As a school leader or staff member of a Christian school, I wonder how you might answer the following question: What practices in Christian schools improve the overall flourishing of young people? It is a deceptively simple question. One might instinctively answer by identifying practices used regularly. Christian schools are intrinsically formative places powerfully shaped by repeated practices. These practices … Read More
Hospitality and Radical Welcome: Changing the Culture, Not Just Opening the Door (Part II)
In Part 1, we explored the difference between being a welcoming school and creating a community where everyone genuinely belongs. We considered how biblical hospitality calls us to notice those who may be excluded and to ask difficult questions about the culture and systems we create. But what do these intentions look like in everyday school life? Radical hospitality is … Read More
Hospitality and Radical Welcome: From Opening Our Doors to Changing the Room (Part I)
Is being a welcoming school enough? When I trained as a headteacher (principal) nearly 20 years ago, I was challenged to consider the following: “Imagine a child walking through your school’s gates for the very first time.” This thought-provoking question must stand at the heart of a Christian leader’s actions. Perhaps the child is nervous, holding tightly to their parent’s … Read More
A Seat at the Table: Co-Creating in Christian Schools
When the kids’ table became one table I grew up eating at the “kids’ table” in the 80s and 90s … or the 1900s, as my kids remind me. A lot of us grew up with two tables—the kids’ table and the adults’ table. The adults ate in the dining room with special cutlery and talked about things that mattered. … Read More
The Compartmentalization Trap: Forming Students Whose Faith Reaches Their Work
Most of the faithful leaders I studied had learned to live as two people. There was the person who showed up on Sunday, and the person who showed up on Monday. One believed things. The other performed a job. Between them stood a wall, quietly built and carefully maintained, so that what happened in one room rarely touched the other. … Read More
Western Civilization Is Not Our Home
Christian Education has always faced a fundamental question: What are we forming students for? What is the end goal that sits at the core of our purpose and guides the process? In our current cultural moment there appears to be a growing impulse within Christian Education in the United States to pursue the preservation of Western Civilization as a central … Read More
250 Years Later: What if the Pursuit of Happiness Isn’t the Goal?
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson asserted that the pursuit of happiness was a self-evident truth and an inalienable right. The concept is everywhere, from advertisements to “happily ever after” tales. A search for “happy” on Amazon Books produces over 70,000 results and at least as many definitions of that word. We live in a culture built around the … Read More
When Christian Schools Outgrow Spreadsheets
From Resourceful Workarounds to Faithful Stewardship Small Christian schools are remarkably good at making things work. A spreadsheet becomes an enrollment system. A Google Form becomes an application. The principal knows which families have special tuition arrangements. The secretary knows where the important paperwork is. Someone has a notebook with all the passwords. When a parent calls with a question, … Read More
First Questions: On Teacher Recruitment
There is a question sitting beneath almost every strategic conversation I hear happening in Christian schools today. It surfaces in board meetings, in hiring cycles that stretch too long, in resignation letters that arrive too soon. It is the question of people—specifically, whether your school can find, form, and retain the kind of teachers who make everything else possible. Ask … Read More
Imagine Stepping Away
A number of years ago, I had the privilege of serving on a curriculum-writing team led by CACE’s own Darryl DeBoer. We spent a week in Seattle building a K–12 curricular supplement for Christian schools. As the Friday deadline approached, many of us became increasingly anxious. The work wasn’t finished, flights were looming, and every glance at the clock seemed … Read More