Kim Essenburg, English 10 teacher, shares how she plans to incorporate creation-fall-redemption-restoration into her grammar unit.

What’s the focus of your grammar unit?
Kim: The content and skills focus of the unit is identifying the various parts of speech, parts of a sentence, phrases, and clauses. One of the unit’s essential questions I use to give a reason for learning the content and skills is “How does knowing grammar help me learn other languages?”

What led you to incorporate creation-fall-redemption-restoration?
Kim: One of my English periods is first period. We have an extra 5 minutes at the beginning of the period to allow for attendance and devotions. I do a 2 or 3 minute devotional every day that connects somehow to what we are studying.

As I came up with Bible passages that had to do with languages, I found that what was new and intriguing to my students was contrasting the 2 stories of Babel and Pentecost. At Babel, God made people unable to understand each other to separate them in order to prevent greater rebellion. At Pentecost, God made people able to understand each other to bring them together in order to hear His solution to separation and rebellion.

I thought, “That sounds like the core of a creation-fall-redemption-restoration pattern.” I also thought that I’d like to articulate that pattern clearly and concisely enough to be able to teach it in the other sections of my class that didn’t have the extra minutes at the beginning of the period.

What do you want your students to learn?
Kim: I want them to learn God’s purpose for languages, how sin impacted languages, the difference Jesus makes, and how we can use different languages to help restore God’s broken world.

Here are the specifics:

Creation: At creation, language was used to build shalom...

1. Between people and God: God used language to bless people and give them a job (Gen. 1.28-30), to give guidance (Gen. 2.16-17), and to supply people’s needs (Gen. 2.18)
2. Between people and other people: Adam used language to greet Eve (Gen. 2.23).
3. Between people and creation: Adam used language to carry out his God-given job of naming the animals (Gen. 2.19-30). 

Fall: At the fall (Gen. 3), language was used to break shalom...

1. Between people and God: Satan used language to twist God’s words (Gen. 3.1), contradict God’s words (Gen. 3.4), and question God’s good intent (Gen. 3.5). Eve used language to exaggerate God’s words (Gen. 3.3). Adam used language to equivocate and to blame God (Gen. 3.12). God used language to curse people and to make the job He had given them difficult (Gen. 3.16-19)
2. Between people and other people: Adam used it to shift blame to Eve (Gen. 3.12). Eventually, at Babel, God put a cap on united rebellion by creating language barriers and thus separating people (Gen. 11.1-9). 

Redemption: Jesus died to redeem us from the alienating force of which the diversity of languages is a sign. The Holy Spirit miraculously demonstrated this at Pentecost in order to proclaim Jesus’ redemptive work (Acts 2.5-12) and in the early church in order to demonstrate the unity that Jesus’ redemptive work makes possible (Acts 10.46 and 11.15-18, Acts 19.5-6, 1 Cor. 12.4-31).

Restoration: God’s ultimate plan is to restore shalom. Overcoming language barriers is both a sign of and a tool for doing this.

1. Both Old and New Testaments picture God’s ultimate plan for people of many different languages to worship him together (Zeph. 3.9, Rev. 5.9, 7.9). 
2. To join with God in bringing this plan into being, Christians are to go to people of all languages to proclaim the redemption from isolation from God and each other made possible by Jesus (Matt.28.19-20, Mark 16.15, Acts 1.8, Romans 14.11-12).
3. In the meantime, God also wants people to use gifts of different languages to serve Him and others, as many Bible characters did, including Joseph (Gen. 39-41), Moses (Acts 7.22), and Daniel (Dan.1.3-4).

This blog entry addresses the following Biblical perspective teacher training benchmarks:

• 2.2. Explain the creation-fall-redemption-fulfillment/restoration framework.
• 4.5. Articulate a Biblical perspective of the content and skills they teach.