Good Education is a Balance

I should have made the fourth-grade baseball All-Star team.  I was CLEARLY the best player on the team. I mean, just look at this catch I made as a kindergartner!

If I was this good as a kindergartner, you can just imagine how good I was in the fourth grade. I had years of experience at that point and training by a Major League pitcher. Nathan Minchey was a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, and he grew up at the same church as I did. Nathan gave me personal pitching lessons in his off-season. I was good.

So when the season was over and we were at the closing ceremonies, I knew my name would be called for the All-Star team. But…it wasn’t. The head coach’s son’s name was called.  My dad was just the assistant coach. I was so mad at my dad! How could he not stand up for me in the coaches’ meeting and make sure I got on the All-Star team? It was simply an injustice. I can remember the anger I felt, and I can remember how mad I was that my parents decided to do nothing to help me get on that team.

Now, as an adult, I look back on this situation so thankful for the way my parents handled it. Last semester during our Family Institute, I started to process what I learned from this experience and what I would have learned if my parents had fought and got me on that team.

If my parents had complained	Because they didn’t complain
I would have learned my parents loved me	I learned how much they loved me for not complaining
I would have learned that life is not fair but you can manipulate the system	I learned life is not fair
I would have learned that I can get my way by how I interact with my parents	I learned to work harder and improve
I would have learned that my parents will fight my battles for me	I learned to suck it up (grit)

I learned a lot more about real life by not being on that team than by being on the team. Dr. Tim Elmore, an author, national speaker, and teen researcher has put some interesting information together about raising the current generation of kids.

He says that our kids' world is full of…

Speed

Convenience

Entertainment

Nurture

Entitlement

What are the consequences of these things?

If our children’s world is full of SPEED, they will view SLOW as bad.

If our children’s world is full of CONVENIENCE, they will view HARD as bad.

If our children’s world is full of ENTERTAINMENT, they will view BORING as bad.

If our children’s world is full of NURTURE, they will view RISK as bad.

If our children’s world is full of ENTITLEMENT, they will view LABOR as bad.

Think about this for a second; what are the implications for our children? How do they view slow, hard, boring, risk, and labor? As an adult I often have to deal with slow, hard, boring, risk, and labor.  If I have a hard time in my marriage, how do I respond? If work is boring for a period, how do I respond? How can I function as a follower of Jesus if risk is bad?

We know that this must be a balancing act because life is also full of speed, convenience, entertainment, nurturing, and entitlement. We also know that these things are not inherently bad. The key is knowing the right opportunities to teach all of these.

So, how does this balancing act impact your child’s education? As a response to all of this, here are some great examples of what we can do in education, which is also great advice for parenting.

Don’t think Control, think Connect.

Don’t think Inform, think Interpret.

Don’t think Entertain, think Equip.

Don’t think Manage, think Mentor.

Don’t think Impose, think Expose.

Don’t think Prevent, think Prepare.

Don’t think Cool, think Real.

Don’t think Tell, think Ask.

Don’t think Prescriptive, think Descriptive.

Don’t think Lecture, think Lab.

As educators, we spend a lot of time thinking about the most effective ways to reach our students. As you have read from my previous blog posts we desire to be a school that focuses on best practices. Yes, you have seen updated technology use, strategic pedagogy, and new programming being effectively used at OCA. But at the end of the day, are we preparing students to be good decision makers and problem solvers? Or, more importantly, are we forming students to be followers of Jesus? 

This is a delicate balance that we take very seriously. We are in the midst of building an educational system that provides speed, convenience, and other modern advantages while still training our students how to do hard, risky, and labor intensive things. There will be adjustments made along the way, but our goal will always be to provide our students with the most well-rounded experience possible.

Bloom’s Taxonomy is a learning model and best practice that educators use to help their students develop critical thinking skills and for better retention of information.

To move up the pyramid from lower-order thinking (simply remembering and understanding facts) to higher-order thinking (analysis, evaluation, creation), we must push, challenge, and create opportunities for critical thinking. Critical thinking, problem solving, self-motivation, and responsibility are 21st Century Kingdom Skills that we focus on at OCA. As educators, we value partnering with families in teaching these real-life skills because we know this will prepare them to be successful in our world.

I am so thankful to be a part of a community like Oklahoma Christian Academy that has families who allow our educators to do this. You allow us to be rigorous, you desire that we develop faith-formative skills in your children, and you collaborate with us (not against us) when your child hits adversity because you know the value of preparing your child for the path and not the path for your child.

Netflix vs. Blockbuster

Blockbuster blew it. It's as simple as that. In 2000, during the early days of Netflix, their leadership team flew to Dallas, Texas to meet with Blockbuster. The goal Netflix had in mind was to sell Blockbuster on this new idea of video rental by mail, and their big hope was to sell their company model to Blockbuster.

As you know, Blockbuster said no. The CEO of Blockbuster said there will never be a time in American culture where families will not want to go to a store to rent a movie and watch it as a family. Not long after that Blockbuster went bankrupt. 

Some may think that the success of Netflix hinged on innovation. I disagree. Netflix’s concept was not innovative, it was just common sense. The Netflix concept was essentially the same as Blockbuster. A customer rents a movie, watches it, and then returns it. They did change the rental payment to a subscription fee and they used virtual ordering and shipping. Those two details were innovative, but the nuts and bolts remained the same. Essentially, all they did was take current technology and enhanced a system that was already in place. This is not innovation; it's common sense. 

In education we have a phrase for common sense things. We call them best practices. Personally, I believe one of the biggest problems in education right now is the focus on innovation and not best practices. As you know, I believe technology must play a huge role in education, but it's not for the sake of innovation. It’s so we can enhance and update best practices. That’s the conversation we need to be having more often in education. 

A new survey by educational publisher McGraw-Hill found 73% of K-12 parents believe traditional textbooks move too slowly to stay relevant in today's rapidly changing environment, while 80% believe digital resource supported learning can make it easier for students to get their head around difficult concepts.

Here is a practical comparisons of the two:

Textbooks	Digital resources
Disengaging	Engaging
Expensive	More affordable
Quickly outdated	Easily updated
Limited accessibility	Increased accessibility
Individual	Collaborative
Stagnant	Interactive

On September 9 we took a big step at OCA. We provided 9th-12th grade students use of a personal Google Chromebook. These are 15-inch laptops using Google Drive, a cloud-based storage and sharing platform, and the Chrome internet browser. They are made for education and are the most practical device in the educational market. 

Putting engaging, collaborative, interactive technology in our students’ hands is one of the most effective ways we can educate our students and prepare them to be leaders in our world. According to research recently published in the New York Times, Chromebooks have become the standard tool for forward thinking academic settings, taking over the market once held by the iPad. This is a best practice that OCA has embraced, and we are ready to see the new doors it will open for our students and educators.  

Offering our students exposure to great learning opportunities is a responsibility we take very seriously. We also understand there is an equal responsibility to provide our students with a clear expectation for responsible use. First and foremost we are teaching our students about digital citizenship and how to use technology responsibly, appropriately, and professionally. Additionally, we are using programs to promote safe use of the internet, programs that include GoGaurdian, Hapara, and Google App Management.

The GoGaurdian content filter follows each device when it leaves our campus and monitors its activity. Hapara allows teachers to view what the students are doing with their computers in the classroom via a live feed. All of these programs will allow us to help direct our students towards responsible use, helping them appropriately use technology and teaching them to be successful in the 21st century.

Netflix knew what they were doing when they removed the barriers to high level success in the movie rental business. Now we’re doing the same thing with education.

Creative Marketing or Distinctively Different?

I need to get something off my chest.  For some reason marketing that takes secular company logos and turns them into "Jesus themed" words has always left me a little unsettled.  I'm not sure why, because there is nothing essentially wrong with it, but it has never felt quite right.  I’m sure you’ve seen these shirts:

Just as my role as a father causes me to view the world differently, my role as president at OCA forces me to see everything through a different lens.  I’m constantly wondering how others see and perceive us, and these types of marketing schemes make me wonder about the way our school is perceived.  I guess I’m most concerned that there are people out there who view Christian education as a knock-off marketing scheme, just adding Christianity on top of the average public school model.  If this is true it causes some terrible problems for Christian education, because we would be a knock-off version of a broken system.  Let me share some statistics about our nation’s public school system with you that I found in CreativeSchools by Dr. Ken Robinson (2015).

•            70,000 students drop out of school every day (p. 20).
•            1.5 million students drop out of school per year (p. 20). 
•             Half of African American and Latino students drop out of school every year (p.21). 
•            40% of teachers leave the profession after the first 5 years (p. 21).
•            The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. (p. 22). Roughly 1 in 35 adults. 
•             More than two-thirds of male prisoners do not have a high school diploma. 
•            63% of students who stay in school report boredom and disengagement (p. 23).
•            40% of college students do not graduate
•              In the last 45 years, suicide rates have increased by 60% (p. 23). Suicide is the third leading cause of death of people between the ages of 15 and 44.Some would attribute this to the overwhelming size of schools and to high-stakes testing.

I hope you are saying, "WOW, these numbers can't be true!"  I’m afraid they are.

The good news is that in Christian education we have the freedom to break free from this model that is failing our kids and our country.  OCA can be Christ-centered, which allows us to be student-centered.  I’m concerned that too many of our Christian schools are modeling themselves after this broken model of public education.  Can we call ourselves Christian schools if that is what we are doing?  Are we just another version of a knock-off Christian Facebook logo t-shirt? 

The challenge to remain distinctively different from our culture while at the same time having the proper degree of relevance to be effective is not a new challenge for God's people.  When Israel was commissioned to seize their newly acquired Promised Land, God gave them a set of stipulations to protect them against religious and cultural syncretism.  (Syncretism is the combining of different, often contradictory beliefs, while bending practices of various philosophies.)  Israel would spend the next several generations slowly integrating pagan culture and practices, and it resulted in a hybrid worldview.  Fast forward 4,000 years, the community of faith is still challenged with keeping our holy distinctions of identity, mission, and purpose, while at the same time keeping an effective proximity with our culture.   

I’m excited that at Oklahoma Christian Academy the Christian part of our name is not just a marketing scheme.  Since we are a Christian school we desire to be distinctively different.  We feel called by God to bring the gospel to our students in relevant ways, creating a school that re-imagines what education should be.

This year will be filled with new vision and plans for a better and more intentional education for our students.  I’m going to use this blog to help communicate about the practical ways we plan to reshape the model of education at OCA.  Here is a sneak-peak at a few of new directions we are headed.

1. Digital Citizenship

2. Project Based Learning

3. Co-teaching and Interdisciplinary Courses

4. Career Shadowing and Apprenticeship Opportunities 

5. Strengthening of Science and Technology 

6. Enhancing Faith-Formative Experiences on Campus

I hope you’re as excited as I am to tear down the old walls and begin building a better foundation for our students’ futures.  It’s going to be a great year, and I feel privileged to share it with you.

Stay tuned...