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The American Freedom Museum and H.A.M. Museum, A Teachers Perspective

April 25th, 2012

As April rolls into May, teachers and students alike experience a little foretaste of purgatory. The school year is nearly over, but finals haven’t started yet. Classes are covering their last topics of the school year, and the students glaze out the windows daydreaming about the vacation that is only weeks away. As a little tide- you- over till summer getaway, I took my eight graders on a daytrip to a couple of local stops. Both have been well covered here but I thought I’d offer fresh insights. The class is a group from a private school in a neighboring town, and as such, represents a new audience for the establishments in question. Our first stop was the Brook Hill, American Freedom Museum. As always, the exhibits are so much more than one expects to find at a local private school. It chronicles the history of the American military through all the nation’s conflicts. There are rare weapons, flags, even vehicles on display throughout the facility. The hall of presidents contains documents and signatures of every American executive. Anyone planning a visit to our area, hosting out of town guests, or compiling a list of summer activities should definitely keep the museum in mind.

Our second event for the day was a place old and dear to my heart, the Historical Aviation Memorial Museum. But first we sat down for lunch at the Skyline Café adjacent to the museum. We had planned this lunch ahead of time and the young men in particular were eagerly awaiting the huge ten inch hamburgers the restaurant serves. With as much food as our crew ordered, all that cooking took a little while, but it proved well worth the wait.

The Aviation Museum is filled with all manner of artifacts, charts, maps, flags, models and uniforms from all periods and nationalities of aviation history. Outside the building are a number of aircraft on display spanning the period from the Korean War through the skirmishes of the nineteen eighties. I love visiting this place and so does my young son and I have every intention of returning. The one caution I would offer to the group that visits is to be sure that your younger more active members lower their voices and restrain their energy, as some of the older docents (much like my grandfather actually), can be a touch prickly. Hey their vets so I’ll extend that deference. Otherwise this is always a fun stop and I will continue to bring my students until they bar the door.

Texas Job Growth Leads the Nation

June 3rd, 2011

I read a report yesterday or the day before, confirming what most of us living in Texas strongly suspected. Our state is well ahead of the curve in terms of job growth. The cities of Dallas and Ft.Worth rank above the rest of the nation in terms of job growth. Houston is a close second. The jobless rate in the metroplex is down slightly from eight percent to roughly seven and a half, admittedly a small decline, but a good one considering the national average is nine percent. There are a number of ways to crunch the numbers, obviously, but in terms of both population and job growth Texas is definitely better off than most of our sister states; far better off than some. I’m not suggesting that times are exactly good here, just better.

The category of growth I found most interesting, both for me personally and for Tyler, comes in the area of Education and Health Care. These two fields seem to be growing albeit slowly, with an interesting stipulation: it includes private as opposed to public schools. The article I read cites 6.4 percent growth in the Ft. Worth area, and 5.2 in the Dallas area. While these numbers relate specifically to the metroplex, this category is of course the largest field of employment in East Texas. With the public schools in Texas experience big cutbacks, private schools are growing, and hiring new staff. While its admittedly anecdotal evidence, I can attest to this, as I recently accepted a position at a new private school in our area.

I think the relative health of the Texas economy comes as a result of a generally pro-business administration, and a lack of state income tax, which encourages immigration from states like California (and others), that are incredibly overburdened by regulation and taxation. Incidentally, the Bureau of Labor put San Francisco near the bottom of the job growth list with -0.3 percent growth when compared to last year.

Register For Fall Classes Early at One of Tyler’s Great Private Schools

April 30th, 2011

Another school year is wrapping up and on most of our minds is the hoopla surrounding graduation, summer vacation, higher electric bills due to cooling costs, etc. etc. But for most area students, the fall semester is just around the corner. I realize that for some, its sacrilege to bring that up now, but it will be here before we know it. For those of us who teach, the cycles of the school year are the unending patterns that govern our lives… but I digress. At least in private schools, every fall there’s a mad rush to recruit as many new students at the last minute as possible. This is especially true for jr. high and high schoolers, who are notorious for waiting to the last, minute to register. Elementary parents are typically far more conscientious about early registration. I can assure the reader, that your children’s school appreciates the fore thought.

Another great concern for area private educators is the tendency many families have to save money in tough financial times, by pulling their students out of private education and enrolling them in public schools. While I certainly understand the need to pare back on monthly expenses, as a parent there is very little I wouldn’t sacrifice to keep my son in a solid academic environment and out of the government schools! A solid education (particularly a religious one) is an investment in a child’s future, which will pay dividends in an ever- changing world. For families who find themselves in a tough financial bind, but who are committed to their children’s private academic excellence, I recommend looking at other (hopefully more inexpensive) options in our area this summer, before placing their students in public schools.

Tyler is blessed with just about every conceivable kind of private school, from pre-K to twelfth grade. In fact I can think of a couple small start-up schools that opened last semester and another is preparing to open in the fall! Schools are becoming more and more like churches in our town (not surprising I guess since many are actually housed in and operated by local congregations). In actuality, we don’t need any more of either here. We have some tremendous, churches and some great schools, Rather than opening new ones we need to participate in and support those we already have. Certainly we can all find a place with an approach and a philosophy with whom we can at least mostly agree!

We here at Tyler Directory have written about nearly all the private schools and educational models available in our area. To read about specific schools and or, their philosophies of education, look to the bottom right of this page, and click the education tab for a list of articles.

University Model School

August 26th, 2010

​Teaching can be a funny gig! Teachers have a way of developing relationships with those at other schools by simply moving from institution to institution, and mingling with others who do the same, not unlike waiters or bartenders.

As someone who has been teaching in and out of East Texas for a number of years now, there are a couple of local schools with whom I have a personal connection, and I’ve not been shy about promoting them.

So over the last year and half a lot of my writing has focused on individual private schools in the Tyler area. In recent weeks however I’ve started to approach the subject from a bit different angle.

Rather than simply giving the skinny on the individual schools, I’ve started looking into and discussing the methodology and curriculum on which they are founded.

Like any other business, private schools generally form around a need or concept that their founders find lacking in other existing institutions within the community. This is exactly how Grace Preparatory Academy (GPA) in Fort Worth, Texas was formed back in 1992, and it lead to a new style or model in private schools called the university model.

​The founders of GPA had collectively tried all existing forms of education for their children, from public, to private, to home school, and found no single form that embodied all the strengths they were seeking for their families.

After meeting with others experiencing similar dilemmas, they elected to try a radical solution, combining the best of home and private schooling, into a sort of hybrid.

The new school would function very much like a university. Students register for the classes they require to graduate, while taking others at home with a parent or tutor.

The same classes are not held every day, so enrolled students, need not be on campus everyday and in fact some schools hold no classes on off days during the week.

The novel system was a success, and interest in the new approach began to generate both across the state and eventually the country. Thus a new overarching organization was formed to provide assistance to new university model schools.

The new foundation was named the National Association of University Model Schools (NAUMS).

University Model Schools (UMS) were formed to provide parents with an alternative approach to educating their students that would allow them to play a more active role, and give them a greater voice in how and what their children are taught.

Obviously the NAUMS is a religious organization whose goal it is to help establish solid Christian schools around the country.

​As interesting and original as this new method is, astute readers are probably curious about a) how the system benefits the individual students, and b) propaganda aside, how the individual school and student functions on a day to day basis within the new system. NAUMS is not a curriculum.

In fact each school chooses its own curriculum, and develops its own identity apart from the umbrella organization. All schools who follow the model however, do aspire to building Christian character and strong academic programs.

Do University Model Schools consistently succeed in producing students of faith who are ready for college life? As with any school, the preverbal devil is in the details. The success of any school is in my opinion, largely determined by the quality of teachers employed there.

Since any NAUMS school can use the curriculum and educators of its choice there is room for it to rise or fall on that basis, but to my knowledge, most of the UMS institutions around the country are showing excellent results.

Another interesting component is that these schools draw not only from area homeschoolers, but also from other private and public schools.

Now I’ll be honest, I’m a proponent of UMS, but I also have to concede that the program may not be for every student or parent.

The method does require the student to be both motivated and responsible, but it also helps to build those qualities into the student at the same time.

The parent on the other hand must be a participant in their child’s education. This is not the approach for the parent who tends to wants little day to day, involvement in their student’s learning.

For more information on University Model Schools, visit the NAUMS web page at http://www.naums.net/index2.html. To read more on the first UM School go to http://www.graceprep.org/. To investigate Tyler’s own UMS read my article entitled Something Different in Education, by simply clicking on the following link, http://www.tylertxdirectory.com/1134/something-different-in-education/.

Accelerated Christian Education

August 18th, 2010

ACE Accelerated Christian EducationAs a teacher for going on twelve years now, much of my writing focus for Tyler TX Directory has to do with that subject. It’s just what I know so naturally, it’s a topic that is often in the forefront of my mind. Recently I discovered that there is a new private school opening in our area, but I will refrain from mentioning it by name as I cannot endorse the curriculum the school is using. I feel I must be careful about critiquing this form of education because I realize that it’s very popular in religious circles.

For going on forty years now Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) has been a force in American Christian Education. In a time when Americans were waking up to the need for private religious schools, the publisher offered a curriculum that was easy to apply, not labor intensive for either students or parents, and required very little faculty or staff to implement. The timing couldn’t have been better, as church schools began to spring up around the country supplied by ACE.

In 1977 another curriculum company started. It borrowed the same methodology and (I can only presume) drew from ACE’s rich target market. Honestly I suspect the number of schools using it has dropped off a bit in recent years, but I may be wrong. The system worked essentially like this; the classrooms were quiet and nontraditional. Each student had his or her own work space or cubicle. The students set goals for themselves and in each subject and worked to complete those goals. If they finished early they could either press on in order to “get ahead,” or they could take a break. Each subject had its own series of booklets, called Paces or Lifepacs depending on the curriculum. At the end of each was a test. Tests and questions are often graded by the student, but (I assume) would also be corrected by the teacher present. The system allowed the student to work at the pace they chose, or necessary to “master” or memorize the material. As an elementary student I was briefly enrolled in an Alpha Omega school before my parents wisely withdrew me.

Of the two, the ACE program appears more popular with most homeschoolers. In practice they are virtually identical, if not in content. Eventually I was enrolled in a school with a more classical approach, but as a student I pined for the days when I could work at my own pace, (which meant painfully slow). I also lost a year (or something like that) due to the fact that I didn’t learn anything. My new classical private school came like a slap. I was back in a world that pushed me, required me to learn, and that didn’t allow me list away at my desk passively reading through a workbook. My new school taught me to think!

And it is actually the methodology that I’m taking issue with. I would probably find much to debate in the programs content and theology as well, but there is no perfect curriculum in that regard. Our preferences generally tend to depend on our denomination. But (in my opinion), the approach to education offered by these program is far too rote. As an educator it is my job to teach my students reason critically. The methods mentioned above do talk a lot about God, but they fail to reason with him. Plugging a student into a cubby hole with a Pace or a Lifepac while an “instructor” walks around the room is not helping them to think. In my experience these systems merely teach the student to perform the minimum requirements necessary to complete a given task. There is no excellence. There is no discussion. There is no mentoring.

The ACE literature suggests that most curriculums focus on how to teach, but should focus on how to learn. However learning is itself a skill to be learned. This brings us back to the original question of how best to teach. Another problem I have with this model is that it greatly devalues the role of the teacher, and quite frankly the parent by proxy. Students merely read from the booklet and plug their answers into the blanks. Yes as a parent or teacher, you may be sitting next to your child, but he or she is not learning from the wisdom or experience that you have to offer, he’s learning from his Lifepac. The fact is the parent / teacher should be irreplaceable in the classroom. Good teachers guide the students through a subject far more complicated than what booklet can present. And let’s face it many or most students would rather not be in school in the first place. The teacher’s role is partially to inspire in their students a love of learning, to get more out of them than they realized they could do, or to introduce them to new concepts they never expected to understand.

I realize the each student is unique, and not everyone has the opportunity to benefit from the education my brothers and I did. Some students (like my sister in law) have grown up in an ACE or Alpha Omega program and come out with a tremendous education. But I would suggest that those were students who would have prospered in nearly any environment because they are excellent students who love learning. I’d venture to guess that most are more like me. I was more inspired to chase my classmates on the playground with a sharp stick in some mock battle than sit quietly in my cubby filling in blanks.

I can appreciate the goal of these publishers. It is not my desire to impugn the religious nature of their mission, only to examine their methods. To read more about my philosophy of education (if that interests you) look for my recent article entitled Guadalupe Radio Network located elsewhere on this site. To read more about Accelerated Christian Education visit their webpage at http://www.aceministries.com. To learn more about Alpha Omega check out their site at http://www.aop.com.