ACADEMICS
CORE VALUE:
LEARNING FOCUSED BY STEVE BOHLMANN, ACADEMIC DEAN
I
t won’t come as a surprise to anyone reading this edition of Wingspan that being learning focused is a core value of MPCS. After all, Christian education constitutes our purpose. And together, our faculty and students have built an exceptional learning culture. So as a school, and more importantly a Christian school dedicated to the glory of God, are we simply restating the obvious? We don’t think so, and our reason begins with that for which we have been created. At MPCS, we believe that our God has endowed our students and all members of the MPCS community with a magnificent and inexhaustible capacity for learning – learning first and foremost that deepens our understanding of our Lord, His character, His creation, His love for humanity, His plan of redemption, and His model for how to love and care for one another. Consequently and guided by biblical revelation, we believe that the Lord calls us to pursue robust intellectual inquiry, seeking truth with the understanding that He is the author of all truth. Therefore, when we support our students’ acquisition of knowledge, wisdom, and the skills to negotiate the most complex of learning demands; when we seek to deepen our students’ understanding of who they are as uniquely-created children of God and prepare them for servant-leadership in the world and God’s church; when our faculty and administration develop their professional learning goals and supportive systems; and when we seek to improve any aspect of the school’s operational infrastructure, at the heart of our actions will always be a fearless commitment to organizational learning, a commitment that is the result of a vigilant emphasis on being learning-focused. In his book The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Peter Senge noted that a learning organization is “an organization that is continually expanding its capacity to create its future.” In the world of today and most certainly tomorrow, rapid change will continue to profoundly impact our lives. Therefore, anchored in Christ and pursuing with excellence the present and future that God has ordained, MPCS is committed to skillful, adaptive, creative, and insatiable learning. Being learning-focused will continue to be a core value that inspires and guides our commitment to mission and doing all to the glory of God. W
“MPCS I S COMMI T T ED TO SKI LLFUL, ADAPTI VE, CREAT I VE, AN D I N SAT I ABLE LEARN I N G.”
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WINGSPAN
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Fall 2020
