The schools that I visit are clearly places of learning, of hope, and of love. I see strong relationships between faculty and students. I see fun, challenging activities that push the students view of the world. I see God revealed through both nature and His Word. Further, as I’ve looked at the findings from CognitiveGenesis study (both last year and this year’s preliminary findings) I see much to cheer about!

So what is the big deal? Do we really need change in Adventist education? Are things really that bad? Change will be the theme of my posting over the next few weeks.

Watch this 10 minute movie and then answer the question for yourself: Why the call for change in Adventist education?

Last school year, we realized that our current content filtering solution was not adequate.  Experts repeatedly advise families to keep their computers in a common area of the home where all internet viewing is public.  In a boarding academy environment it is challenging to apply this advice without removing computers from dorm rooms completely.  Doing that would be counterproductive to the educational goals and would reduce parent’s ability to communicate with their children.  We have a responsibility to the parents that send their children to our school to provide an environment where pornography and other detrimental web sites are not allowed.  While we can’t prevent students from brining inappropriate material on campus, we certainly don’t want to create an environment where pornography can grow and spread without check.  If students have ready access to inappropriate material in the Internet, we will have an undercurrent breading which will not only affect the student’s individually, but will undermine the spiritual program of the school.

continue reading "Content Filtering - One Year Later"

In my years of work in Adventist schools I have tried to keep focused on the basic goals of Adventist education. This has sometimes been a difficult matter because parents send their children to our schools for a variety of reasons. Some want a safe place where their children can be protected from the rough and tumble life of a public school. Others want the academic benefits found in Adventist schools with smaller class size and teachers who give individual attention to their child. Still others value the spiritual atmosphere of the Adventist school. These are just a few of the things Adventist parents look for when selecting a school for their children.

While the mission of an Adventist school is indeed quite complex, Adventist educators must never lose sight of our primary reason-to-be: to bring our children and youth into a personal relationship with our Lord, Jesus Christ. As Larry Blackmer so eloquently stated in his recent article in the Review, we must maintain high academic standards in our schools, but first and foremost we must inculcate “distinctly Seventh-day Adventist values in our children.”

Trying to meet the multiple goals set for our schools is sometimes a daunting task. But success can only come as we keep the main goal in constant sight. I am very pleased to see that the educational leaders in the North American Division is giving renewed focus to the Adventist distinctives in our schools. Their effort in this will be a great service to Adventist teachers and administrators as they focus on the complex mission of our schools.

In an earlier article I discussed using the built-in library of SmartArt graphic organizers in Microsoft Office 2007 applications.  As you try the different images however, you’ll soon want to make changes to them, frankly, because they get a little boring after awhile, and they may also not fully meet your needs.  So let’s take a look at ways to spice up your SmartArt graphics.

I’ve opened up Microsoft Word and want to create a target for a game I plan to play with my students later in the week.  So instead of creating my own target, I decide to see if any existing targets are available by clicking the Insert tab and then clicking the SmartArt button in the Illustrations section of the toolbar.  In the Choose a SmartArt Graphic window, I click the Relationship option on the left, because I suspect a target just might be contained in that grouping.  Sure enough, there is a target graphic available in the list of objects named Basic Target.  (See Figure 1)  After selecting the target and clicking the OK button, the graphic is inserted into my document.  If you’re following along In Word as you read, you must admit it looks kind of plain don’t you think?

Figure 1

continue reading "Modifying a SmartArt Graphic in Word 2007"

In my previous post under the section on School Improvement, I expressed concern about the quality of our Adventist schools, and especially the small schools. One of the respondents gave the following explanation for this situation: “My theory on why so many of our small schools are subpar and failing: they are being run by amateurs in their spare time.” I think she is at least partly correct. The operating boards of our small schools are filled by people who are not professional educators and certainly do not give full time thought to the operation of the school. However, this is true of most not-for-profit organizations not just Adventist schools. Very few institutions in the nonprofit sector have full time professionals on their Board of Directors. So, how do we deal with small schools who have non-educators making the decisions about their operation?I have pondered this question for many years as I’ve worked with our Adventist schools, especially the small schools. I think the answer lies partly in the matter of leadership. Here is an excellent opportunity for the professional educators among us to give the training and guidance that is needed for good decision-making at the local operating level. If amateurs don’t have the tools to make good decisions for our small schools then the professionals should step forward and provide the leadership to fill this need.

First, members of local boards should be instructed in their proper role on the board. They need to be shown the difference between policy making and management. They should function in the policy arena and leave the management to the Head Teacher. Second, board members need to be instructed in their proper oversight role and shown the difference between oversight and micro-management.

A further area for leadership by the professional educators is to help head teachers in small schools understand how they are to function in the management of the school. If they don’t manage in a proper way there is a temptation for operating boards to dabble in this area of school operation.

So, this is a call for leadership on the part of our professional educators within the Adventist system. It is badly needed, especially in our small schools

Books. Magazines. Newspapers. TV. Radio. Internet. Blogs. Chatrooms. MySpace. iPods. YouTube. Advertizing with most. More media, more information, more choices. How do students learn to choose what is good, noble and true? To focus on what is needed to make life-direction-setting decisions as growing disciples?

As the importance of knowing how to find information for decision making increases, the need to evaluate media from a biblical worldview increases. Values are caught more than taught. So who are students learning most from? When? Where? How?

Thinkers. Not mere reflectors. Rooted and grounded in truth. Prepared to make principle-driven, character-backed decisions. Students need Christ-like teachers and parents as mentors who model and teach media literacy.

So I’m hunting for resources to be media literate myself, to make informed decisions and to be well prepared to teach media literacy in Adventist education at any level. I’ve started a collection as CIRCLE’s Media Literacy category.

Here’s a recent discover. Center for Media Literacy K-12 provides a CML MediaLitKit, a framework for teaching and learning in a media age. And you can easily access hundreds of archived Media and Values articles by media issues/topics or curriculum/subject areas.

Can you add to this list? What are you using? when, and how?

Why do you teach?  Is teaching merely a job? a way to earn a living? a career that makes a difference? or is there more?

“Christian teachers see the profession of teaching as a ministry. It is an act of serving young people as they move toward the realisation of their mental, physical, emotional and spiritual potentials.” SPD Record (p.7)

Peter Beamish, Dean of the Avondale College Faculty of Education in Australia, has more to say about the calling to teach.  He describes a new website created to profile the teaching ministry. The Ministry of Teaching website features “the reflections of practising teachers, along with information about pathways into the ministry. The website is also designed to serve those already working in the teaching ministry. An exciting section of the website is the new online journal of Christian education called Teach. The journal contains information about the latest research findings in education, administration, and teaching and professional practice.”

Be (re)inspired by viewing the 2 minute videos on Ministry of Teaching - real teachers, real issues, real students. Then inspire senior high school and college students by sharing the link, and sharing your story - what makes teaching more than a job or career to you, why you accepted the call to continue the teaching ministry of Jesus Christ.

Finding new ideas for Bible classes is often like searching for hidden treasure. Going for the gold seems to require 99% perspiration - but let’s talk about the 1% inspiration, materials worth shouting out about!

The South Pacific Division recently shared their new Bible 1-8 curriculum designed by and for their Pacific Island region. Two teachers guides include lesson or story plans to accompany the ten-volume Uncle Arthur’s Bible Story series Concise (each lesson fills a one-page table), clear, adaptable, utilizing multiple intelligences, including helps on how to lead students to Christ, and suitable to multi- or single grade classes, these free downloads could be helpful supplements to other Adventist elementary Bible curricula.

Both documents are available in word format, so you can edit/add to make them your own:
Bible Story Plans, Volumes 1-6
Bible Story Plans, Volumes 7-10

Find curriculum in print or online in other world regions:
North American Division
South Pacific Division
Southern Asia Division
Southern Asia-Pacific Division

Do you know of other Bible curricula, texts or instructional materials not listed? Please consider contributing ideas or items here or through circle.adventist.org/submit - together, we can better continue the teaching ministry of Jesus Christ.

When I was using the early versions of Microsoft PowerPoint to create training content for my corporate students, I spent a lot of time creating my own graphic images to organize the concepts I wanted to get across. That meant taking the time to think about how to organize my thoughts into procedural steps to lead students through a process for the purpose of reaching a desired goal, and then designing the images to be used to help make sense of what I meant. For example, when wanting to show students that a process required completing a series of steps, I often used either the built-in arrow shapes and then formatted them to the style and color I wanted, or ended up creating graphics images from multiple default shapes. This can be a little time consuming, and may require more time than available in a teacher’s fast paced world.

The natural solution for me back then was simply to save my uniquely created graphics images in a special presentation file I called Graphics, which acted as a library of images I could quickly insert into my presentations. While that is still a good idea, and may serve you well when creating your own images, I’d like to point out that, for those of you using Office 2007 applications, a handy pre-built library of many organizational graphics images are available to choose from, making it very easy to quickly put together a useful slide. This is great news for educators with very little time. It can mean creating a great looking handout for a lesson and getting 25 copies ran off in less than a couple of minutes.

continue reading "Create Graphics Organizers Using SmartArt in Office 2007"

“It is good enough for who it’s for,” stated my friend in response to a query regarding a project he had just completed for me. We both laughed at this little joke that had become standard between us whenever I asked about how good something was. But over the years I have thought about how this same statement has been applied in Adventist schools. It seems that mediocre teaching is good enough for small schools or kids living in a rural area. We don’t have to have outstanding education as long as it is Christian education. In fact, I’ve heard it stated a many times over the years that a poor Adventist education is far better than a good public education.

I find such an attitude to be totally inconsistent with our Adventist philosophy. From my perspective, good enough should never be acceptable. Adventist education should be the very best and still strive for improvement. Our small one-room schools should have the same high quality of instruction as the very best suburban school. Average teaching should never be accepted as good enough. God’s high ideal for his people can best be exemplified in the very best education for our Adventist young people.