Truth & Reconciliation @ LCES

I'm so grateful for our staff who lean into challenging topics and meaningful learning for our students. Our LCES team is amazing!

Our students were challenged this morning to process "National Day for Truth and Reconciliation" in their crew chapel groups. (This means they sit in groups of about 10 students, one from each grade). 

It reminds me that community and relationship is the best context for learning. 

This is a blessing for our students, and the world who needs to hear God's story by them today, and in the future. 

 

To Be Noticed and Known

One of many things I am grateful for at LCES are when a student gets some individual time with an adult. It may be just a few moments as our staff move through their responsibilities, but these are very influential parts of a day where our students are being noticed, which confirms they are known and they matter at LCES. This is a beautiful thing and I'm grateful that we can support relationships as the core of learning in this way. 

 

Moments of Gratitude

I'm thankful for many things at LCES. Here are four I noticed in the first week of school:

At our school students see themselves first as God's children. That's beautiful. 

Relationships are important and are the context of learning. That's life giving.

Students respect and love their teachers at LCES. That's beautiful. 

Innovation and change are part of LCES. That's exciting!

It's going to be an awesome year. 

SJ

A New Year Begins: Our Place in God’s Big Story

By God’s grace, for the 63rd time in our school’s history a community of parents and school staff are ready for a new year of learning and living by faith. We’re so thankful for the work of school custodians and maintenance volunteers who have cleaned, painted, and spruced up our building. Our teachers have been working for weeks to get ready to welcome more than 190 students today. God is good and God is faithful!

Schools are placed of relationships and stories, and we’re excited that both of those can be rooted in God’s truth at LCES. This year we will be exploring our place in God’s Big Story (Psalm 89:1-2) as His people who live connected to a grand story that connects us all the way back to creation and all the way forward a fully renewed creation. Knowing where we are in that story guides our learning, strengthens our connection to others, and draws us deeper into God’s beautiful world. We’ll share more on this as the year progresses. 

Whether it is your first year or you’ve lost count, we are glad you are here for this next chapter of God’s Big Story. Please join our staff in praying for a wonderful year of growing together. 

SJ

The "Real World": Learning, Home, and Refugees

 “How do your students do when they enter the real world?” 

The manner in which the question was asked suggested that at least to some degree, the inquiring family presumed that the learning journey for students at LCES is not linked in a direct way to what happens in the broader world outside of the school day. I firmly believe it does. 

Take for example our student service project this spring. After wrapping up our learning connection with Indwell, our students are being challenged to learn about what “home” means, especially to those who don’t have one. LCES will be learning about refugees throughout the world, but also locally right here in our city as they read through books specifically chosen to help them understand the journey of those who have fled their home. 

Christian education has as its goal not to isolate students from life, but to enable them to fully understand what they are actually seeing around them: God’s amazing world! We seek to have students be able to peel back the confusion and distortion of that good creation caused by sin in order to see creation as it was originally meant to be, and one day what it will become again. The “real world” without the story of the mighty acts of God isn’t real at all, since it tells an incomplete story of what life is really all about. As C.S. Lewis said through one of his characters, we seek to provide students ample opportunity to “…go further in and go further up” as they deepen and widen their understanding of all things. Mixed in between math facts and poetry, gym class and art, Christian education grounds students with the chance to sort through a messy world to find what is real, true, valuable, honorable, faithful, and praiseworthy. 

SJ

Wonder: Sleeping With One Eye Open

"Mr. Janssen, did you know that dolphins sleep with one eye open?

Frequently, I have reason to speak with our students. In most of the occasions I have the pleasure of celebrating things with them; a birthday, a recent creation or project, a story from their life outside school, something they have just recently learned, or something they think is “amazing” about God’s creation.

Loose or missing teeth, holiday plans, counting in French, and many other parts of their lives are readily shared with joy and excitement. Life at every turn offers something new to take in. This is the joy of the Christian elementary educator: we pace with our students who are seeing God’s world as something brand new, like an undisturbed field of snow they have never visited before.

Life is amazing. Though our often-jaded attention as adults tends toward areas of frustration, worry, or lament faster than it goes to wonder – our world is an astounding place. Your child’s days are filled with seeing, appreciating, and attempting to understand many brand-new things for the very first time. “Wonder creates awe, and awe creates worship” a friend of mine used to say. While eyes and ears are focused to see these things, what a perfect opportunity to be telling the mighty acts of God and answering the big questions of life like “Who am I?”, “Where am I?”, “What’s my purpose?”, and “What is this world really all about?” This is one of the ways that we attune our students to the kingdom that Jesus taught his disciples about.

I’m thankful for Christian education which not only draws our children’s attention to an amazing creation, but also to worship its creator. All of life (including learning at London Christian Elementary School) is sacred.

Praise God!

SJ

A Letter From God At Christmas At Our Christian School

 A few years ago one of the focal points in kindergarten at this time of the year was mail and the activities of a post office. Imaginative “letter and parcel mail” had been moving around the building, including several staff members who had special mailboxes which were regularly filled with proud notes and letters sharing their developing printing and writing skills. 

On one occasion Ms. Stortz had given me the happy responsibility of delivering some pieces of group “mail” to arrive during lessons. I played the role of delivery person with a baking recipe for this morning’s class in a large envelope. One of the students saw me with the large letter in hand and said, “Maybe it’s a letter from God!” 

A letter from God. What a wonderful way to think about the focus of this unique week of school! Jesus is the Word made flesh (John 1:14). Immanuel – God with us! How precious is that Word enabling us to receive God’s gift of grace. That Bethlehem baby became a living letter to us of God’s unfathomable love and paved the way for us to a new covenant of grace. 

As we celebrate, may we have the quickened steps of the shepherds who, bursting with joy cried "Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about." (Luke 2:15) The LCES board, staff, and students wishes you all a faith-filled, safe, and memorable break. 

Merry Christmas!

SJ