Well, here we are one month into the school year and it actually feels somewhat normal. If you had asked me a year ago if seeing kindergarten students and their parents arrive at school wearing masks would seem normal, or if grade 11 students walking to DQ wearing masks would seem normal, I would have never responded in the positive! Yet here we are. I think what makes it feel somewhat normal is the non-COVID behaviours that are occurring on a daily basis – the sound of kids on the playground and the soccer field; children reading together; students hanging outside the high school during break; and students engaging in art, PE, music, and science. I am super grateful for these ‘normal’ activities that help make us all feel like we are doing what we have set out to do – school!

But more important to me than all these normalizing activities is that we are getting back to what we are passionate about at SCS. Last spring, we were deeply engaged in managing transitions and adapting to new stages, new protocols, and new expectations. And that was important in that season, however, working hard to manage change is not WHY Surrey Christian School exists, it is a means to a much more important end. And that is what we are passionate about, educating for wholeness by engaging God’s world in the servant way of Jesus! And lest you think that me citing the mission statement is just a promotional attempt, let me explain HOW we are working towards our WHY. We are intentionally designing formational learning experiences in our attempt to shape our students into a peculiar kind of people, a kind of people who are oriented toward the Kingdom of God, a kind of people who are on the journey to becoming fully alive in God’s story. In the midst of so many competing stories – stories that define human flourishing by the acquisition of wealth or experiences, stories that define human flourishing as somehow connected to achievement, or physical appearance, or popularity – we seek to facilitate a process whereby our students come to define human flourishing in the terms of the Kingdom of God. And for SCS those terms focus on enjoying creation, worshipping God, caring for His earth, creating beauty, building community, discovering order, reflecting God’s image, discerning contemporary idols, serving others, and seeking justice. These ten ‘throughlines’ are woven throughout our curriculum both explicitly and implicitly. We believe they are markers of what a person looks like when they are experiencing the wholeness that Jesus came to bring, and so we design learning to intentionally foster these traits of discipleship, and we do this across the curriculum.

So welcome back! Welcome back to the sights and sounds of ‘normal’ school activities. But more importantly, welcome back to this project that we are all invited into, the project of becoming fully alive in God’s story!