Positive Christian education trends continue to emerge in province
Christian education has crucial role to play in society: Redeemer president
Friday June 18, 2010 -- Michelle Strutzenberger
Recent coverage of the Ontario Alliance of Christian Schools (OACS) members reveals the continuing emergence of a number of positive trends and activities, providing added reason to hope in a bright future for the movement.
Several retiring leaders interviewed by OACS News in the last few weeks identified some of the hopeful trends they are seeing, including the increasing interest in Christian education from parents of a wide variety of Christian traditions.
These leaders are also encouraged by the passion of many young people today for upholding and advancing Christian education.
“There’s really hope for the future because there's a lot of good people, well educated, who understand why we have these Christian schools,” retiring principal John Lunshof earlier told OACS News.
Karen Gerritsma, who retires the end of this month, has a similar view.
“I see a younger generation of leaders who are also passionate about Christian education, and they’re willing to stand on the shoulders of us who have gone before and make our schools even better than they are,” she says.
Other positive signals include the fact that OACS schools are not shying away from innovation and forward-edge thinking, as several recent stories show.
For instance, Alex Van Donkersgoed of Halton Hills Christian School has begun exploring the use of YouTube videos to strengthen his teaching and engage students more deeply.
He says he sees a “huge future” in the use of YouTube videos for supporting classroom teaching and suggests teachers from all OACS member schools record the best of their lessons and provide that as a library for the other OACS schools — and “perhaps even the world” — to draw from.
Having discovered word-of-mouth as the best form of advertisement, Orangeville Christian School (OCS) has been wading into different forms of social media to foster sharing positive stories about the school.
OCS has been rebuilding and redefining itself as well as looking for ways to grow, prompting principal and chief operating officer Paul Marcus to immerse himself into learning about word-of-mouth marketing.
Marcus has created a blog on the school’s website, posting pictures and related text at least twice a week, and is also using Facebook.
“The newer generation are going to be more digitally inclined than the last,” he earlier told OACS News, adding there will be more new media to come.
Other positive trends include schools’ ongoing efforts to ensure they are engaged in the broader community.
Redeemer University College is one of these schools, as identified by the institution’s new president Hubert R. Krygsman who says he has been encouraged to see a strong commitment by Redeemer students, faculty and staff to “roll up their sleeves and get involved in the community and make that part of the learning process.”
As another example, two London District Christian Secondary School (LDCSS) students won a community-wide contest sponsored by their local MP.
Taking part in this competition provided the added benefit of strengthening the reputation of LDCSS as a participating community member, “not cloistered off in our little corner but part of what’s happening in the city,” says advancement director Kerry Wilson.
Beyond any passion, innovation or community engagement, however, there is reason to believe in a significant future for Christian education because it has the tremendous potential to play a crucial role in addressing critical issues of today’s society, Krygsman says in a recent article.
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