the stuff". Set yourself up for success. 

Once you've read about and followed people doing missional communities, then you're ready to innovate. Find new ways to integrate yourself into the community you are reaching out to. Take the things you learned from the people you read and people you followed and make them work in your context. 

So where do you find yourself? Do you need information? What topic can we help you find information on? Do you need people to imitate? What is your goal and how can we help you connect to people doing that? Do you need to innovate? Tell us your thoughts below. 

Classroom Oikos: Introduction

I have decided to start a new series I'm calling "Classroom Oikos". It will be on lessons I've learned as a classroom teacher about living as a family on mission. This series will take any series that Jarred comes up with, monthly updates from our Oikos and guest writers' series, all of which are in the works. 

As a note of privacy, students names will be changed as will any coworkers that have asked me to keep their names private.

The classroom is not a perfect example of Oikos for a few reasons:

1. The students are assigned to me as opposed to me finding people of peace. This means they might not want to be a part of the family but they don't really have a choice. 

2. Although we do have a mission of sorts (different depending on who you ask), there isn't an "out" component as far as trying to bring outsiders in.

3. There is no multiplicative element to a classroom that you would want in an Oikos. 

Despite those differences, the classroom is a GREAT example of Oikos for a few reasons:

1. Discipleship is the number one focus within the classroom, building both character and competency in every area of life

2. The student-teacher relationship is very similar to the spiritual children-spiritual parent relationship that is seen in Oikos.  

3. We are in the classroom over 30 hours a week which gives us the life on life component that Oikos strives for. 

I hope you enjoy the stories and more than that, I hope you can gain some insight into the workings of missional communities. 

This is the school where all the magic happens. 

October 2015

       Unfortunately, the Cubs were out of the running for the World Series very quickly into October. That allowed us to stay focused on family, church planting and investing in some key people. 

Most of the energy of the month went to my new fourth grade class. Because of the staple rhythms we had in place, we were able to help a friend in crisis, prepare a sermon, cast vision for our family, do the Residency + intensive, and continue to build covenant with new people despite the class being one of the highest priorities. 

October ended up being a time of God really continuing to build into us.  We realize that as pioneers within our context, we are going to be looked at and to by people wanting to learn more about and/or do missional lifestyles. Since we are not doing it great yet by any stretch of the imagination, our strength will be in transparency and relationship. God is continuing to bring avenues for us to build relationships that are also making us more visible. 

Our missional community is getting ready to move into a new season in which we will be raising up new leaders. With Katy and Jarred foreseeing a lot of energy going towards the bakery in the coming months we are looking for the next group of people the we can start a huddle with to bring up leaders that can continue breaking ground in the community.

Katy and Jon handing out candy to the neighbors. We over doubled the amount of kids we handed out candy to from last year (up from 10 to 25). We are counting it as a measure of growth!

Robert decided that Hope Vineyard would take part in a Learning Community. We have realized that this is still the best way to get connected with the 3DM movement. Because of the current nature of the LCs, I personally won't be able to go to the immersions.  Jarred will be able to go. Besides the people in Robert's huddle, there are two more people going, one out of personal interest and another to observe. 

As we look to getting into the swing of the holiday season that is upcoming, we are excited for a few things. First, we will be completing the first quarter of Residency + which is exciting because the next quarters will be more hands on as far as church planting goes. Second, we will be doing some covenant time with the people in our family that we will start huddling in the next season. Finally, we are looking forward to our annual time of retreat that happens in this season. 

This is the final post that we will have about our story for the foreseeable future. Our purpose in writing this blog was first and foremost transparency. We also wanted to share with people who wanted to start doing missional communities how our start looked. We still have a wealth of knowledge/access to knowledge about starting missional communities so we would like to offer the upcoming season of the blog up to those of you that are desiring to start missional living in your own lives. So tell us, how can we be supportive? What questions do you have? What information do you need? What strategies can we help you with? We will be looking to have guests writers and the more direction we get from you our readers, the more applicable it can be! Thanks for your input!

Love, 

The Irby's

September 2015

        September brought less rhythms than we had anticipated. We realized we might be in a longer period of rest than we had thought. The rhythms that have stuck so far have been really great. 

We have continued to do family dinners every other Sunday. The attendance at the dinners has been much like it was a year ago at this time; we have a few regulars and many people coming through for a visit. 

There were three "Irby family" rhythms that we tried to keep up. In order of least successful to most successful:

1. We made dinners for the week on Saturday. Jarred and I kept up with that and one time we had an apartment full of people join us. It was tons of fun and everyone who came was super grateful for the meals. We will still try inviting people in October. 

2. Our "Fear the Walking Dead" nights were pretty regularly attended but not by the same people. With the end of the season approaching, we will decide if it is a rhythm to keep up for "The Walking Dead". 

3. Every morning Jarred and I eat breakfast together. We realized that we eat breakfast at around the same time Courtney gets off work. Since she's near by, we invited her to come over when she gets off and eat with us. It has been a great time of connecting and fellowshipping.

Full freezer after a Saturday of cooking with friends. 

       We had another 3DM pilgrimage.  The day before was a TOM dinner. It was awesome to connect with people of the TOM family and break bread with them. Several people we had met before and many we had met through covenant huddles or Facebook so it was nice to finally see them face to face. The 3DM pilgrimage was almost an extension of that. There were about 50 people, many of whom were in TOM and the covenant relationship was definitely forefront. 

Our Residency+ class started. We got off to a slow sort which caused us to do a little cramming. The dynamics of the group are not what we would have expected. Jarred and I are the only two that are church planting and Jarred is the only male. We are excited to see what God will be teaching us through this process. 

In the later part of the month, my class assignment got changed from first grade to forth grade.  It did not start right away because my principal was trying to prevent the change from needing to happen.  The assignment starts the first Monday of October. 

As we look forward to October, the new group of kids is only the tip of the iceberg for what we are excited about. We are hoping to begin forming the team we want to launch our church plant with.   We are exited to continue in the Residency. And we are hoping to watch the Cubbies win the World Series.