The LCES Difference: Who are we?

LCES Board meetings in January and February have been focusing on taking stock of what we are, where are, and where we feel called to go as a school. I left one such meeting a few weeks ago with my head full of thoughts from the valuable discussion. Sleep evading me, I thought I would take the opportunity to try to get specific with the first question; “Who is LCES?”

LCES is not just a building that is spacious and bright

                …although it does look like that that

LCES is not just a place of song, laughter, quiet concentration, and noisy learning

                …although it does sound like that

LCES is not just a school of people who enjoy community

                …although we are blessed to live with much in common

LCES is not just a place of change, growth, and renewal

                …although we delight each term with how students change

LCES is not just a place where students are steered toward a future occupation

                …although we do find joy in recognizing gifts and talents for use in God’s kingdom

LCES is not place where people are perfect and problems escape us

                ...because we are in need of God’s grace like everyone else

LCES is a place of learning that exists because of Christ

                “For from him, and through him, and for him are all things. 

                  To him be the glory forever! Amen” (Rom 11:35)

SJ

School Yard Breakdowns and Grace

“I forgive you.” 

These powerful words came unprompted in a conversation while two students and I were responding to a conflict they had involved in that morning. Words spoken and actions carried out on the part of one student had devastated another. It was clearly a situation in which wisdom had not prevailed and tempers and a flair up of past wrongs not righted won out over restraint and better judgement. It drove a wedge between the two of them. 

After helping them to retrace the steps of the choices made, entirely on their own, these students seemed to feel the pressing need to extend and receive forgiveness. The day seemed to be a little brighter for them as they left my office because they could go back to way things are supposed to be. I sure wish I could promise them that they won’t face situations that will trip them up and in which they will be back again where they once were, caught in conflict. Everyday life will continue to remind them of the need for grace and forgiveness. 

When people wonder what personal and parental relationships look like here, I often use the phrase “we are not able to park sin out on Clarke Rd and hold it at a distance.” It affects all of what we do each and every day. Thankfully, so does God’s grace and love – a force much stronger. We realize the richness of that grace as a school when we dedicate ourselves to one of God’s good gifts – community. We collectively bring all of our hurts, hangups, and hiccups to one another and ask all to “… be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults.” (Ephesians 4:2) 

The flood of relief that students and adults feel when the harshness of conflict have been turned into the joy of living at peace with one another hints at the way we are hard-wired to live before the Lord. It feels right and good to be living in community that way because that’s the way we are created. When we find delight and pleasure in living honestly, authentically, and graciously with each other we do so because we experience the goodness of the coming kingdom. 

The other student’s response? “Thank you. I’ll try to do better.” 

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth…. SJ

First Loops and Joy: Spirit Days at LCES

A student giggled this morning as I walked in to her classroom with what she called “fruit loops hair.” I grinned. There is no better way to start a Monday morning.

Some pretty unusual hair is on display today at LCES as spirit week starts with crazy hair day. Florescent colours, blinking lights, wigs, and pipe cleaners are challenging our “normal” every day hair. There are signs of some advance preparation and creative thinking: bottles of hair flowing into a cup, a family of stuffed animals peeking out from a swirl of hair, hair seeming to defy gravity and so much more. What fun! We can hardly wait for the rest of the week with wacky clothing, career day, colour day, and the perennial favorite - pajama day.

Spirit week with all of its unusual wardrobes and activities is a welcome break in the month of February to our regular patterns. One of the things I appreciate most about it is the smiles and laughter that it brings to our community of learning. The delight for students of seeing their classmates (and their teachers!) in their creative, fun-loving best brings joy to their day. Plenty of life's journey's in living and learning are quite serious, it feels good to balance that with not taking ourselves so seriously. God wants good things for his children and joy is one of those good gifts.

“The joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10) were the words of comfort that Nehemiah shared with the very upset Israelites when a public reading of the law had revealed their shortcomings. God’s law was clear, but so was his love. Nehemiah wanted them to be sure that the people knew God wants good things for his people.

God is good to us. Joy is an integral part of our days here at LCES. There is joy of fellowship and companionship, joy of learning and discovery, joy of service to each other, and joy in living in full assurance of God’s presence, love, and provision. A culture of joy makes our school a wonderful place to be. SJ

Big Things Guide our Learning

Many years ago I had the unique opportunity of helping a young student learn the potential of something they knew nothing about. Since he had just mastered basic addition, subtraction himself, I showed him how a calculator was able to solve these problems and spit out answers for him if they were entered correctly. Lots of practice ensued and he was quite impressed that it knew all the answers and was consistently correct. I then showed him how it could also work in the domain of his newest skill - multiplication. With wide-eyed wonder, he looked at me and said “This thing can do multiplication too?”

Education would be much more effective if its purpose was to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they do not know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it. ~William Haley

At LCES we are interested in creating those life-long learners that William Haley, a British newspaper executive, was talking about. He lived and worked between the world wars, a time period where information was delivered by a teacher or book, not by Wikipedia, twitter, or facebook. So, what do we hope to see in our life-long learners of 2017?

Connectedness: We aim for our students to see God’s creation as an intricate, complex, and amazing
example of how purposeful God is. God’s world is something to be studied as a whole, as well as in
parts.

Discernment We want our students to develop tools and have opportunities to practice, under the
watchful idea of a passionate educator, figuring out what is God’s truth and what it means for them.
God’s world is designed around God’s truth.

Service: We strive to have our students live out the truth of biblically knowing as the study the Lord’s
handiwork directs them to love their
neighbor in every way, in everything they do and say. God’s world is one of community.

Wonder: God’s world is a place of beauty and we wish for our students to meet God in new ways as
they learn. God’s world speaks of his greatness.

Big things guide our learning!

SJ

Helping Students Learn

Does the learning of LCES students today look the same as your recollection of your elementary school years?

I’ve noticed in my career as an educator that things in schools are constantly changing. This happens as we understand more about how students learn, how their brain and body work together as they explore God’s world, how technology and culture shape them, and how the social nature of a school learning environment both helps and challenges them. We dedicate ourselves to figuring out which learning methods work best for each student. Even the basic recognition that all of our students learn differently is a very different starting point than the education that typified many of their great-grandparents.

Learning happens in a relational context. An excellent example of this is easily noted by observing our Educational Assistants. We are grateful to have three of them (Ms. Bruinsma, Ms. Dykstra, Ms. Moniz) whose presence in our building affirms what we think about learning. They move throughout the entire school connecting with nearly every grade in some way. They are an extra set of hands to help with many tasks, but they do much more than that. Sometimes they are working with one student, other times with a small group, or perhaps the entire class. In some cases they have relationships that span many years, and as result have a wider understanding of students as learners than the current teacher since they move from one grade to the next. This enables them to watch the learning tasks and goals of the classroom and adapt, substitute, or extend them meaningfully for students who need something else. They can expand the variety of learning methods available to achieve the same understanding for all our students. Their presence in classrooms gives direction and affirmation to all of our learners.

I’m thankful for an educational home for our students that continues to adapt in order to create opportunities for great learning with the resources it has available. Join me in praying for wisdom in that pursuit as we aim “to educate children, equipping them for a life of faithful, Christian discipleship.”

SJ  

“I want you to have this”

Three pieces of plastic glued together now sit on my desk right below my computer screen. They were delivered to me by a very young student after a tentative knock on my office door last week. Small hands showed me how the pieces fit together, had been glued, and taped (quite enthusiastically) to keep it together while the glue was drying. I asked for the story behind how this creation came to be, and what I needed to know about it. Without skipping a beat, the student shared. “I like making things, learning how they fit together, and I wanted you to know that I got it all figured out.”

I have to admit that I love visits like this from students. I draw much from them in terms of affirming why we do what we do here at London Christian Elementary. Here’s what this brief interchange reminded me:

Our students start school with a powerful desire to make sense of the world around them. It is easy for an adult to forget the intensity of discovery and sense-making that takes place in childhood. An ever increasing sense of the physical world of God’s creation is expanding every day in their mind to become wider and deeper in complexity, increasing their wonder and fuelling their curiosity. I’m grateful for the opportunity to have a Christian school where the wonder and connected nature of God’s world is affirmed and celebrated every day.

Learning takes place in a relational context. The sharing of this item with me was proof that one of the most exciting things about learning is sharing the outcome of that learning with someone else. I am thankful for Christian educators that pace along with our students to help them put all the pieces together and praise God while they do so. These relationships have powerful, character shaping impact in the growth of faith and worldview for our students.

Learning is both knowing and doing. We need to work with concepts and ideas frequently, but not to the exclusion of hands-on discovery as part of learning and discovery. Students who have made patterns with tiles and felt the “fit” when it all made sense, or those who have collected compost and watched the effects of decomposition by microorganisms themselves will understand these things in more memorable and meaningful ways. We are grateful for a diversity of learning tools and methods at LCES that we can provide for our students as they explore.

I won’t be throwing out this precious gift anytime soon.  SJ

Nostalgia, Stewardship, and Time

A new year is only nine days old. Does it feel normal to write 2017 yet?

Our family went on a virtual field trip over the holidays. With the help of “street view” from Google Maps, I was able to show my children the first home (5000kms away) I have memories of, my walk to school, and the church our family attended. We “travelled” down the country road to my wife’s childhood home and the places she remembered. Much to our children’s delight, these visuals were a trigger for an avalanche of stories from our past. What fun to recount the fond memories and laughable moments!

Things have changed: a second story had been added to my old house, many trees are gone, and there is no trace of the busy dairy farm that was adjacent to my wife’s home of long ago. These all seemed to be reminders that the past is not a place we can return to, or at least as we remember it.

The close of one year and start of a new one reminds us with greater perspective that, one day at a time, God lays before us new opportunities and possibilities and asks us to be wise stewards of them. When we end up in life where we don’t expect to be, or when circumstances cause us to be weary and worn, we may wish to fall back to “how things used to be.“ Perhaps nostalgia is a strong motivator because it shifts us to a place in our memory where we are surrounded by comfort rather than the complexity of making tough choices in new uncharted waters.

Do we choose preservation, or pursue possibility? They probably are not mutually exlusive. God assures us that he has plans to bless and lead us, all for his glory and for his kingdom – as our chapel this morning confirmed. May God find LCES faithful with the possibility and potential He has for us, wherever they take us.  SJ