Teaching That Reaching Hand

Mrs. Katie Dumire, one of our veteran teachers here at Maranatha who teaches both sixth grade math and Bible, is on the frontlines of integrating God’s Word into everything that she does. “In Bible, my curriculum is all about worldview. We talk about the different worldviews, and then that leads us to pointing toward our worldview as our Christian worldview.” In Bible, it’s easier to discuss a biblical worldview because the entire class is framed around it. In math, however, “you have to be more intentional.”

One of the things that we’re doing here is teaching students how to be in the world, but not of the world. As Christians, you should feel a little out of place sometimes. - Mrs. Dumire

When discussing how she integrates a biblical worldview into her math class, Mrs. Dumire put it like this, “My goal as a math teacher is to have enough Word inside of me where I’m kind of spilling out.” She also likes to frame math for her students as looking at it from a more broad perspective in relation to the Bible. “God is a God of order. God is a God of making everything right, and that is math right there.”

Taking biblical integration beyond the classroom, Mrs. Dumire explained that sixth grade is the perfect time for students to really have genuine opportunities to practice what they are learning about how to treat one another. Not everyone gets along in middle school, and yet helping steer kids in the right direction of how to handle working with someone that you don’t get along with, how to practice showing empathy, love, and kindness with someone you don’t like is huge. “We focus so hard on our relationship with Christ, and then kind of bringing that to a relationship with all of our classmates.” This isn’t always easy for the sixth graders, but if our goal is to raise up kids who stand strong for Christ, it all begins right here in middle school.

When asked about what makes Maranatha different from any other school, Mrs. Dumire's response was, “One of the things that we’re doing here is teaching students how to be in the world, but not of the world. As Christians, you should feel a little out of place sometimes.” She went on to talk about how oftentimes new students coming into Maranatha are a bit shocked that there’s a standard. A standard for how to treat each other, a standard for what words we don’t say, and a standard for how we both embrace each other and build each other up. No matter if someone is struggling with something deep, or perhaps just having a really rough day, sixth grade students have what it takes to make a difference and reach out to help those in need.