The Books That Form Us: Three Reads Launching the Grade 9 Culture Maker Journey

What does a book about habits have to do with a book about natural abilities—or a Christian theology of culture? Quite a lot, it turns out. Three books selected for Innovate Academy’s Grade 9 Culture Maker Course invite scholars to move from self-government to self-knowledge, to something larger than the self.

There is a difference between asking a ninth grader, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and asking, “Who are you becoming?” The first question usually produces an occupation: doctor, engineer, entrepreneur, artist, or perhaps something involving technology that does not have a name yet. The second is considerably harder. It asks a young person to think about character and habits, natural abilities and limitations, vocation and responsibility. It suggests that preparing for adulthood is not simply about choosing the right career, but learning to steward a life.

That is the larger question behind Innovate Academy’s Grade 9 Imagine year in the iLAB Culture Maker journey. Scholars begin exploring their natural talents and God-given abilities while researching possible interests through electives, service learning, internships, and mentors. They are asked to understand how they operate as learners and workers and, ultimately, to begin identifying who they are as Culture Makers and leaders. Three books accompany that journey: Sean Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, Bob McDonald’s Don’t Waste Your Talent, and Andy Crouch’s Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling. Read together, they create an intriguing progression: How will I live? What has God given me? And what will I make with it?

How Will I Live?

Sean Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens begins somewhere decidedly practical: with the repeated choices that eventually become a life. Adapted for adolescents from Stephen Covey’s famous 7 Habits framework, the book addresses the real territory of teenage life—self-image, friendships, peer pressure, goals, priorities, family relationships, and the pressures of the digital world. Its habits move from self-government toward relationships: becoming proactive, beginning with an end in mind, putting first things first, learning to understand others and work collaboratively, and recognizing the importance of renewal.

For a Culture Maker, that starting point matters. Before asking a young person to change the world, it is worth asking whether he or she can manage a Tuesday. Can a scholar keep a commitment, prioritize something important over something immediately gratifying, listen before responding, recover after disappointment, work alongside someone who thinks differently, and recognize the need for rest and renewal? These may not sound like grand acts of culture-making, but culture is built from habits long before it is built from achievements. This is also where Covey’s book intersects beautifully with our theme of wellness. The way we work, speak, listen, prioritize, relate, rest, and respond to difficulty forms us long before we recognize that formation. We cultivate our habits, and eventually our habits cultivate us.

What Has God Given Me?

Once scholars begin examining how they are living, Don’t Waste Your Talent introduces another question: What have you actually been given? Bob McDonald’s book focuses on discovering the natural abilities that influence the kinds of work and environments in which a person is likely to thrive. Meaningful vocational discernment requires more than asking what someone likes or what career is popular. Young people benefit from understanding the abilities they naturally bring to the table and considering where they can use those abilities productively.

That dovetails directly with the work Grade 9 scholars will be doing through the Highlands Ability Battery (HAB). The iLAB curriculum asks scholars to explore their HAB profiles to understand their “natural talents and God-given abilities,” then connect that self-knowledge with research, electives, service learning, internships, mentors, and eventually a personal and career vision. But at Innovate, self-discovery is not intended to end in self-absorption. The opening Scripture for the Grade 9 experience establishes the larger frame: “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace” (1 Peter 4:10).

That changes the usual conversation about talent. Instead of stopping at What am I good at?, scholars are invited to ask, What has God entrusted to me, and what might it be for? A natural ability is not a trophy, nor does every scholar need to be equally gifted in every area. Part of becoming well-formed is learning to see one's particular design without inflating it into pride or diminishing it through comparison. It means knowing our strengths, understanding our limitations, recognizing the strengths of those beside us, and learning how different gifts can work together. In fact, the Grade 9 curriculum explicitly asks scholars how knowing their natural strengths will help them when they are called to work with others. That is self-knowledge in service of community.

What Will I Make?

Then comes Andy Crouch’s Culture Making, and suddenly the lens widens. If Covey asks how we will live and McDonald asks what we have been given, Crouch asks what we will do with it. Culture Making challenges Christians to move beyond simply consuming, copying, criticizing, or condemning culture and instead recover our calling to create it—to make something of the world we have been given.

For Innovate scholars, that idea should sound familiar. “Every Scholar a Culture Maker” has never meant that every graduate needs to become famous, found a company, write a novel, or invent something revolutionary. Families create culture. Classrooms create culture. Businesses, churches, laboratories, kitchens, gardens, studios, neighborhoods, technologies, institutions, and friendships all create culture. The question is whether we will simply inherit the culture handed to us or learn to contribute something True, Good, and Beautiful to it.

That is why Culture Making belongs at the other end of this three-book progression. Before scholars can seriously ask what they might contribute to culture, they need to understand the person doing the contributing. What habits are shaping me? What gifts have I received? Who might those gifts serve? What needs cultivating, repairing, creating, or reimagining? And what might God be asking me to make?

Reading Toward Wellness

At first glance, this may seem like an unusual reading list for an issue devoted to wellness. No nutrition or exercise book appears among them. But perhaps that reveals something important about what Innovate means by wellness. A flourishing life cannot be reduced to physical health or emotional comfort. To be well is also to develop habits that sustain a meaningful life, to understand ourselves accurately enough to steward our abilities wisely, to live well in relationship with others, and to possess a purpose larger than personal achievement.

Together, these three books offer a progression: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens asks scholars to cultivate their lives; Don’t Waste Your Talent asks them to discover and steward what has been entrusted to them; and Culture Making asks them to offer something back. That progression mirrors the Grade 9 Culture Maker experience itself, where scholars move through the design thinking stages–Imagine, Investigate, Implement, and Improve–as they begin discerning how their abilities might intersect with the needs of the world around them. 

Perhaps that is one of the most valuable things we can give young people at the beginning of Upper School: not a predetermined answer to What will you become?, but better questions with which to begin the journey. How will you live? What has God given you? Whom can it serve? And what will you make?

Because ultimately, a Culture Maker is not simply someone prepared to succeed in the world, but someone being formed to contribute something good to it.

Curious About the Innovation Center?

Wondering how Innovate helps scholars discover their God-given abilities and turn them into real-world purpose? Step inside the Innovation Center (iLAB) to explore how mentorship, entrepreneurship, internships, service learning, and hands-on experiences help prepare every scholar to become a Culture Maker.

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