This site is devoted to fostering practical and creative dialog for promoting excellence in K-12 Christian schools.
Excellence in K-12 Christian Schools / Published by Dr. Barrett Mosbacker
Ninety-nine percent (99%) of our parents are wonderful. They are supportive. If they have a concern they know how to “speak the truth in love.” They assume the best and seek understanding, reconciliation, and unity for all concerned. They don’t sugar coat problems, nor should they, but neither are they sour. They can deal with unpleasant issues without leaving a bitter aftertaste.
Read MoreIn earlier posts I published parts one and two of what originally was planned to be a five part series. Because the next three sections outline effective solutions, I believe it will be beneficial to my readers to combine them into one article.
You can read part one here. You can read part two here.
If you would like the entire series as one PDF, you can download it here.
I am grateful to Mr. Paul Coughlin of The Protectors for sharing his expertise on the Christian School Journal Blog.
Read MoreWhen Jesus said that the poor will be with you always, he may as well have added bullies, too. We will never “get rid” of bullying because in order to do so we would have to rid the world of the sins that sustain it, which are formidable. They include arrogance, pride, hubris, contempt and related sins such as “cupiditas,” for which Dante reserved the lowest levels of hell. Also called the “sins of the wolf,” cupiditas describes the kind of behavior and person who consumes others.
Read MoreTheir letters are separated by zip code, but united through bewilderment and feelings of betrayal from the organizations they believed would protect their child from bullying—the leading form of child abuse in the nation, and the only form of abuse we tell the most vulnerable among us to “just ignore.”
Their pleadings are almost always composed by emotionally flailing mothers who witness a common but mystifying tailspin of their beloved child, a spiral born from intentional abuse that weds power to fear, making it formable, and due to its predatory nature impossible for Christian school teachers and faculty to effectively combat alone. One bewildered mother writes:
Read MoreYou are probably having too many meetings, for too long, and with too many people.
Let’s say you hold a weekly meeting with five people that lasts for one hour. And let’s say you hold this meeting every week for the school year. Here is the math:
5 people x 1 hour = 5 cumulative personnel hours of work time per week.
5 hours x 36 weeks (average school year) = 180 hours.
180 hours = ~4.5 weeks of time devoted to this one recurring meeting.
What could you and or your staff do with an extra 4.5 weeks each year?
Read MoreI believe that adding online courses to your school can be a financially positive move. In fact, I will show how it is at least a $20,000 opportunity.
Online courses can help your school:
However, before we go further, your school’s mission should drive decisions including this one about online courses. As a former Principal, I know that many good ideas were presented to me. If I did not evaluate them in light of the mission, my school would have quickly gotten off the course God intended for us. As the video below notes, online courses can help with the mission of most Protestant or Catholic schools. Bringing rigor with additional foreign languages, AP courses, dual credit choices from faith based colleges….. helps accomplish a common phrase in mission statements—“Excellence in Education.”
Read MoreI don’t make New Year’s resolutions; I make New SCHOOL Year resolutions. I have never found New Year’s resolutions particularly helpful because my life revolves around the SCHOOL year, not the calendar year. This makes the summer an ideal time to pray and reflect on the past year and to plan for the next. Over the summer I reflect on and assess two areas: my leadership and my life-work balance.
Read MoreWhen I was in undergraduate school I had a classmate encourage me to become a pastor. His encouragement stemmed from his assessment of my teaching gifts, which he considered to be at least adequate for the pastoral ministry.
He was kind but wrong. While I do have the gift of teaching, I would make a poor pastor. For one thing I dislike hospitals, weddings, and funerals.
Although my friend was wrong about my vocational calling, I have come to realize that he was right about a critical element of my role as Superintendent. I am called to fulfill a pastoral role in my school. I am to be a shepherding Superintendent. I shepherd my staff, students, and parents, a responsibility that I take seriously because eternal souls are at stake. As C. S. Lewis observed:
Read MoreIt was one of those Saturday night banquets in 1970s Christian circles. The menu featured vulcanized chicken slices from birds that might well have spent their formative days too close to the local tire factory – they were a bit chewy I mean. A minor multitude of merry wives were socializing gleefully as their husbands did their best to sit up, bare up and smile, while silently wishing they were home watching Hockey Night in Canada. As for me, at this particular event I envied my right leg. It was asleep.
Read MoreIf you are a leader or a teacher, you probably use PowerPoint or Apple’s Keynote program. Nothing personal, but you are probably using them incorrectly and in the process boring your audience.
I have.
Not wishing to bore my audience, I have read several excellent books on presentation design and delivery. What I have learned has transformed the way I design my presentations. No more FrankenSlides!
Read MoreCafés evoke feelings of warmth, conversation, community and connection. Conversations in a cafe often give birth to great ideas. This is the idea behind this site.
The Christian Education Leadership Cafe is a comfortable and informative place for connecting and sharing best practices in Christian School Leadership. This site is devoted to fostering practical and creative dialog for promoting excellence in K-12 Christian schools. Discussion focuses on leadership, productivity, professional development, technology integration, personnel, dealing with stress and conflict, enrollment and marketing, and best practices for promoting and sustaining world-class quality in Christian schools.
Come on in and join the conversation.
DISCLAIMER
This is a personal weblog. The opinions expressed here represent those of the authors and not those of my employer or any other organization. My thoughts and opinions may change from time to time as a necessary consequence of being a life-long learner. The information on this blog is authentic to the best of my knowledge, and as such, it is prone to errors and the absence of information. The content on this blog is provided for entertainment and informative purposes only and should not, therefore, be perceived as professional advice in regards to health, finances, or any other field. This disclaimer is subject to change at anytime without notification.
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