What will our children need to thrive in and impact the culture they will inherit in a few short years?
|
|
The Christian school is the ideal incubator for developing these attributes, in partnership with the church, the home, and the broader community.
Legacy & Impact
Wilmington Christian School has a strong legacy of cultivating Godly Influencers for over 70 years
Our Challenge
Today, Christian schools are facing widespread, significant challenges.
Enrollment decline
|
|
Non-supportive churches
|
|
As a result, many Christian schools find themselves struggling.
WCS is currently facing these significant challenges as well.
Funding & Stewardship
Wilmington Christian School has made tremendous efforts to be a good steward of financial resources while continuing to deliver quality Christian education.
|
78%
Net Tuition Revenue |
30%
Expense reduction and decrease in administrative staff (not teachers) |
|
But despite our diligent efforts, Wilmington Christian School continues to face the ongoing widespread negative trends of decreased enrollment and financial challenges that are affecting Christian schools today.
"Challenges are one of the best ways to spark innovation. Observe, learn, adapt, and change the world."
Out of necessity, Wilmington Christian has a bold and innovative vision for the future...
Our Bold Vision for the Future
The flourishing Christian school of tomorrow will look different from the school of today.
Undoubtedly, a vision for the future of Christian education will require new ways of teaching and learning. Ultimately, it may transform the fundamental look and feel of classrooms and schools.
Undoubtedly, a vision for the future of Christian education will require new ways of teaching and learning. Ultimately, it may transform the fundamental look and feel of classrooms and schools.
While our mission of cultivating Godly influencers remains the same...
...our future requires bold innovation.
Flexible, open-source learning environment
|
|
Meaningful mentoring (spiritual & vocational)
|
|
Student ownership of school culture
|
|
A Day in the life of an 11th grade WCS student in 2025
Wendy made the turn from Loveville Road onto campus at 6:55 on a cold Wednesday morning in early November. The parking lot was still dark, with a few cars scattered around the student parking area. Collecting her things, she made her way to the “The Latte Lounge” for her weekly student senate meeting. As she arrived, a few of her fellow senators were already there firing up the latte machines getting ready for a steady flow of students in just 45 minutes.
Today’s student senate meeting included all 16 senators, and they were planning the spring semester spirit week that will occur in late March. In addition to planning student activities, the student senate also works with the Upper School principal on student life initiatives, such as disciplinary hearings, care for struggling students, and managing the student gathering spots throughout the building.
This year, they have decided on a concert as the main activity and William, a senior senator bubbles with excitement as he reports that Josh Garrells has agreed to come. As Katie closed the meeting with a review of the various prayer requests submitted by students, the senators spent their last 10 minutes together in prayer, and then rushed off to their day. William and Wendy (managers of the Latte Lounge) stayed behind to man the latte machine and as the 7:45 bell rang, students queued up to buy their cup of motivation for the day. A few teachers wandered in, too.
At 8:00am, Wendy and William wrapped up the morning’s sales and then spent the next 30 minutes cleaning the machines, reconciling the cash drawer, preparing the daily deposit record, and entering the information into QuickBooks. They had recently noticed a few problems with their QuickBooks reports, so they planned a meeting during lunch with their community mentor, Rhett who runs a local coffee shop and who meets with Wendy and William once a month to mentor them in running their business. Profits from the Latte Lounge go towards funding house activities throughout the year.
Today’s student senate meeting included all 16 senators, and they were planning the spring semester spirit week that will occur in late March. In addition to planning student activities, the student senate also works with the Upper School principal on student life initiatives, such as disciplinary hearings, care for struggling students, and managing the student gathering spots throughout the building.
This year, they have decided on a concert as the main activity and William, a senior senator bubbles with excitement as he reports that Josh Garrells has agreed to come. As Katie closed the meeting with a review of the various prayer requests submitted by students, the senators spent their last 10 minutes together in prayer, and then rushed off to their day. William and Wendy (managers of the Latte Lounge) stayed behind to man the latte machine and as the 7:45 bell rang, students queued up to buy their cup of motivation for the day. A few teachers wandered in, too.
At 8:00am, Wendy and William wrapped up the morning’s sales and then spent the next 30 minutes cleaning the machines, reconciling the cash drawer, preparing the daily deposit record, and entering the information into QuickBooks. They had recently noticed a few problems with their QuickBooks reports, so they planned a meeting during lunch with their community mentor, Rhett who runs a local coffee shop and who meets with Wendy and William once a month to mentor them in running their business. Profits from the Latte Lounge go towards funding house activities throughout the year.
Continue reading...
Wendy’s school day began with her open-source Heritage Studies course which is based on the new Faith and Liberty Discovery Center at the American Bible Society in Philadelphia. As the school year began, she and her classmates spent a day at the Discovery Center on Independence Mall learning about the influence that Scripture had on our nation’s founders and key leaders. They also spent a full day on a walking tour of Philadelphia, led by a Christian historian who explained the impact that Scripture had on the events that occurred at each site. In the week that followed the trip each student in the class created a list of 8 events or people from American history that they would study throughout the year, from the perspective of how Scripture shaped the event/person. Each month, the students would share the fruit of their research through papers, mini-documentary videos, speeches, and dramatic reenactments.
Wendy was not scheduled to meet with her Heritage Studies tutor on Wednesday, so she was able to spend the extra time she needed to be sure she had the right questions about QuickBooks for Rhett. William had to scoot out a bit sooner, as he couldn’t be more than few minutes late to his Calculus class. “Sure, partner, rush out just when we’re getting to the fun part!” Wendy chided.
William only has scheduled classes before lunch each day, so he couldn’t afford to miss much of Calculus. After lunch (and sometimes before) he leaves campus to intern at a local cabinet and furniture shop. While he is generally only able to work about 3 hours a day before he heads back to school for sports, he is rapidly developing his skills in furniture design and construction, working alongside a master craftsman. He has yet to begin work on his own project, but since it is only the beginning of the second quarter, he and his community mentor at the shop are confident that he will be able to formally design and build the coffee table he has sketched out on paper in time to submit his work as his senior service project in May. If all goes according to plan, he’ll have plenty of time to write his paper on the history of furniture and its impact on culture, prepare his 10-minute project presentation for one of the Two Senior Symposium nights, and present his gift to the Cokesbury Retirement Village prior to graduation.
After wrapping up in the Latte Lounge, Wendy walked to the Learning Lab and pulled her iPad Pro out of her bag to work on her Heritage Studies research. This month, she is studying Martin Luther King Jr’s. work in civil rights, and how his deep love for the Bible shaped his philosophy of non-violent protest. Working through a reading of King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, she prepared for her meeting with her tutor on Friday, including completing the journal/reflection exercise that would be due prior to their discussion. For this month, she is memorizing King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech for her class presentation.
The rest of the morning featured a pretty typical set of class periods, though each day is quite a bit different from the others, given that WCS has moved to a modified block schedule. What is consistent, though, is that the teachers have transitioned away from lecture-based learning and so the classes that Wendy takes look very little like the old style of “talk and chalk” that many people grew up with. Teachers have become proficient at supporting student learning in engaging ways, as opposed to exclusively focusing on transferring content. Traditional lectures with PowerPoint presentations still happen occasionally, but the older that students get, more class-time is spent interacting with information in ways that require students to deeply understand, process, and use what they’re learning.
Physics class involved working out the next steps in an engineering problem—a problem that their teacher had devised in conjunction with a Delaware DOT engineer, based on an actual bridge reconstruction project in downtown Wilmington.
Wendy and her friends had watched the curated content videos over the previous weekend and had been assigned their bridge load calculation problem first thing on Monday. Thankfully, each of her teammates had completed the required discussion board postings by the Sunday deadline, so they were all up to speed on how they would approach the problem. Skip was the team leader, and he had done a great job of reminding each student of their responsibilities and roles in the project.
Today, they jumped right in, re-reading through their assigned problem and reviewing their notes from Monday. Wendy’s iPad needed to be recharged, so she had to sit a bit away from the group to reach the outlet, which made for some challenges in collaboration. However, each student had the Google Sheets spreadsheet up on their devices, and so they could see what one another was doing. Mr. Jenkins was also in the Google Sheets spreadsheet, so he could easily see everyone’s progress. He made his way around the classroom to visit with each group to provide support and encouragement and impromptu tutoring as needed. Thankfully, Physics was 1 ½ hours long today, so the students had plenty of time to dig deep into the assigned problem.
On Friday, the engineer from Delaware DOT who was overseeing the bridge work was scheduled to visit the class, so the students were highly motivated to get their project completed in time. She was coming in to inspect their work and answer questions about the actual project. Next week, Wendy and her friends would be heading out for ½ a day to see the project in person.
Math today was less exciting—Wendy had an exam that she felt ill-prepared for. As she sat at the table, gathered her scrap paper, and logged into the Learning Management System to take the test, she breathed a quick prayer asking God for help, and clicked into the first question. The course title was “Quantitative Reasoning” and was an online dual-enrolled class in which she would earn both high school credit AND 3 credits from Colorado Christian University. Her goal was to graduate high school with 24 credits, but her first thought this morning was that she was in trouble. The test ended up being harder than she expected, and she knew she’d need to visit with her tutor/mentor Mrs. Jackson later that week to get some extra support Of course, she hoped for a good grade, but she sent Mrs. Jackson a Google Calendar appointment invitation anyway so that she visit with her in her office during Friday’s lunch period.
After a busy morning, Wendy couldn’t wait for lunch. Lunch at WCS is a full hour, and all teachers are available for meetings, mentoring, or extra help during that hour. Today, Wendy had the meeting with Rhett and William, so she grabbed a salad and headed to one of the many spots that High School students can go to for lunch—the Wilberforce Room, which has a classic English tea-room look, complete with pub-style tables and an ample collection of classic books lining the walls.
William and Rhett were already at a corner table and had just logged into QuickBooks to begin looking at the recent entries that were causing so much trouble for Wendy and William. As it turns out, they had miscategorized several transactions which messed up their reporting, and it was a quick fix to get everything back in line. Since Rhett had already planned to spend the hour with Wendy and William, they decided to brainstorm additional ways to drive more business to the Latte Lounge, including an idea Wendy had for a delivery service, where students would deliver fresh coffee to teachers in their rooms before the start of school. William had also thought of delivering coffee to parents in the car-pool line as if it were a drive-through, and they talked through logistics on that idea, including asking the sophomore App Development class if they would be able/willing to create an app to allow parents to order and pay for coffee in advance. In the last ten minutes of the meeting, Rhett shared some stories of how God was using his local coffee shop to connect people with one another in meaningful ways, and he finished up with a prayer for Wendy and William to understand more of God’s purposes for their work in the Latte Lounge, and their lives.
Immediately after lunch, Wendy excitedly headed to her literature class—after a morning of intense left-brain work, she was glad to switch to her more artistic side. The day’s agenda involved a group discussion about a section of Les Misérables that she found fascinating and hilarious all at once—when Jean Valjean escaped the Paris convent in a coffin, only to find himself buried alive. Reading the entire book was a challenge for her and her classmates, given the detailed descriptions and complex characters, but she and her peers were pushing through, motivated in large part by Mr. Tilman’s incredible passion for the book. As he discussed the themes, settings, challenges, and characters in the book, the students couldn’t help but get caught up in it all. Mr. Tilman was a master at immersing every classroom discussion in Biblical truths, and Wendy often felt like she was observing a soul-surgeon as Mr. Tilman dissected each character’s unseen motivations and choices. He helped her see her own spiritual and personal battles and victories in Cosette, Jean Valjean, and even in Javert.
Today, each student had to come prepared with an analysis of their assigned section of the chapter dealing with the “great escape.” One after another, the students shared their thoughts, with Mr. Tilman serving as a discussion referee of sorts, ensuring that each student was given their proper platform to talk and then to be challenged in friendly ways by their peers. However, he was not the center of discussion, and at times Wendy forgot he was even there. Class spilled over past the bell as one of Wendy’s classmates, Dan, refused to stop talking about his perspective on how Victor Hugo personified “the Law” in Javert, and how “there’s a little bit of Javert in all of us.” It wasn’t until everyone started throwing crumpled-up papers at him that he begrudgingly closed his argument—and his back-pack. Mr. Tilman raised his voice above the exiting students to remind them that they had another 30 pages of reading to do that evening, if they “ever hoped to stay on track,” and complete the book in one semester.
Wendy’s second-to-last class for the day was Influencing the Culture, which all WCS students are required to take sometime prior to their senior year. Her schedule didn’t work out to take it in 9th or 10th, so she was one of the older ones in the class, which she didn’t mind. She loved sitting next to a few ninth grade girls, seeing herself as a mentor to them and enjoying helping them think more deeply about how they could bring Godly influence to others. The year-long course is divided into four units: Reading and Responding to the Culture; Servant-Leadership; Effective Public Speaking; and a Cultural Engagement Project. For their cultural engagement project, Wendy’s class had chosen to partner with the Delaware Family Policy Counsel’s efforts to curb abortion in the state. While their main work would be in the latter part of the year, the class consistently researched the abortion issue and kept up-to-date with developments in the state through guest speakers, internet resources, and classroom discussions.
Today’s class, though, was a continuation of their study of servant leadership, and the topic of study was good listening skills. Mr. Gregory opened the class in prayer and then dove into a 15-minute lecture (complete with hysterical role-plays demonstrating poor listening!) on how to be a great listener. He gave them several practical tips for how to manage distractions in their heads, which is a chief cause of poor listening. Then students were split up into groups of three to practice listening to one another. There was a good bit of laughter and groaning as students (including Wendy!) complained about how challenging it was to listen well. “Not to worry,” assured Mr. Gregory. “We’ll be doing this again tomorrow. Your assignment for tonight, though, is to talk with someone in your house, practicing the skills we discussed today. Then, you’ll write a 250-word reflection on what went well, and what didn’t go so well. Hopefully your parents or sibling won’t be too shocked at your newfound desire to listen well!”
Rounding out her day was Wendy’s Bible class—an apologetics class with Mrs. Baylor, which helps her and her peers to understand the reasons for her faith in Christ and the ways in which they can effectively discuss those reasons with others. The activity for the day was to watch a video of a debate between Ravi Zacharias and an atheist college professor. The debate topic was the conflict between intelligent design and naturalistic evolution. Wendy was already very familiar with both sides of the debate, as the class had spent two weeks doing independent research on many of the issues surrounding this hot topic. Last week, she has presented a 4-page paper that outlined those issues, and so she was very ready to see expert debaters in action tackling the subject.
Unfortunately, they only were able to see about a quarter of the debate, since students could “press stop” at any time to discuss a point or to ask for clarification. A few times the class erupted into lively debate themselves, but Mrs. Baylor helped them channel their passion and clarify their thoughts, questions, and answers in respectful ways. In the last 10 minutes of class, Mrs. Baylor directed the students to process what they had seen, alone and quietly. Wendy appreciated having to sit quietly after such a raucous class session, and she was relieved to find out that there was no homework.
After school, Wendy had a student senate disciplinary hearing for a student who had skipped a scheduled class for the second time in a month. While these meetings were sometimes difficult, Wendy enjoyed the process of hearing a student’s case and helping to shape the school’s response. Of course, the upper school principal leads the school’s response to disciplinary issues and has veto power over student decisions, but he rarely has to assert that authority to change the plan that the students come up with. Over time, the practice of involving students in discipline issues has helped all the students to take more ownership for school culture, and discipline issues have actually decreased.
Wendy was personally involved with one of the students who had to appear at a discipline review meeting last month—Helen, who had had developed a habit of expressing disrespect to her science teacher, Mrs. Billings, and after several negative interactions, Mrs. Billings referred Helen to the student discipline team. After hearing the facts of the situation and interviewing both Helen and Mrs. Billings, the discipline team assigned Helen to keep a “respect journal” in which she was to write daily about her feelings towards Mrs. Billings—for an entire month. Wendy had volunteered to be Helen’s accountability partner, and each week they had lunch together at least once, to discuss her journal writings and to pray for Mrs. Billings. In the process, Helen and Wendy became friends, and Helen was making progress in transforming her negative feelings towards Mrs. Billings.
Since it was between seasons, and basketball had not yet begun, Wendy did not have practice. Instead, she met a few friends in the Media Center to do some more work on the bridge project from Physics class. They also spent some time planning their visit to the Urban Promise Academy in downtown Wilmington where they would be teaching basic physics to 6th graders for an hour a day for an entire week. The students were super excited about the opportunity and they had been planning this service-learning project for about a month. Today, they worked on the assessment they would give the students at the end of the week. Wendy thought a few questions were too hard, so there was a good amount of give-and-take among them as they settled on a compromise, which meant that two of the four that she objected to were removed from the test. Mr. Jenkins had arranged for them to pilot the test with WCS sixth graders on Monday of next week, so they were under some pressure to get the test finished and submitted to him for a final review.
After her meeting at the Media Center, Wendy headed home to complete her unfinished work from the day, and to read her 30 pages in Les Miserables. Later that evening, she completed her active listening exercise with her younger sister, which ended in lots of laughter as her sister teased her for seeming to be so ridiculously interested in her day.
Finally, as she wound down from a full day, she sat at her iPad to process some of her thoughts about her day in her journal. As she thought, she was brought back to just three years ago, to the time before WCS had transitioned into a new school. It didn’t take much for the memories to come rolling back—memories of rigid schedules, standardized classes, and very little opportunity to actually do something significant with what she was learning. Sure, she always had great teachers who loved her and loved teaching. But as she compared then with now, she wrote…
"I can hardly imagine what my life would be like if our school had stayed the same as it always was—I’d be taking the same old classes in the same old rooms, and really not being challenged to own my learning—expect of course for my test grades. Before, I felt like all I had to do was figure out what my teachers wanted from me and give it to them; it actually felt a little bit like a game. I wish I had a dollar for every time a teacher said, “Now make sure you get this down, class—this is going to be on your test,” or, “Don’t worry about this or that; it won’t be on your test.” Now, I feel like I’m an active part of my own learning and life, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I’m not looking forward to graduating—well maybe a little bit… I just hope that college will be as engaging and fun as high school has been!"
Wendy was not scheduled to meet with her Heritage Studies tutor on Wednesday, so she was able to spend the extra time she needed to be sure she had the right questions about QuickBooks for Rhett. William had to scoot out a bit sooner, as he couldn’t be more than few minutes late to his Calculus class. “Sure, partner, rush out just when we’re getting to the fun part!” Wendy chided.
William only has scheduled classes before lunch each day, so he couldn’t afford to miss much of Calculus. After lunch (and sometimes before) he leaves campus to intern at a local cabinet and furniture shop. While he is generally only able to work about 3 hours a day before he heads back to school for sports, he is rapidly developing his skills in furniture design and construction, working alongside a master craftsman. He has yet to begin work on his own project, but since it is only the beginning of the second quarter, he and his community mentor at the shop are confident that he will be able to formally design and build the coffee table he has sketched out on paper in time to submit his work as his senior service project in May. If all goes according to plan, he’ll have plenty of time to write his paper on the history of furniture and its impact on culture, prepare his 10-minute project presentation for one of the Two Senior Symposium nights, and present his gift to the Cokesbury Retirement Village prior to graduation.
After wrapping up in the Latte Lounge, Wendy walked to the Learning Lab and pulled her iPad Pro out of her bag to work on her Heritage Studies research. This month, she is studying Martin Luther King Jr’s. work in civil rights, and how his deep love for the Bible shaped his philosophy of non-violent protest. Working through a reading of King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, she prepared for her meeting with her tutor on Friday, including completing the journal/reflection exercise that would be due prior to their discussion. For this month, she is memorizing King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech for her class presentation.
The rest of the morning featured a pretty typical set of class periods, though each day is quite a bit different from the others, given that WCS has moved to a modified block schedule. What is consistent, though, is that the teachers have transitioned away from lecture-based learning and so the classes that Wendy takes look very little like the old style of “talk and chalk” that many people grew up with. Teachers have become proficient at supporting student learning in engaging ways, as opposed to exclusively focusing on transferring content. Traditional lectures with PowerPoint presentations still happen occasionally, but the older that students get, more class-time is spent interacting with information in ways that require students to deeply understand, process, and use what they’re learning.
Physics class involved working out the next steps in an engineering problem—a problem that their teacher had devised in conjunction with a Delaware DOT engineer, based on an actual bridge reconstruction project in downtown Wilmington.
Wendy and her friends had watched the curated content videos over the previous weekend and had been assigned their bridge load calculation problem first thing on Monday. Thankfully, each of her teammates had completed the required discussion board postings by the Sunday deadline, so they were all up to speed on how they would approach the problem. Skip was the team leader, and he had done a great job of reminding each student of their responsibilities and roles in the project.
Today, they jumped right in, re-reading through their assigned problem and reviewing their notes from Monday. Wendy’s iPad needed to be recharged, so she had to sit a bit away from the group to reach the outlet, which made for some challenges in collaboration. However, each student had the Google Sheets spreadsheet up on their devices, and so they could see what one another was doing. Mr. Jenkins was also in the Google Sheets spreadsheet, so he could easily see everyone’s progress. He made his way around the classroom to visit with each group to provide support and encouragement and impromptu tutoring as needed. Thankfully, Physics was 1 ½ hours long today, so the students had plenty of time to dig deep into the assigned problem.
On Friday, the engineer from Delaware DOT who was overseeing the bridge work was scheduled to visit the class, so the students were highly motivated to get their project completed in time. She was coming in to inspect their work and answer questions about the actual project. Next week, Wendy and her friends would be heading out for ½ a day to see the project in person.
Math today was less exciting—Wendy had an exam that she felt ill-prepared for. As she sat at the table, gathered her scrap paper, and logged into the Learning Management System to take the test, she breathed a quick prayer asking God for help, and clicked into the first question. The course title was “Quantitative Reasoning” and was an online dual-enrolled class in which she would earn both high school credit AND 3 credits from Colorado Christian University. Her goal was to graduate high school with 24 credits, but her first thought this morning was that she was in trouble. The test ended up being harder than she expected, and she knew she’d need to visit with her tutor/mentor Mrs. Jackson later that week to get some extra support Of course, she hoped for a good grade, but she sent Mrs. Jackson a Google Calendar appointment invitation anyway so that she visit with her in her office during Friday’s lunch period.
After a busy morning, Wendy couldn’t wait for lunch. Lunch at WCS is a full hour, and all teachers are available for meetings, mentoring, or extra help during that hour. Today, Wendy had the meeting with Rhett and William, so she grabbed a salad and headed to one of the many spots that High School students can go to for lunch—the Wilberforce Room, which has a classic English tea-room look, complete with pub-style tables and an ample collection of classic books lining the walls.
William and Rhett were already at a corner table and had just logged into QuickBooks to begin looking at the recent entries that were causing so much trouble for Wendy and William. As it turns out, they had miscategorized several transactions which messed up their reporting, and it was a quick fix to get everything back in line. Since Rhett had already planned to spend the hour with Wendy and William, they decided to brainstorm additional ways to drive more business to the Latte Lounge, including an idea Wendy had for a delivery service, where students would deliver fresh coffee to teachers in their rooms before the start of school. William had also thought of delivering coffee to parents in the car-pool line as if it were a drive-through, and they talked through logistics on that idea, including asking the sophomore App Development class if they would be able/willing to create an app to allow parents to order and pay for coffee in advance. In the last ten minutes of the meeting, Rhett shared some stories of how God was using his local coffee shop to connect people with one another in meaningful ways, and he finished up with a prayer for Wendy and William to understand more of God’s purposes for their work in the Latte Lounge, and their lives.
Immediately after lunch, Wendy excitedly headed to her literature class—after a morning of intense left-brain work, she was glad to switch to her more artistic side. The day’s agenda involved a group discussion about a section of Les Misérables that she found fascinating and hilarious all at once—when Jean Valjean escaped the Paris convent in a coffin, only to find himself buried alive. Reading the entire book was a challenge for her and her classmates, given the detailed descriptions and complex characters, but she and her peers were pushing through, motivated in large part by Mr. Tilman’s incredible passion for the book. As he discussed the themes, settings, challenges, and characters in the book, the students couldn’t help but get caught up in it all. Mr. Tilman was a master at immersing every classroom discussion in Biblical truths, and Wendy often felt like she was observing a soul-surgeon as Mr. Tilman dissected each character’s unseen motivations and choices. He helped her see her own spiritual and personal battles and victories in Cosette, Jean Valjean, and even in Javert.
Today, each student had to come prepared with an analysis of their assigned section of the chapter dealing with the “great escape.” One after another, the students shared their thoughts, with Mr. Tilman serving as a discussion referee of sorts, ensuring that each student was given their proper platform to talk and then to be challenged in friendly ways by their peers. However, he was not the center of discussion, and at times Wendy forgot he was even there. Class spilled over past the bell as one of Wendy’s classmates, Dan, refused to stop talking about his perspective on how Victor Hugo personified “the Law” in Javert, and how “there’s a little bit of Javert in all of us.” It wasn’t until everyone started throwing crumpled-up papers at him that he begrudgingly closed his argument—and his back-pack. Mr. Tilman raised his voice above the exiting students to remind them that they had another 30 pages of reading to do that evening, if they “ever hoped to stay on track,” and complete the book in one semester.
Wendy’s second-to-last class for the day was Influencing the Culture, which all WCS students are required to take sometime prior to their senior year. Her schedule didn’t work out to take it in 9th or 10th, so she was one of the older ones in the class, which she didn’t mind. She loved sitting next to a few ninth grade girls, seeing herself as a mentor to them and enjoying helping them think more deeply about how they could bring Godly influence to others. The year-long course is divided into four units: Reading and Responding to the Culture; Servant-Leadership; Effective Public Speaking; and a Cultural Engagement Project. For their cultural engagement project, Wendy’s class had chosen to partner with the Delaware Family Policy Counsel’s efforts to curb abortion in the state. While their main work would be in the latter part of the year, the class consistently researched the abortion issue and kept up-to-date with developments in the state through guest speakers, internet resources, and classroom discussions.
Today’s class, though, was a continuation of their study of servant leadership, and the topic of study was good listening skills. Mr. Gregory opened the class in prayer and then dove into a 15-minute lecture (complete with hysterical role-plays demonstrating poor listening!) on how to be a great listener. He gave them several practical tips for how to manage distractions in their heads, which is a chief cause of poor listening. Then students were split up into groups of three to practice listening to one another. There was a good bit of laughter and groaning as students (including Wendy!) complained about how challenging it was to listen well. “Not to worry,” assured Mr. Gregory. “We’ll be doing this again tomorrow. Your assignment for tonight, though, is to talk with someone in your house, practicing the skills we discussed today. Then, you’ll write a 250-word reflection on what went well, and what didn’t go so well. Hopefully your parents or sibling won’t be too shocked at your newfound desire to listen well!”
Rounding out her day was Wendy’s Bible class—an apologetics class with Mrs. Baylor, which helps her and her peers to understand the reasons for her faith in Christ and the ways in which they can effectively discuss those reasons with others. The activity for the day was to watch a video of a debate between Ravi Zacharias and an atheist college professor. The debate topic was the conflict between intelligent design and naturalistic evolution. Wendy was already very familiar with both sides of the debate, as the class had spent two weeks doing independent research on many of the issues surrounding this hot topic. Last week, she has presented a 4-page paper that outlined those issues, and so she was very ready to see expert debaters in action tackling the subject.
Unfortunately, they only were able to see about a quarter of the debate, since students could “press stop” at any time to discuss a point or to ask for clarification. A few times the class erupted into lively debate themselves, but Mrs. Baylor helped them channel their passion and clarify their thoughts, questions, and answers in respectful ways. In the last 10 minutes of class, Mrs. Baylor directed the students to process what they had seen, alone and quietly. Wendy appreciated having to sit quietly after such a raucous class session, and she was relieved to find out that there was no homework.
After school, Wendy had a student senate disciplinary hearing for a student who had skipped a scheduled class for the second time in a month. While these meetings were sometimes difficult, Wendy enjoyed the process of hearing a student’s case and helping to shape the school’s response. Of course, the upper school principal leads the school’s response to disciplinary issues and has veto power over student decisions, but he rarely has to assert that authority to change the plan that the students come up with. Over time, the practice of involving students in discipline issues has helped all the students to take more ownership for school culture, and discipline issues have actually decreased.
Wendy was personally involved with one of the students who had to appear at a discipline review meeting last month—Helen, who had had developed a habit of expressing disrespect to her science teacher, Mrs. Billings, and after several negative interactions, Mrs. Billings referred Helen to the student discipline team. After hearing the facts of the situation and interviewing both Helen and Mrs. Billings, the discipline team assigned Helen to keep a “respect journal” in which she was to write daily about her feelings towards Mrs. Billings—for an entire month. Wendy had volunteered to be Helen’s accountability partner, and each week they had lunch together at least once, to discuss her journal writings and to pray for Mrs. Billings. In the process, Helen and Wendy became friends, and Helen was making progress in transforming her negative feelings towards Mrs. Billings.
Since it was between seasons, and basketball had not yet begun, Wendy did not have practice. Instead, she met a few friends in the Media Center to do some more work on the bridge project from Physics class. They also spent some time planning their visit to the Urban Promise Academy in downtown Wilmington where they would be teaching basic physics to 6th graders for an hour a day for an entire week. The students were super excited about the opportunity and they had been planning this service-learning project for about a month. Today, they worked on the assessment they would give the students at the end of the week. Wendy thought a few questions were too hard, so there was a good amount of give-and-take among them as they settled on a compromise, which meant that two of the four that she objected to were removed from the test. Mr. Jenkins had arranged for them to pilot the test with WCS sixth graders on Monday of next week, so they were under some pressure to get the test finished and submitted to him for a final review.
After her meeting at the Media Center, Wendy headed home to complete her unfinished work from the day, and to read her 30 pages in Les Miserables. Later that evening, she completed her active listening exercise with her younger sister, which ended in lots of laughter as her sister teased her for seeming to be so ridiculously interested in her day.
Finally, as she wound down from a full day, she sat at her iPad to process some of her thoughts about her day in her journal. As she thought, she was brought back to just three years ago, to the time before WCS had transitioned into a new school. It didn’t take much for the memories to come rolling back—memories of rigid schedules, standardized classes, and very little opportunity to actually do something significant with what she was learning. Sure, she always had great teachers who loved her and loved teaching. But as she compared then with now, she wrote…
"I can hardly imagine what my life would be like if our school had stayed the same as it always was—I’d be taking the same old classes in the same old rooms, and really not being challenged to own my learning—expect of course for my test grades. Before, I felt like all I had to do was figure out what my teachers wanted from me and give it to them; it actually felt a little bit like a game. I wish I had a dollar for every time a teacher said, “Now make sure you get this down, class—this is going to be on your test,” or, “Don’t worry about this or that; it won’t be on your test.” Now, I feel like I’m an active part of my own learning and life, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I’m not looking forward to graduating—well maybe a little bit… I just hope that college will be as engaging and fun as high school has been!"
Partner With Us
We invite you to prayerfully consider how you can partner with us to help us overcome our challenges and turn our vision into a reality.
|
Are you Christian professional, business owner, or leader?
Do you have a heart for discipling students? We are looking for Christian men and women to pour into our students as vocational and spiritual mentors. Examples of flexible opportunities Include:
If you're interested in learning more, please fill out the contact form below so we can follow up with you. |
Additional Resources Related to our Bold Vision
1. Read a published article by Headmaster Roger Erdvig on the innovative application of Service Learning in Christian Schools
"Service-learning is a teaching strategy that connects classroom learning with meaningful, authentic service in the community. Students learn and practice content, skills, or dispositions in the classroom and then go out to apply those learning objectives in the context of a service project that meets legitimate needs of others." Read the full article here
2. Watch a video on the Surprising Truth About Learning In Schools
"Service-learning is a teaching strategy that connects classroom learning with meaningful, authentic service in the community. Students learn and practice content, skills, or dispositions in the classroom and then go out to apply those learning objectives in the context of a service project that meets legitimate needs of others." Read the full article here
2. Watch a video on the Surprising Truth About Learning In Schools
3. Download/Share the digital pdf of our printed Future Vision brochure.
| wcs_future_vision_brochure.pdf |
