Students are learning about how God masterfully created our brain to work. In our elementary classes and in our chapels, students are learning about neuroplasticity (like Plasticine) and what happens in the brain when we learn something new (creating a path between neurons). Why? We believe that if students understand God’s design of their brain, that they will make the connections to how they need to learn.
In the Community Christian School (CCS) environment, the focus is on developing a mindset of growth from a Godly perspective, which vastly impacts the capacity to learn and the results a child will experience. It begins with teaching elementary students that they each possess the potential to be his or her best for what God created them to be, no matter what, and to provide them with the support they need to be successful. At CCS, this translates into an environment where each child is taught to:
- apply rigorous effort aimed towards excellence;
- gain confidence in their learning; and
- embrace mistakes as growth opportunities.
Highlights of chapel lessons this year include encouraging students to think about what they have, rather than what they do not have, how PlayDoh and Chocolate Chip Cookies came about as results of mistakes, how mistakes are an important part of the learning process, how FAIL translates to First Attempt In Learning, how video games can demonstrate to us how we learn, and that to be mistaken is not a sin. “I haven’t failed. I’ve just found ten thousand ways that won’t work.” (Thomas Edison)
John Maxwell, in his book Sometimes You Win – Sometimes You Learn, reminds us that “life is difficult … [yet] everyone who got where they are, started where they were”. At CCS we desire for each child to work hard with the gifts that God has given them, to become more fully who God intended them to be, and to grow more fully each day in who they already are.
