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
Schools That Inspire: An Urban Road Less Traveled
Hope Academy, an affordable, diverse, faith-based, classical school serving families in downtown Minneapolis, is doing things just a little differently.
Schools That Inspire: St. Matthew’s Church of England Primary School
My visit to St. Matthew’s left a profound impact on me. The school’s mission and values center on the flourishing of all children and staff.
Celebrate and Imagine #4: Ron Polinder–70 Years of Christian Education
When I think of a Christian education leader who combines the best of prophet, priest, and king leadership, my mind turns to Ron Polinder. Formed by the routine and discipline of farm life and educated in K-18 Christian schools, Ron is someone whose life and career passionately reconciles his deep faith with his vocational practice. Along with many others, I … Read More
What Kind of a School?
During the eight years I taught EDUC 501 as an adjunct at Dordt University, my graduate classes increasingly became a mix of Christian and public school teachers. In order to put all of my students on a common ground of biblical understanding, I used Our World Belongs to God: A Contemporary Testimony, a wonderful “creed” published by the Christian Reformed … Read More
Rising Leaders’ Guide to Change and Innovation: Earning the Right to Be Heard
When it comes to ministering to faculty, staff, students, and parents, we can’t give what we don’t have. We cannot expect to encourage others, stay patient, answer calmly, and use wisdom appropriately without consistently spending time in God’s Word, being connected at a Bible-believing church, and praying regularly over the school, faculty, and students.
Words and Walls
Do we want diverse and inclusive schools? Absolutely. All of us who teach, lead, or chose faith-based schools for our children have good work to do in this space. Getting there is going to be a long process. It is challenging to do difficult work in a society obsessed with the immediate. Let us not grow weary.
Diversity in the Christian School: Motivation and Action
Burdened by headlines of racial unrest, Christian schools across the country are seeking answers and want to know more about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) They desire to create a place for learning and growth in this arena for students, faculty, and parents. Others pressured by their communities to grapple with their school’s past want to learn how to work … Read More
Diversity in the Christian School: What G.R.A.C.E. Meant to a Student of Color
Myia Sims shares what it is like to attend a white Christian school as a black student and what she learned through a diversity club called G.R.A.C.E Council: “Through this program I came to recognize Jesus’ cry for holistic justice and how as a follower of Christ I was called to advocate for the oppressed. These lessons gave me a renewed faith in the totality of the Scriptures.”
Diversity in the Christian School: Why Diversity Matters to a White Person, Part 2
God’s command in Micah 6:8 is well known: “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” That action is lived out in society, not in isolation.