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.

Too boring to talk about until I say, FREE. Yes free. The NAD has WordPerfect for free for you. Oh WordPerfect, what a let down. Well, I know there is some link for WP on the NAD website between healthy lifestyle and the link to the Association of Southern Baptist Colleges. Where is it again?

Hey, I have something easier and it is cross platform. What is cross platform? Well, it means the software is so good you don’t have to know that it is cross platform because it simply works on your computer, how is that for an easy answer? The word processing software is called OpenOffice and it is great! This software does everything that Microsoft does and I like it. I put OpenOffice on all my nephews’ laptops when I buy them. And I save hundreds of dollars. The program is fully functional and it also includes other things like a spreadsheet and so on.

In addition to OpenOffice there are some other free products are there that are real cool. One is Zoho. Zoho is a bunch of crazy guys that have been working on this project for so long that they are now giving it away because they are too tired to sell it. Zoho is amazing. A smart teacher could do so much with Zoho.

And of course, there is always Google Documents. This is great service by Google and it is also free. I use this service a lot. I both write my documents but I also save my documents to Google. Thanks Google.

I have used all three products with great satisfaction. Try them out and have fun being cheap and high tech at the same time.

Cheers,

Tom Krazan
Central California
Adventist Education is the Best

Let me start off with, I have no idea if to Moodle or not to Moodle. But what I do know is that there are educators all over the world that are Moodling as often as I am Googling. I am not an educator but I love technological advantages, that is how my company became regional with over 350 employees from a small operation in my garage (technological advantages also helps me spell fifth grade words properly but it does not help my grammer). I like you, am in a service industry and the biggest advantage I discovered was using tools developed by others, especially if they were free or almost free. Which leads me to Moodle. Moodle is free but the story is a little more complicated then that. This school software does some very amazing things. At least that is what a teacher (and a lot of others) told me. Here are two links that explain the concept, link 1 and link 2.

continue reading "To Moodle or not to Moodle"

Family vacations have taken on a new adventure using a GPS. Knowing exactly where we’re going before the journey begins is now important and discussions frequently analyze optimal choices for keeping on course when detours for fuel, food or friends happen. Starting with the end in mind keeps us checking we’re en route all along the way.

As Adventist educators, starting a new calendar year is often a time for reflection and re-evaluation. Is the purpose of Adventist education clearly before us, despite detours in 2007? Have we prayerfully recommitted our lives to serve on whatever route God plans to best accomplish His purpose in 2008?

Reflecting on one or more articles in the Adventist Education Essentials topic of CIRCLE, the Adventist Curriculum and Instruction Resource Center Linking Educators, could be a helpful refocusing exercise. Each section has been recently updated, with topics such as how to integrate faith In the Classroom and On Campus, and The Ministry of Teaching.

One small gadget can change our experience on a road journey, focusing on the destination, more than the obstacles along the way. I recently read The Craft of Christian Teaching which refueled my journey as an Adventist educator. Van Dyk (2000) identifies true north for Christian education like this: “The purpose of our classroom efforts cannot simply be the transmission of classical intellectual insight, but rather, the whole-person equipping of our children for knowledgeable and competent discipleship in a hurting world.” This aligns with the Adventist philosophy of education aim and mission, to prepare “students for a useful and joy-filled life, fostering friendship with God, whole-person development, Bible-based values, and selfless service in accordance with the Seventh-day Adventist mission to the world”. Van Dyk provides practical tips, founded in a biblical worldview, on how to chart the best course between end goals and our 2008 starting point.

Its easy to sit by in our homes and schools, reading these posts and wonder why the GC/Union/Conference is silent on these issues that so gravely threaten Adventist Education. But then again, I wonder, are they silent, or am I just not listening? What are some of the things that have been “said” from higher up the church structure?
continue reading "Why the Silence?"