Applied Research Paper

The Rocky Bayou Christian School (RBCS) Mission Statement says that their goal is to “provide the best Christian Education by partnering with parents in training their children to live to God’s glory by developing a biblical worldview, Christian character, and the skills necessary to fulfill His calling in their lives.” This paper will demonstrate that the Rocky Bayou Christian School (RBCS) basic skills curriculum, established in 1973 for college prep, has enabled the school to accomplish its aims, goals, and objectives. Convinced of the need for a Christian school, a pastor and an elder researched a successful Christian school and purchased their book titled How To Start Your Own Christian School. The RBCS founders, a pastor and a Lt. Colonel (still active-duty at the time), with the help of their wives (who were school teachers) started the school with a total of twenty-two students and four teachers (the present enrollment is around eight hundred). RBCS started with kindergarten through sixth grade and added a grade each year through the twelfth grade, with the first high school graduation in 1980. By 1986, the basic skills curriculum had served RBCS well enough to qualify them for accreditation from the Florida Association of Accreditation for Christian Colleges and Schools (FACCS), the American Association of Christian Schools (AACS), and the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI). FACCS, a member of the National Council for Private School Accreditation (NCPSA), also certifies RBCS teachers.

RBCS is organized and functions under the Northwest Florida Christian Education Association (NFCEA). They are not a parochial school, representing the doctrine of one church; rather, they are an interdenominational school, designed to serve all the Christian families in the area and to serve as an evangelistic outreach to non-Christians families who will adhere to RBCS standards in order to obtain a superior education. The board consists of the superintendent and one to three representatives of several nearby churches who adhere to the fundamentals of Christianity contained in the RBCS Statement of Faith (Grete, 2004).

In fulfillment of the RBCS goal of “developing a biblical worldview and Christian character,” the director taught his students to be good citizens of their community, state, and nation. Being a West Point graduate and a returning professor, prepared the director to teach American History I, economics, and government. In those classes, he includes materials to train students to accept their civic responsibilities by bringing in candidates for government offices to inform the students and to give them an opportunity to ask the politicians how they harmonize their Christian faith and their work as government officials. He requires them to write letters to the editor, to senators, and to congressmen concerning important issues. Beginning in 1980 and continuing still, he sponsors a Teen Political Affairs Club (Teen PAC) trip to Washington D. C. yearly where students learn more about the functioning of their government. While implementing the school’s basic skills curriculum, the director and his staff observed a diversity of learning difficulties. In 1985, the director started a one-track program called Talent Development to address these learning needs. By 2000, the superintendent (former director) provided leadership to expand the one-track Talent Development into the Special Services with four tracks. With professional advice from Christian organizations such as NILD, the program principal has developed curriculum appropriate for the wide variety of learning differences. In 2004, the superintendent, seeing the importance of technology for now and the future, developed a very high quality technology program to serve students in kindergarten through twelfth grades.

In 1998, the principal of the academy took the lead in further developing and improving the academy college prep curriculum. He sponsors the Academic Team, promotes math competition clubs, enrolls RBCS students in the annual FACCS academic competitions, expands and upgrades the sports program for boys and girls, and facilitates the expansion of music programs—both in choirs and bands. About five years ago, a charter school started less than two miles from the RBCS campus, enticing some top RBCS students to enroll in their classes—even paying for their gas to drive to school each day. To offset this loss, the principal—bolstered by an enthusiastic academy teacher—incorporated the Advanced Placement (AP) program in all subjects because of its superior standards; this program complements the existing college prep curriculum by providing college-level materials. A Dual Enrollment program with Okaloosa Walton College (OWC) allows RBCS students to take college courses from OWC, credit for which will be granted the students upon graduation from RBCS. The Home Study Assistance Program (HSAP) was designed to help parents provide a Christ-centered education for children taught in the home from kindergarten through twelfth grades. This program serves local families and out-of-state families. Recently, an increasing number of Christian families are choosing homes-schooling and on-line schools for their children rather than enrolling them in RBCS. Again, the principal is wisely developing high-quality curriculum programs and extra-curricula programs to serve these Christian families with group activities such as sports, excellent bands and choirs, special field trips, drama, and art. As these home-schooling students participate in select on-campus programs and activities, they frequently enjoy socializing, observe first-hand the operations of the school, and end up attending RBCS as full-time students.

Each course taught at RBCS is described in the Curriculum Guides which include the objectives of the course, the text materials used, the student requirements (including how students’ grades will be calculated), and the scope and sequence of the course. Teachers are responsible for the use and development of the Curriculum Guides; since RBCS’s curriculum is an on-going process, teachers must discuss with their department principal any adaptations to the existing plans: increasing, diminishing, or replacing them. The department principal has the final authority; however, the superintendent and principal have always encouraged classroom teachers to make significant recommendations for improving the curriculum and selecting text books.

In their philosophy of Christian education, RBCS declares that in a Christian education, God works through committed Christian teachers, biblical methods, and truthful curriculum materials to build disciples with a biblical world view, character, and skills necessary to fulfill God’s calling and live to His glory; that education of children is inherently religious; and that God commands parents to teach their children to love and honor God, but that Christian schools can provide professional help to carry out their child-rearing responsibilities. RBCS ministry was established to serve and glorify Christ by assisting parents to perform their God-given responsibility to biblically educate their children (Grete, 2004). Their philosophy of Christian education finds expression in the twin traditional educational philosophies of Essentialism and Perennialism. A basic tenet of Essentialism is the transmission of a culture based primarily on Protestant Reformation concepts promoting a Protestant ethic, respect for Constitution and law, and promoting a Puritan work ethic. They believe that the American government is a covenant in which the people adopted a Constitution for self-government, a Constitution that rests on traditional Christian principles from Anglo/American common law. The defining characteristic of Perennialism is one which insists on passing down the universal and eternal truths and values they have gleaned from the accumulation of wisdom found in classical and sacred literature of thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Locke, and Burke. Each of these educational philosophies provides a framework which allows a Christian school such as RBCS to pursue curriculum materials that teach and promote their aims and goals inherent in their philosophy of Christian education.

To fulfill their philosophy of Christian education, RBCS organized their academic departments into kindergarten, elementary, junior high, and high school; all have a mixture of the best curriculum materials, most of which are published by Christian organizations such as Christ Centered Publications, A Beka, and Bob Jones. The kindergarten department has separate classes for three, four, and five year olds; all teach Bible, phonics, math, reading, art, and music. The kindergarten curriculum consisting of basic skills—rather than the child-centered socializing skills—is taught with traditional methods. The elementary department has separate classes for grades one through six, with subjects in Bible, phonics, reading, math, science, history and geography, penmanship, music, art, and physical education —all taught in a self-contained, traditional classroom setting with traditional teaching methods. Students leave the classroom for music, band, and physical education. The academy is divided into Junior High, consisting of grades seven and eight, with its own coordinator and High School, consisting of grades nine through twelve, led by the principal. Junior High offers a basic skills curriculum consisting of Bible, English, literature, World History I, American History I, pre-algebra, Algebra I, earth science, basic science, Microsoft Office, and physical education. One seventh grade is taught in a self-contained homeroom with one teacher. The remaining Junior High classes are departmentalized and are taught with traditional teaching methods. The High School honors curriculum, in keeping with state and RBCS requirements for graduation, requires four credits in Bible, four credits in English, three credits in literature (including philosophy and apologetics, honors senior literature or AP literature), four credits in math (including AP calculus), four credits in science (including physics or AP chemistry), four credits in social studies (including economics and government), two credits in foreign languages, one credit in physical education, and two credits in electives (Grete, 2004).

RBCS’s Special Services, divided into four separate programs, receives students after considering a combination of educational, perceptual, and psychological tests; teacher recommendations; and parent requests. The department adjusts the class size and organization, adjusts the subject mater (focusing less on the cognitive and more on kinesthetic learning), and adjusts teaching methods of instruction, making them more concrete and more life-related. This department is populated primarily with students whose educational needs have not been met by surrounding public schools, thereby qualifying for the McKay Scholarship voucher. Third Track, a department of Special Services, has students with average to superior intelligence that learn differently from others. These students are allowed to discover their own learning and testing styles. Their classes have small student-to-teacher ratios, allowing for “hands-on” activities for kinesthetic learners. Teachers use concrete methods, helping students relate learning and everyday life. Godly character is taught and practiced by teachers to be good role models for their students. The majority of these students need instruction and practice in study skills, organization, responsibility, and accountability; all must be taught and drilled with never-ending reinforcement. Talent Development, another department of Special Services, teaches their students in a manner similar to that of an old-fashioned one-room schoolhouse with a variety of clusters and groups, especially crossing over grade levels for individual strengths and weaknesses. These students are taught the basic subjects of Bible math, language arts, and art, but they are mainstreamed for physical education and music. Low student-teacher ratios allow needed one-on-one instruction (Grete, 2004).

Two divisions of Special Services use curriculum and programs developed by the National Institute of Learning Disabilities (NILD). The Teddy Bear Club is modeled on the NILD program called Search and Teach, a one-on-one educational therapy program for the prevention of learning disabilities. All five years old kindergartners and new first graders have a screening test to detect a need for this club. Finally, the Discovery Department, an NILD three-year program of one-on-one educational therapy, attempts to make a neurological change in the brain. Perceptual and cognitive deficits are overcome by therapy to stimulate the areas of weakness, enabling the students to overcome their deficits so that they can utilize their full intelligence. This therapy is administered to students in addition to their routine classroom work. The RBCS philosophy of Christian education has required them to augment their original intent of being a college-preparatory school into being one which also serves the diversity of learning needs of the entire Christian community (Grete, 2004).

The recent federal educational acts of America 2000, Goals 2000, and more specifically the No Child Left Behind have standardized a basic skills curriculum for educating America’s children. The No Child Left Behind Act assures the success of implementing the curriculum by withholding federal funds for failure to do so. This act has generated a plethora of standardized tests, given and published to concerned parents, politicians, and the public. The results of these tests allow the United States Department of Education and all other educators to compare the success of schools—system-wide, county-wide, region-wide, state-wide, country-wide, and even world-wide. These standardized tests have been a boon to RBCS, whose main claim to success in the past had been returning college students thanking teachers and administration for preparing them well for college. But the results of standardized tests now allow RBCS to boldly claim success in educating students by charting the comparisons of their school test performances scores with the scores of other schools, including the local charter school, the county schools, tri-county schools, state schools, and across the nation. The RBCS college prep curriculum is being implemented well and it is meeting the needs of RBCS students in honors classes in kindergarten through twelfth grades. Since the Special Services program was developed in 2002, it is working toward accreditation by FACCS in 2008. Most of the Special Services students enter RBCS after twice failing their Individual Educational Plan (IEP), demonstrating the failure of local public schools to meet the students’ educational needs. As a result, these students are awarded vouchers through the McKay Scholarship, allowing them to attend RBCS and pay for their tuition with their vouchers.

In keeping with the Mission Statement of RBCS “to train students with the biblical world view, Christian character, and skills necessary to fulfill God’s calling on their lives,” RBCS has included Bible as a core class; a daily assembly for a short devotion, pledge, and pray; a weekly chapel program for spiritual teaching; beginning each class with prayer; and a Missions Club that takes students on a yearly missionary trip. All relevant classes teach the facts of biblical Creation so that students can detect the flaws in the theory of evolution. Also, most texts in kindergarten through twelfth grade are from Christian publishers. To teach them to serve one another, RBCS students are required for graduation to complete fifty hours of service in the Community Service Program. They may participate in activities such as the RBCS Workathon, 3-Hour Club Workdays, teaching Sunday School or AWANA, organizing or working with community neighborhood clean-up efforts, performing charity work, tutoring or coaching as a volunteer, and serving the elderly at local nursing homes.

The RBCS basic skills curriculum is enabling them to meet their goals; the incorporation of Special Services is now enabling them to also meet the needs of students with learning differences. But knowing that curriculum development is an on-going process, this writer suggests some recommendations. First, the English department is improperly divided into one semester of grammar and vocabulary taught by one teacher while the same semester of composition and vocabulary is taught by another teacher. A better organization is the integration of teaching grammar and composition, constantly practicing and reinforcing grammar rules while writing and practicing using the new vocabulary words while writing. Second, the book Kingdom Education: God’s Plan for Educating Future Generations by Glen Schultz will be researched to see if his thesis can improve the RBCS curriculum. Kingdom Education requires teachers to incorporate a scripture to support every learning objective; this scriptural concept is emphasized to the students as part of each lesson (Schultz, 2003). This program can possibly improve the Christian mission of RBCS. Finally, this writer volunteers to develop a curriculum committee-of-one to work with the principal and superintendent. This curriculum person can survey teachers and parents throughout the year for recommendations for curriculum improvements. These surveys will be organized and presented—with the principal’s approval—at staff meetings on a monthly basis for their reactions and further inputs. This curriculum person will assist the principal in monitoring the Curriculum Guides. At the end of each semester and again at the end of the school year, the curriculum person will compiled a report to give to the principal and superintendent for considerations for possible improvements for the coming year. With time, the curriculum committee-of-one can develop into a fully functioning committee assuring an ever improving curriculum for RBCS.

References

Grete, Robert L. (2004). Rocky Bayou Christian School Family Handbook. Unpublished manuscript, , Niceville, FL.
Schultz, Glen. (2003). Kingdom Education: God's Plan or Education Future Generations. Nashville, TN: LifeWay Press.