Calvin Names Carvill Winner of Teaching Award

February 13, 2004 == MEDIA ADVISORY

Beginning at age 10, when she and her family fled East Germany, Barbara Carvill
has often felt like the new person in a strange place. But at most stops along
the way she was made to feel welcome and she's never forgotten what that was
like.

So it's perhaps no surprise that her teaching career at Calvin College has been
marked by a passion to create community in her classrooms, to make all of her
students feel welcome.

And now that passion has earned her Calvin's highest faculty honor - the
Presidential Award for Exemplary Teaching. The award includes a one-of-a-kind
medallion and provides the winner with a significant financial stipend thanks
to the George B. and Margaret K. Tinholt Endowment Fund, set up at Calvin by an
anonymous donor in honor of George Tinholt, a former member of the Calvin Board
of Trustees.

Carvill says her teaching philosophy is tied pretty closely to the arc of her
life, a story that had its first upheaval in1950 when, as a young girl, she
fled the Communist-controlled eastern part of Germany for the U.S.-controlled
west. It was there Carvill had the one experience in her life where she, as a
newcomer, was not made to feel welcome.

"They (the Germans in the west) had very little," Carvill recalls, "and
disliked all the refugees from the East. We definitely did not feel welcomed
there. I remember feeling very estranged and forlorn."

Carvill contrasts that experience with the welcome she felt when she came to
Calvin in 1978 as a recent widow and mother of a four-year-old daughter.
Carvill had been teaching at Toronto District Christian High School and working
on a Ph.D. at the University of Toronto, while also involved with her husband,
Robert, in a myriad of activities at the Institute for Christian Studies. When
their daughter was born in 1973, she was baptized in a Christian Reformed
Church and the Carvill family joined the CRC. That chain of events led to an
offer to come to Calvin.

"I was invited by Calvin to apply for a job in the German department," she
says, "because they wanted a native German speaker and preferably a person from
the CRC."

Carvill begins to smile as she continues.

"We had joined the CRC, and I was a native speaker - so I was probably the only
person on the whole continent with these qualifications," she says with a
chuckle.

Regardless of the circumstances, the move from Toronto to Grand Rapids proved a
good fit for both Calvin and Carvill, especially after the death of Robert from
leukemia in 1975.

"I was well received here," she says. "People took me in right from the
beginning. I never felt an outsider here. I came to a good department with
wonderful talented and appreciative colleagues. I was truly welcomed as a
stranger."

Almost a quarter of a century later, Carvill and colleague David Smith would
write a ground-breaking book on foreign language instruction called The Gift of
the Stranger: Faith, Hospitality, and Foreign Language Learning.

Coincidence? Carvill says no.

"Having been welcomed into this community," she says, "I wanted to give
something back, to show how important the virtue of hospitality is in life."

Jim Lamse, a former colleague of Carvill's, recalls a vivid demonstration of
Carvill's commitment to this ideal.

Carvill had been asked to speak at the closing banquet in Chengdu as part of a
summer workshop for Chinese English teachers sponsored by the English Language
Institute China (ELIC). She first wrote out her speech in English, but with
great deference to the Chinese style of speechmaking, which she had taken the
time to study. But when it was her turn to speak, the audience was astounded
to hear her present her thoughts in their language. She had the speech
translated and recorded for her in Mandarin Chinese so that she could memorized
it with the correct pronunciation.

Says Lamse: "It was a speech and an evening those in attendance would never
forget. She honored their traditions and took the trouble to learn their
language. But that's Barbara, at home or abroad, living out lovingly and with
delight the hospitable message of Scripture and the loving ethos of our
department."

Former students of Carvill echo Lamse's benediction.

In writing to support Carvill's nomination for the teaching award, one former
student said: "Not only did I learn to read and interpret German literature,
but I also learned to perceive the literature through the eyes of faith." She
added: "Faith was not something that was left outside the classroom door in
Frau Carvill's class."

Another student wrote: "Professor Carvill taught me the meaning of hard work
and doing my best. This was not simply because she assigned more work in her
class, but because she made me want to actually learn the material."

Such words warm Carvill's heart because they reflect her teaching philosophy.

"I like creating a classroom atmosphere," she says, "in which I want to give my
best. If the students have my best, they will learn best."

Carvill admits that some learners are tougher to reach than others, adding that
early in her career she was too quick to dismiss such students. Now, she says,
she works harder to connect with them, to get through the facades students
sometimes erect and to find hidden gifts that they may bring to the classroom.
Usually, she says, she is successful in this attempt.

And then both she and her students share an important gift: a classroom where
connections are made and learning is not a stranger.

For the full story see
http://www.calvin.edu/news/releases/2003_04/carvill.htm

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Received on Thu Feb 12 18:28:15 2004