As in almost any school, at Lighthouse the primary locus of the encounter between teachers and students was in the classroom. In the case of Lighthouse, this meant that the classroom was also the place where the teachers could most count on having the kinds of conversations called for by the mission of the school. In other words, it was the principal site for beginning and sustaining discussions of a religious or spiritual nature. The curriculum outlined in the previous chapter was designed precisely for this purpose.

As explained in Chapter 3, I observed three classes in detail, attending the great majority of class meetings, recording them and taking notes. In this chapter, I will share some of my observations, in particular of the classes taught by Allie in the fall and by Sydney in the spring. For reasons that I'll explain later, Taryn's spring class designed around the novel The Shack (Young, 2007) proved somewhat less relevant from a research point of view. Nevertheless, there were some very interesting data and I include a section on this class toward the end of the chapter. But most of my comments and analysis will focus on the other two classes.

Given the number of classroom recordings I made – 11 in the first semester and 33 in the second for a total of 44 – it was neither practical nor desirable to prepare full transcripts. Moreover, I knew what it was that I was most interested in as I began the observation process, and since I personally observed every class I recorded, I was able to keep notes in real time (backed up by a journal written immediately afterward) and identify the passages of classroom discourse that were of special interest to me. These were not infrequent – because of the nature of the materials, and of the school, spiritual issues were raised in a large number of the classes I attended. It is these moments that will be the focus of attention in the present chapter.