What is it we do here?

Have you ever been on a unique trip or taken in an especially meaningful experience and been asked afterward “What did you do?” or “What was it all about?”. Without being able to recount the entire experience in one sitting, it’s challenging to share the event in a way that does it justice.

One LCES school year, or the succession of many of them, are very “full” and their impact is hard to share. To the captive ears of families who are often inquiring at this time of year, my answer to “What is it you do here?” often goes something like this:

Bible is a course of study here. Starting with the rich narratives of the mighty acts of God in the Old and New Testament right from JK onward, our students hear daily from God’s Word. In an overlapping, cyclical rotation, students continue to expand their understanding of who God is and what he calls them to do as they mature in wisdom and faith.

There is a devotional nature to what we do here. Each school day begins and ends in prayer in a group setting. Before everything from mealtimes to leadership meetings, from parent-teacher interviews to camp trip excursions – we ask the Lord to lead us and the Holy Spirit to guide us. Monday morning chapel sets the tone for the week and staff bookend every week with time together with God.

All curriculum is taught as being connected and whole. Every square centimeter of this earth belongs to God and declares his glory. In each subject area, we consider the world as a whole – a broken, sinful world – but a world fully redeemed by Christ. Art, science, geography, language studies, music all of it is part of God’s good creation and we study it with love for our creator.

Community is a part of what we do. Families at LCES gather together with the common wish to be part of the Joshua’s expression of “...as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:15) Conflicts and problems happen within us, but with the starting point of God’s command to love one another we work for healing and enjoy surprising unanimity.

Our teachers are professionals with faith. Who is with your child for 30 hours per week? At LCES, the answer to that question is this: our committed staff not only happen to be trained and qualified to teach, they see their task as their life’s calling given by the Lord. They are not simply free to be openly Christian in their interaction – it’s a requirement.

Praise God for the opportunity to be part of quality, Christian education. SJ

Christian Schools as Greenhouses

As I shoveled snow many times this weekend and felt the icy blast of wind chills that took my breath away, I attempted to distract myself with the reality that mid-March is one month away. It may still snow at that point, but the serious part of winter will be over. Beneath these mounds of snow lies the potential for green grass, daffodils, tulips, and more. I can hardly wait.

I heard an analogy for Christian Education recently that that I thought was helpful.

In order to give a young plant every opportunity to thrive in its eventual home, a wise gardener starts the plant off in the very controlled environment of a greenhouse. Temperature, sunlight, and moisture are closely monitored to ensure the plant thrives in its first stages. Fertilizer, pruning, and close monitoring accelerate the plant toward being ready to leave the greenhouse for the natural world when ready, equipped to flourish where planted. The greenhouse start is never intended to keep the plant from being able to experience the outdoors; it is a step taken to give the best opportunity for future success of that plant in its eventual setting.

Christian education’s long-term goal is much the same. Students are planted in an environment rich with opportunities to flourish. The nourishment of learning about who God made them to be and what God asks them to do is liberally showered every day on young hearts and minds. The pruning shears of a controlled environment where certain habits of faith are encouraged and others are discouraged direct the plant to grow in a certain direction. The warmth of stimulating stories and ideas is sustained to give every opportunity to create disciplined minds and committed hearts for both the present and future soils they will be planted in. The long term goal of Christian education is not isolation, it is integration.

I look forward to spring. I can’t wait to see how our plants will do. SJ

Our Students and Their Connected World

On Google Maps my parents pointed out to my children recently where they were both born in Europe. The two very small towns were less than 100km from each other, however they lived in two very separate experiences that may as well have been worlds apart. Only after travelling thousands of kilometers to a new land called Canada did they meet and eventually get married. I could see that it was challenging for my own children to understand that they lived
so close together but were yet so far apart.

If I contrast that with a recent LCES event, I come up with some interesting conclusions and observe how much things have changed. Over an internet connection our grade three students joined many others across the country as they met and interacted with Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian to walk in space as an astronaut. The live event allowed a prominent person to directly interact with students in a very memorable way.

If I want to check out where my parents lived, or what the hotel I am about to book looks like, I can virtually “walk” down the street to take a look. 360 videos, a more recent phenomenon on YouTube, allow you to walk around within a video and look wherever you wish, not only where the camera man chooses to aim the equipment. Surgeons are doing live consults with people who are half a world away. Voice recognition to tell your device to search for information is becoming more than a party gimmick, it is a viable way to use a computer, tablet, or phone.

Here is something that I keep returning to as I notice these changes. Although we as parents and grandparents feel the whiplash of how fast these things change and how it can possibly work, and how different it all is from a world we once knew, for our students there is little remarkable about this technology rich landscape. This is their normal, what they consider their starting point.

We are wise to follow those before us who have faced change and chosen to boldly say “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” (Psalm 119:105) Training our student’s hearts and minds toward biblical wisdom remains our task and our best way to equip them to live in ways that are faithful in a world increasingly own past experience. I`m thankful for our Christian School who aims to do just that. SJ

Justice Seekers

“That’s not fair” said a student this morning as they encountered the first conflict of the day. I took a moment to help said student recognize that fair doesn’t mean everyone gets the same thing, it means everyone gets what they need.

At a conference on Christian education that I attended a few years back, a speaker summarized the central task of what Christian schools are called to. Beyond simply “filling” students with information, his summary was that “Christian schools ought to seek to recapture the first loves of our students and redirect them to the core of the gospel.” By first loves he meant the things that students long for, the priorities they organize their growing understanding of the world by, the objects or experiences they find value and identity in, and ultimately what it is they think they are living for.

This morning I listened in as a classroom re-visited the familiar story of Christ’s pathway to the cross. Students were led to consider the trial at which Jesus was accused of falsely teaching and leading people away from what was considered true and right in the eyes of the Sanhedrin. The students were both stretched and surprised as they saw the unjust nature of that particular trial, and the importance of valuing and maintaining justice as a society. Connections to stories of injustice, either personal or more public like those highlighted by the high-profile court case starting today, were meaningfully connected. This is the stuff of significant learning that changes lives.

Jesus speaks to us at length about the importance of taking up the plight of those who experience injustice in its many forms. It is our prayer that LCES works alongside the efforts of family and church to train the habits of our children to not only know the gospel, but as part of their core-being response “be” the gospel to a world that needs it. That’s a habit worth practicing! SJ