Teaching can have an outward focus, engaging with the local community and the world, bringing the wider world into the classroom or taking the learner out. Teachers can invite visitors to come and be interviewed, and church musicians can be invited to a music class. Teachers can relate learning to wider issues of faith and values relating to what is going on society. For example, teaching about integrity in science and writing up experiments truthfully can relate to the integrity (or lack thereof) shown in current events. Insights learned in the classroom—such as thinking of people as whole, not just as bodies or minds or spirits—can be applied to society.

  • Teachers can invite members of the local church community to come share what the church does as part of a lesson on serving the community. Teachers can arrange for students to cook for the elderly and invite members of the community into the school to be served. People can be interviewed about faith in a religion class.
  • Teachers can use case studies of real situations in history—such as child workers on cocoa farms—as a way of drawing parallels between campaigns for change in the past and campaigns today. Teachers can arrange for learners to interview members of their family and friends about their likes and dislikes for modern foreign languages so that they can reflect the thoughts, feelings, and choices of people in the community, rather than just their own preferences and opinions.

Examples such as this show the role faith can play across the curriculum and how it can be related to life.