Getting Ready for Graduation

"Who are your students becoming?  What experiences do they need to become that?"

(thoughts from The Vancouver Symposium on 21st Century Christian Education) 

I have spent 3 intense days with many incredibly deep-thinking educators from various corners of God's Earth, wrestling with the notion of how we need to change education's paradigms so that our students are prepared for a world we cannot begin to conceive of.  

How clear is your idea of who God has created your child to be?  What might His purposes be?  How are you designing educational experiences to allow your child to 'apprentice life' in a real, safe, and developmentally appropriate environment with the freedom to risk, to fail, and to try again?  We have such an amazing opportunity to move boldly forward.  Let's not "default" to the educational experiences we endured in rows of desks with dated textbooks and teachers standing up front... especially in a home school world!  

Hands on experiences, field trips, interactive web site learning venues, talking with experts, building and creating, and using technology tools allows our students a more dynamic learning environment than reading textbooks, filling in workbooks, and raising hands to ask for permission to go to the washroom.  With educational tools such as Blooms Modified Taxonomy and Garner's Multiple Intelligences, we can be intentional in the way we vary and leverage the learning opportunities for our students.  With Scripture open, we can explore every topic and concept through the lens of Truth, to the glory of our God and King!