End of the 2018/2019 School Year

It’s the end of the 2018-19 school year. Most of you are on vacation now, or at the very least your work at the school can be done without students present. That said, a good many of you will roll right into summer school, or you’ve taken on a summer job, because – let’s face it – teachers just don’t make enough. This is an excellent time, no matter what your situation, to take stock of another year done and to look forward to next year.

For Jason and Patrick, this will be the last post of the school year. We will start back up with a back-to-school post in August. In the meantime, we’d like to leave you with a few thoughts and announcements as we wrap up the school year.

This summer is a transition for Patrick. He will be leaving his position at Providence Classical Christian Academy in St. Louis, MO to rejoin the team at Clapham School in Wheaton, IL. The five years spent at Providence have been a fruitful time to learn and grow as an administrator. It has been a joy to assemble a great team of teachers and provide them with a vision of what middle school and high school can be when we think holistically about students as persons. It has been one of my goals to establish an environment of collegiality among the faculty and staff as well as enable the faculty to teach their subjects with skill and enthusiasm, drawing out the best students have to offer. The investment made in two of my faculty over the past several years now sees them move into administrative positions, so that there’s a sense that whatever good I have done here will carry on in the capable hands of those I leave behind.

One of the benefits of joining Clapham is the ability to work more closely with Jason, operating in the same school and being located closer together to facilitate our writing goals. There’s already a great leadership team and the faculty are fantastic. There’s much I will need to learn in this new environment (although not so new, since I worked there previously), but I also have the opportunity to share lessons learned at Providence to take the school to new levels.

This summer Jason and his wife Ashley are expecting the arrival of their new baby boy Atticus sometime in early July. He will also be busy working on some major projects and planning for the year for Clapham School.

Together our goals are to expand on what was a great first year blogging. There’s much we’ve learned about providing long-form content on the art of teaching. We’d like to provide you our readers with more great content that will help you whether you are a classroom teacher, an administrator or a homeschool parent. One project Jason and Patrick are working on is a full-length book on the topic of the Bible and education. In this we’re exploring what we are calling the apprenticeship model of education. We look forward to the time when we can share with you more details. In the meantime, Jason will be adding some new social media avenues to interact with us. Plus, we are exploring whether to create content through either a podcast or videocast format. If you’d be interested in listening to or watching content from us, we’d appreciate getting feedback from you about your preferences.

Finally, a thought. Teaching is challenging work. One thing I’ve learned is that teaching is an art form. And like most other artists, we suffer for our art. This art form requires much of us from managing a classroom and delivering excellent content to marking papers and interacting with parents. There is a deep and profound joy we gain when each of these areas of our art work well. But we are also our own harshest critics, pushing ourselves to get deeper into our material or to forge better connections with our students. Now that it’s the summer time, it’s a great time to recharge for the new school year awaiting us in August. It’s time to pan out to the big picture. What inspires you as a teacher? What is the grand purpose God has placed you on this earth to accomplish as a teacher? What did you accomplish this year that has propelled you forward in your journey as a teacher? Where could this take you next year? Taking time to reconnect with the lofty and inspiring values you have is the best way to recharge. There will be time for rejigging your lesson plans later. Now is the time for the soul work.

We hope you have a great summer. See you when the new school year begins.