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LINFIELD CHRISTIAN SCHOOL 23 Cultivating Confidence The first thing you notice when you enter Barbara Schwankl's science lab on the first floor of the high school building is that it is full of life. This is true in the case of the rabbits, fish, lizards, and guinea pigs that enjoy their comfortable residence in cages around the room, but it is also evident in Barbara's energetic personality. Her enthusiasm for science and for her students is infectious, and while it seems obvious that she was born to be a biology teacher, that was never her original intention. Educated as a research biologist, Barbara held a variety of positions within the scientific community, even working for ten years as a zookeeper at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. But with a husband in the military, Barbara and her family moved around the country (and sometimes internationally) quite a bit, and she found herself often serving as a guest science teacher in her kids' schools. When they eventually moved back to California and enrolled the kids at Linfield, Barbara even helped out in her daughter Nikki's fifth grade class as a substitute. In 2007, as her husband was about to be deployed to the Middle East, she was actually pursuing a real estate license, but when one of Linfield's high school science teachers passed away unexpectedly, Barbara was asked to step in as a long-term substitute. "I was supposed to be a sub for three weeks, and [the school] was going to find a biology teacher. And here we are almost ten years later," she laughs. It turned out to be a perfect fit, as Barbara has a clear passion for engaging students and helping them to understand the intricate details of the world God has created. "This is just who I am," she observes. "I think everyone in our science department is teaching what they're passionate about, and for us as Christians, to be able to talk about science and how science reflects the Creator God? It's awesome! There are a lot of really great Christian teachers in public schools, but they can't tell you why a water molecule is a God thing or why DNA is a God thing, but we can." She continues by explaining, "I always tell the kids that it's like when you have a certain musician that you love; you're going to study how they play the guitar, how they move, what strings they use. You're going to look at the mechanics of what they do to create that song, right? If you're into art, you're going to study an artist's brush strokes and the type of paint and canvas they use. Well, if you want to know who God is, you study science. Science is like His artwork, and when you look at the details, it's clear that so much of [creation] could never happen by chance. This is why we are all so excited about our subject matter because we can see God's hand in everything." T

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