Signs of Change: Daniel's Bulletin Board

Walking past the computer room of Meadow Hall School in Lagos, Nigeria, Shelia Dykstra remembers noticing a bright new bulletin board that illustrated some connections between the Christian faith and technology.

Dykstra, a Christian Reformed World Missions missionary, was making a return visit to the school after leading a lecture for a graduate-teacher training program there a few months before.

After seeing the bulletin board, she knew she had made an impact on one of her trainees named Daniel.

“Daniel had been a quiet, very reflective participant,” she said. “He is someone who takes in training, but is thinking all along how it can be put into action.”

As a Christian education consultant in West Africa, Dykstra mentors Christian school leaders, helping them apply a biblical worldview to their teaching. For Daniel, this meant applying the Christian faith to information and communication technology.

Daniel created a bulletin board in his classroom that showed technology from a biblical view. It featured several key people in the development of the Internet and also illustrated God’s hand in creating new technology.

Dykstra had taught a session on creating meaningful bulletin boards for classrooms and now she was happy to see the lesson put into action.

 “You don’t usually see bulletin boards of this quality in the school,” she said. “Usually, they just slap a quote on the wall.”

Exploring a Christian worldview can be especially challenging in Nigeria, a country where teachers find their education system plagued with bribery and corruption.

“Teachers come to school late,” Dykstra explained. “Some simply prepare a note for the children to copy and some are caught lashing out in anger at a student or class.”

Oftentimes, teachers in Nigeria simply lecture to their students without getting feedback from them. So, another challenge for Daniel and other teachers has been learning how to use more interactive teaching methods.

But from the teaching sessions, Daniel discovered the benefits of moving away from one-way communication and he began using new teaching methods.

“I now make the students do a little research on the Internet at the start of class,” said Daniel. “Then we discuss what they have found and I explain the topic more.”

Today, Daniel stays in contact with Dykstra, sharing the progress he has made and looking to improve his teaching further. Daniel mentioned that he started asking more open-ended questions to promote discussion and also added some hands-on projects to his class.

“It is not often that teachers come back and share exactly how they are putting ideas into practice in their classroom,” said Dykstra. “But when they do, it’s really encouraging.”