THE WOODLANDS
THE C H WOODLANDS RISTIAN
A C A D E M ACADEMY Y CHRISTIAN OCTOBER 17, 2014
Head Of School Notes - by Julie Ambler Life is always busy here at Woodlands Christian! Thus, it was a blessing for our entire senior leadership team (Steve Zeal, Stephen Clark, Bruce Hunter, Eve Allen, Randy Hollas and I) to travel to the Atlanta, Georgia area last week for a three day conference presented by the Council on Education Standards and Accountability (CESA). CESA exists to motivate, support, and hold accountable Christian schools that aspire to superlative academic standards, institutional best practices, and collaboration with like-minded schools. While there, we attended workshops and interacted with Christian school leaders from about 40 different schools from across the country. We heard Andy Crouch, the editor of Christianity Today, who spoke from his latest book, Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power. We also met Dr. Michael Lindsay, President of Gordon College in Boston, who shared from his book, View from the Top: An Inside Look at How People in Power See and Shape the World, and gave a riveting account of being targeted by the media over the past 90 days for his biblical view of marriage. It was truly inspiring for us to meet and hear from such devoted Christian warriors. We also had the opportunity to visit two wellestablished Christian schools in the greater Atlanta area. Mount Paran Christian School, founded in 1976 and located in Kennesaw serves 1,200 students from PK-3 through 12th grade. One of their distinctives is “taking back the arts for Christ”. We were awed to see their amazing performing arts center where we enjoyed performances by their advanced dance ensemble, choirs, orchestra and string quartet. Mount Paran’s 65-acre campus includes a state-of-the-art performance hall, a black box theater, a soundlab recording studio, three dance studios, and numerous rehearsal and practice rooms. We look forward to the day when Woodlands Christian can offer its students an equally wide range of programs and supporting facilities in which to develop and express their creative gifts for Christ!
Cyndee Farra, our Director of Technology, joined us on the final day of our trip for a visit to Greater Atlanta Christian School (GAC) in Norcross, Georgia. GAC, founded in 1961, is an Apple Distinguished School that serves over 1,800 students from PK-3 through 12th grade on a beautiful 81-acre campus developed with 31 permanent buildings. GAC has a reputation for educational innovation, and we enjoyed visiting prototype and collaborative classrooms, touring outdoor learning centers, observing the seamless integration of digital devices into the classrooms and labs, and dialoguing with their enthusiastic staff about educational best practices and research. We were pleased to observe that our own faculty has already adopted and implemented many of their activities and best practices, and we look forward to bringing enhancements inspired by GAC to our campus soon! Such trips enable us to stretch our vision and learn from schools that are further ahead of Woodlands Christian in their timetable. We were inspired to see large, thriving Christian schools that successfully keep Christ and students at the center of everything. Like Woodlands Christian, these schools offered beautiful campuses, a strong sense of Christ, challenging academics, and an irresistible sense of community. We successfully gleaned best practices, benchmarked our programs, and learned from the experiences of these fine school leaders. We are humbled by the vision, blessings and growth that God has bestowed upon Woodlands Christian in recent years, and we believe that He is calling us to become a future leader among Christian schools. As we continually seek God’s guidance for His school, this trip generated many ideas, much encouragement and tremendous inspiration to further equip and inspire generations of students to become leaders for Christ – spiritually, academically, physically and socially. Thank you for your support of Woodlands Christian and the privilege of serving your family here.
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