Letter From God: A Children’s Christmas at Our Christian School

One of the focal points in SK recently has been mail and the activities of a post office. Letter and parcel mail has been moving around the building, including several staff members who have special SK mailboxes which get regularly filled with proud notes and letters sharing their developing printing and writing skills.

Ms.  Stortz  has  given  me  the  happy  responsibility  of  delivering  some  pieces  of  group  “mail”  to  arrive  during lessons. Today,  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 back to a perfect relationship with him.

Between a Christmas program, pasta lunch, carol sing, and school skating we will have many times to gather as a community this week. May we do so with the same awe and wonderment 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 Christmas.  Merry Christmas!

SJ

"Christmas Ready" at Our Christian School

This, this is Christ the King,

Whom shepherds guard and Angels sing
Haste, haste, to bring Him laud,
The Babe, the Son of Mary.

Amid the ‘festive’ merriment of a retail world doing its best to be hope-filled and pretending to be full of Christmas joy, an employee asked me on Saturday “Are you ready for Christmas?”  Sadly, the question was more motivated by the chance to reach deeper in my wallet, not deeper in to my heart.

I know of those with true Christmas joy , who like the wise men of old have smiles on their faces and gratitude in their hearts. Equally present are those with bruised hearts and shaky confidence in believing things are as joyful as the tinsel and tunes tell us they are. News of cancer returning, a job lost, and the despair of struggles with parenting are looming large for several in our community.  

A public prayer I heard once at this time of year comes to mind. It was a petition that this be the “last advent ever.” It sticks with me because I’m not sure I’d ever heard an advent pray like that.  “Come quickly, Lord Jesus” was the intent of the worship leader, longing for the second coming of Christ to complete the renewing of God’s creation back to the perfection of what it was before sin. That’s the true joy of Christmas!

May our celebrations be deeper than the annual return of comfort food, pleasant music, and the opportunity to extend gifts and cards. I’m thankful for Christian education which can remind our students in very real ways that they are part of that story and will share in its joyful ending. Come quickly, Lord Jesus!

SJ

A Candle in Darkness: Hope in our Christian School

At the first sight of snow a few weeks ago, two students approached me and asked about the chance that school would be cancelled the next day. A “snow day” was their hope, at least for the moment. It didn’t come to pass, and quickly passed out of their focus since it was only a short, momentary hope.

Contrast that with the hope of advent:

Come, Thou long expected Jesus
Born to set Thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us,
Let us find our rest in Thee.
Israel’s Strength and Consolation,
Hope of all the earth Thou art;
Dear Desire of every nation,
Joy of every longing heart.

I remember advent in church as a child. The first candle of this annual tradition was the one that was most dramatic. I lived in northern BC, where late November and December where characterized by long nights and short, gloomy days. We craved light. My dad installed grow lights to keep house plants thriving. The burst of a lit match followed by the steady glow of a flame piercing the darkness was mesmerizing to me.

Advent begins with hope. Students, teachers, and parents all crave hope. We cling to the notion that our heart’s desires will be realized. We console ourselves with the hope that some situations will not last forever. We cope with some situations simply because others have given us hope even though we don’t see it or feel it yet ourselves.

We frame our understanding of the world and our place in it with the hope that comes from a long- expected Jesus. What a joy it is to know our students are being led in such deliberate, hope-filled paths on the road of faith as we prepare to celebrate Christ’s birth. Praise the Lord for Christian education!

SJ

Where is the water meter? Connected Learning at Our Christian School

Two grade eight students knocked on my door and asked me this question. They explained that they are getting organized to do a water audit of our school for the next two weeks in an effort to better understand how a community uses water. I was happy to walk them to the mechanical room and show them where it was, how to read it, and talk through first ideas about how to organize the study. Learning about units of measurement, place value of numbers on the meter, variables in a study, sample size of research, and more followed out of necessity. What a relevant, memorable way to learn these things in a process that instantly has purpose!

Kindergarten students are creating thank-you cards for some local businesses that have helped us in maintaining and improving our school building. They have an intended audience for their recently learned communication skills (learning to write) and the beautiful artwork they create.

A junior student has been captivated by data management techniques learned at school. A sample of truck traffic was taken and was interesting enough that the next step was for the student to reach out to the Ontario Trucking Association with questions about what was discovered. The student is interested to see if the letter carefully written and re-written will get a response from this real-world office.

Grade seven geography students recently heard a presentation about a country in Central America they had limited knowledge of from someone who has been there. Elsewhere, three classes will be meeting a falconer tomorrow at school following study of habitats and biodiversity.

This is connected education! While there will always be need for introductory skills and concepts to be taught and practiced, it is exciting for our teachers and students to bring them to meaningful use and purpose in God’s amazing world. Inquiry is a powerful tool that we are interested in using to lead students to learn more about how God’s world works and how they connect to it.

SJ

I Am His: A Story About Belonging At Our Christian School

Our Leaders-In-Training team of grade seven and eight students led chapel recently. Every student was given a dot sticker on the way into the gym. In advance of bullying awareness, the students challenged our student body to recognize what bullying is, what its impact looks, sounds, and feels like, and what can be done when it is observed.

They also led us to sing “Christ is Enough.”  That song contains the following refrain:

Christ is enough for me

Christ is enough for me

Everything I need is in You

Everything I need

Finally, we heard the story of Max Lucado’s “You are Special.” In it, the main character of Punchinello learns to understand that his creator make him uniquely, and with a specific purpose.  He comes to understand that other people’s labels or “dots” only stick to those in his village if they let them. On the way out of the gym, all of the students were invited to remove the dots they had on them and place them on a large banner which read “I made you, and I don’t make mistakes.  -GOD” They left for the remainder of the day with a new nametag on them which read “God’s” or “His.”

I am proud of our students and delight in them hearing this important message at the start of their week together in the classrooms and on the playground. There are loud voices and pressures in our children’s lives and they start early. They want our students to define themselves in foundational ways that are far from the truth that they are first and foremost, God’s children. What a wonderful way to start a week ready to grow in wisdom, love, and service to our faithful God. I am grateful for LCES.

SJ

A Twisted Railway and Remembrance at Our Christian School

We will remember.

“The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.” Czeslaw Milosz

Camp Westerbork in the Netherlands was originally a safe haven for Jews fleeing Germany just before WWII. After Germans took hold of it, it became a gateway for Jews and others to be moved through to other concentration camp locations throughout Europe. Desiring compliance and control, an illusion of a good, civilized life was created by music, sports, a school, hospital, and more. Each Tuesday more than a thousand left the camp by rail and eventually died at the hands of those who believed absolute power and tyranny could create a better life for some. It was a place of deceit that lead to death for more than 100,000.

When the camp was torn down, a decision was made that the railway line that carried so many in, never to return, should both stand as a memorial and act as a public statement to the future. The two rusty railway tracks were visually made impassable by bending them up to the sky in memory of the loss of life, and so badly mangled to say “this will not happen here again.”

There is great pain in remembering the high cost of peace and the atrocities of war each Remembrance Day. Those who have personally and directly felt those costs have experiences that awaken remembrance within them all the time. Those who have not, which includes most of our students who have no such direct connection or experience of present or past pain, depend on others to prompt them to listen to the stories of sacrifice and the gift of peace. We need to know their story.

Growing in wisdom means teaching the value of remembrance for our students who will live in a time we will not see. Remembrance Day reminds us of a world torn apart by the depths of sin, and yet entirely loved by its creator and rests in his care.

We will remember.

We will participate in a special assembly from 10:45-11:15am on Friday. The LCES community is welcome to come and join us in the school gym. 

We will remember.                                        

SJ

Faces of the Future: Learning in 2020

Last week the “principal brag book” arrived on my desk. It’s a happy coffee break each year for a few moments when I get to review every student on each page, enjoying the unique pictures. Big grins, quirky expressions, and a few smirks made me smile as I enjoyed their unique personality. Our children are precious in our sight, and are dearly loved by the Lord. While we may want to pace them in a holding pattern so they don’t grow older they are steadily moving toward being independent adults.

Surely future tradespeople, service providers, lawyers, entrepreneurs, therapists, pastoral care workers, statisticians, mayors, and a thousand other possibilities are present in our classrooms today. We know and trust that God has a specific role and task for them as part of his Kingdom.

The future for the students pictured in my album is different than my own, and that of my parents, and many past generations. The World Economic Forum has named the most desired skills for employment in 2020. They are:

• Complex Problem Solving
• Critical Thinking
• Creativity
• People Management
• Coordinating with Others
• Emotional Intelligence
• Judgement and Decision Making
• Service Orientation
• Negotiation
• Cognitive Flexibility

I see the first steps of the formation of many of these capacities in our LCES classrooms, starting already in kindergarten with the ways that students are given different ways to explore and learn. I notice students learning about the process and themselves as much as they learn about the “right answer”. I recognize students and their own inquiry shaping how they can solve problems they observe. A teacher as lead learner is a powerful means to increase a student’s readiness to tackle these future ways of working.

How is your child’s world different than yours at his/her age? It is an interesting question to consider.

SJ