Touching the Hearts of Students

by George Adrian Van Grieken and Br. George Van Grieken FSC

This volume is a resource for teachers, administrators, board members and all who are engaged in Lasallian educational ministries today. It reflects on the life and times of De La Salle and the early... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1884904181
• ISBN13: 9781884904189
• Release Date: September 2015
• Publisher: Christian Brothers Publications
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Excellent Overview of Lasallian Mission and Pedagogy

Van Grieken's discussion of the characteristics of Lasallian schools has been invaluable for my dissertation research on a Lasallian university. The book compiles information that is otherwise scattered among biographies of Saint John Baptist de La Salle, internal documents for the Brothers of the Christian Schools, and commentaries and interpretations on the first two. In particular, Van Grieken provides more (and more helpful) information on the theory and practice of Lasallian pedagogy than I have found elsewhere. I highly recommend Touching the Hearts of Students for anyone teaching at a Lasallian school or anyone doing research on Lasallian education and pedagogy.

Review from the Journal "Catholic Education"

Introduction by Sister Mary Peter Traviss, O.P. University of San Francisco"...Van Grieken's Touching the Hearts of Students contributes to an understanding of the current work of religious communities who are using their expertise in operating Catholic schools to prepare the laity to assume leadership of these schools. Written in the tradition of [Saint John Baptist de] La Salle's famous instructions to teachers, the book is logically laid out with great attention to detail. The reviewer captures the spirit of the book and its message."Book review by Brother Jeffrey Gros, FSC"As the age of the laity emerges, providing vision and formation for Catholic schools formerly staffed by religious remains a challenge and an opportunity. Religious communities are developing training programs, literature, and inservice processes for empowering lay educators in their mission as Catholic educators, drawing on the tradition of the sponsoring community.This volume is an important contribution to that literature. While this book emerges out of the tradition of a particular community, as the subtitle notes, the fact that it deals with the Catholic patron of all teachers, John Baptist de La Salle, and that it is designed in a practical, concrete way, gives it a more universal usefulness than just a resource for schools in the tradition of the De La Salle Christian Brothers. The book includes five chapters, a useful annotated bibliography, and three appendices.The first chapter situates Catholic education today, as religious communities are in the process of moving into shared mission with lay colleagues and of providing support for the merging lay leadership in the schools. Developing this vision is enhanced by grounding that vision in the particular narrative which gave rise to it. The second chapter traces the life and times of De La Salle. The third chapter elaborates the educational vision that has emerged in the Church from the vision and practice of this tradition.Much of modern Catholic education is grounded in the 18th- and 19th-century movements focused in the heritage of De La Salle. The most well known of those contributions are the simultaneous method and the vernacular language. The chapter that will be most useful for administrators envisioning programs and processes for board and faculty development is the fifth, which focuses on the vision and practice for today. After laying out 10 operative commitments for an educational spirituality emerging from the spirit of faith and zeal, the author provides a detailed reflective process for enhancing the internalization of these commitments. In each section the text delineates consequences for students, teachers, teaching activity, and the teacher-student relationship. With these brief expository segments are included appropriate quotations and follow-up questions. While the quotations here are from De La Salle and Christian Brothers literature, they can as easily b