When our teachers were told that we were moving to a distance learning model they just “dropped their nets” and started doing what needed to be done. For some of them, it was an easy transition but a teacher like Mr. Kornelis thrives in an environment based on discourse and socratic dialogue. He reinvented himself as “Muscle Mike” and now his students (and parents) are entertained and educated by his videos.

Read on for Mr. Kornelis’ thoughts on the spring of 2020:

During this bizarre season of quarantine, our theology class embarked on a scholastic inquiry into the final end of man. To put that into layman’s terms: We asked the question “what did God make us for?” or, “as humans, what’s our ultimate God-given purpose?” Well, one of the considered possibilities is that what God made us for, our ultimate purpose, is to be physically excellent and healthy (think Lebron James, Michael Phelps, Larry Fitzgerald). But theologians and philosophers point out that it seems that in the animal kingdom, humans are far excelled in strength, speed, and longevity. For example, the ultimate purpose of a lion might lie in its strength and the ultimate purpose of a cheetah might lie in its speed, but it would seem that man’s ultimate purpose lies elsewhere. And so I knew this hypothesis had to be tested and I knew just the man to test it.

For our lessons I had developed a character named “Muscle Mike”–the ultimate human specimen, the epitome of human brawn (a character I was naturally typecast for). And so to test this theological hypothesis that man in the animal kingdom is physically inferior there was only one thing to do: Muscle Mike must contend with the beasts of the field. He attempted to prove his great speed against a “Tanzanian Bush Dog” and his great strength against a “Peruvian Plains Lion”. But to find out how he fared against these extraordinary animals and to discover the ultimate God-given purpose of man you’ll just have to see the video. All in all, it was one of the most fun lessons to record and I think one of the most fun lessons for students to watch.