About 4 years ago, a friend of mine, Ryan Thibodeaux, gave me a book titled, The Big Picture: Education Is Everyone’s Business. In short, experienced principal Dennis Littky was given the opportunity to design a high school any way he wanted from the ground up. And what he did was amazing!

A school where students actually pursued their own interests. A school where the work students did actually mattered in the real world. A school where 96% of the first graduating class went to college. And a school where bored students, at-risk students, and valedictorian-track students all thrived. The thought that kept surfacing in my mind was, this is the way school should be!

Then, I had the opportunity to meet some actual students who had been schooled in this way.  I attended a conference in San Diego, CA, where students were pursuing an interest-based, real-life work curriculum. The students were amazing! First, they easily interacted with adults. Second, they were actually happy and excited about learning. Last, each student easily and articulately addressed our group of about 200 educators (because this model of education requires the student to do quarterly talks to demonstrate their learning). If I were an employer, I would have hired any of these students in a heartbeat!

Back in Lake Charles, I tried to incorporate what I was learning into my classroom at a local, private school. But it proved to be very difficult. At the same time, my class once did a career day where each student worked with a professional business person for half a day in a career that the student was interested in. Even including this very small component made a significant difference. One student who thought she would be an engineer totally changed her mind after visiting with the engineers from Recon Engineering. On the other hand, another young lady confirmed her career choice when she actually worked with a cosmetologist. Either way, both students were now closer to deciding on a career choice and less likely to waste money major-switching in college.

Something else I noticed. Not all my students had the ability to dream. I heard some really big dreams at one of the local public junior high schools where I was teaching. One student said she wanted to find a cure for cancer! Amazing...what a big dream! But another student's dreams were hijacked years before when she encountered difficulties in her family life. She literally could not come up with a big dream. That made me sad. 

But what if there was a Christian school? A place where I could ask that student if I and a trusted group of students could pray for her about the issue.  Pray that God would come in and fill any gaps from her childhood. Then, pray that God would be her Perfect Father and place a new dream in her heart. And she could begin pursuing that dream right here in high school!

Come and take a look! Bethel Christian High School is a boys' and girls' Christian high school where students discover their God-given identity, pursue their passions, and do real work in the real world!