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Speaker: Christian Baldauf
This plenary explores how the Bible can serve as a foundation for educational work and shape a teacher’s identity and approach to pedagogy. We will consider how Scripture can guide our work in teaching, counseling, and mentoring, and how to apply biblical principles in practical ways across different educational roles. The session will also offer guidance for supporting both newer believers and experienced Christians in integrating their faith into their professional life, helping teachers bring a consistent, Christ-centered perspective to the classroom.
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Speaker: Christian Baldauf
Our language is a gift from God that can be used in a purposeful and appreciative way. This plenary focuses on how teachers can communicate with wisdom in the classroom, drawing on biblical principles to guide their words and interactions. Practical tips for goal-oriented communication with learning groups will be developed: from the beginning to the end of a lesson. The session will also address how to exercise discernment and discretion in different educational contexts, including public, private, and Christian schools, equipping teachers to navigate diverse classroom environments with clarity and integrity through respective communication.
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Speaker: TBD
This plenary tackles how to support young people as they sort through the noise of social media, cultural messages, and competing ideas about identity, purpose, and truth. We’ll look at how teachers can build critical thinking, resilience, and honest questioning in their students, while also grounding their own approach in God’s unshakable truth. You’ll see how a calm, confident posture invites students of any background to explore tough topics without fear or hostility. We’ll connect these ideas to real issues students face today, including gender identity, body image, mental health, media influence, justice movements, and family pressures, and offer practical ways to respond with clarity, compassion, and integrity in both public and Christian school contexts.
Plenaries
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Speaker: Christian Baldauf
This workshop explores how to use AI wisely in lesson planning while keeping a clear biblical worldview at the center. Participants will learn how digital tools can subtly shape values and how to guide students toward truth as revealed in Scripture.
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Speaker: Dagmar Kielinger
How can teachers guide boys and girls through questions about identity in a way that respects their development and supports their well-being? This workshop offers practical strategies grounded in solid research and current educational guidelines, helping educators respond with clarity, compassion, and confidence. -
Speaker: Maral Reisz
Teachers are confronted with a wide spectrum of behavioural challenges in their pupils: aggression, AD(H)D, speech and language disorders, auditory processing disorders, dyslalia, selective mutism, autism, depression, and mobbing. This list is not exhaustive, and these problems are becoming increasingly common. How should primary school teachers meet these challenges? This workshop will present practical answers based on 40 years of experience as a special needs teacher, with the aim of fostering children’s motivation and joy in learning, development, and identity. It is grounded in biblical principles.
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Speaker: Dr Helmut Brückner
It is a widespread assumption that the natural sciences and faith in God are incompatible. This lecture argues the opposite. The case is made using insights drawn from the natural sciences, archaeology, and ethnology. The goal is to provide teachers with the knowledge necessary to address pupils’ inquiries regarding the science–faith debate.
Workshops
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Christian Baldauf
Christian is the Director of the VEBS Academy (Verband Evangelischer Bekenntnisschulen), where he leads biblically grounded professional development for Christian teachers and school leaders. He trained as a primary school teacher and worked for many years in teacher training and school practice before assuming leadership of the Academy in 2020. Married with four children, Christian is passionate about helping educators integrate a biblical worldview in their teaching, drawing on God’s view of humanity as revealed in Scripture.
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Dagmar Kielinger
Dagmar is an ESSP educator in developmentally sensitive sex education and a retired high school teacher in sports, geography, and social learning. She now trains teachers, supports parents, and works with young people through the TeenSTAR sex education association. Dagmar is active in her church community, especially through the Torchbearer mission “Fackelträger Schloss Klaus” in Austria, serving in guest care, pastoral care, and violence-prevention training. Together with her husband, Dagmar has a large family (including eleven grandchildren) which fuels her passion for helping young people thrive.
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Maral Reisz
Maral is a special needs teacher with extensive experience supporting pupils with speech, physical, and cognitive disabilities in both mainstream and Christian school settings. She is the founder and director of the Institute and Publishing House for Children and Language (IKUS and VKUS). Maral has served as the regional spokesperson for children with speech and language disorders for the Hessian Association for Special Education. She has also led children’s ministry at Move Church Wiesbaden, facilitated multiple mother-child groups, and directed the Hochheim Network for Children and Language.
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Dr. Helmut Brückner
Dr. Brückner is a retired Professor of Physical Geography at the University of Cologne and a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. His long career has explored how landscapes and coastlines evolve over millennia and how people and the environment influence each other. His research—rooted in geochronology and geoarchaeology—provides a deep-time perspective that bridges natural science and meaningful questions about origin, change, and purpose. He continues to contribute to conversations about faith and science in light of his academic work.