This past August, our hearts swelled with excitement as we received heartwarming pictures from a sister school in rural Sierra Leone: men hard at work digging and installing pipes, showed the impact of last year’s grade 4 classes (4S and 4P).

Ben Yap, our new superintendent, has lived and worked all over our globe – from Australia to China to the UK. Just days before the school year started, he arrived here in Canada, and we are so grateful to have him. In October, we met up to ask some questions and get to know him better.

I was recently reading a book about Christian teaching for a course I was taking. In one particular section, the author was unpacking the idea of a Christian mind and had some interesting things to say about how a non-Christian and Christian teacher might differ.

One of the most important jobs as a parent is choosing the right school for your child. My husband and I wanted our daughter, Janan, to receive the strong foundation of Christian education, but our question was where? How could we decide? I visited a few schools with excellent reputations, but something held us back. So why did we choose Surrey Christian School?

One of the best parts of my job is teaching the Vocations In the Kingdom of God 12 course because it is such a gift to get to know each of our grade twelve students. From our class opening circles to presenting a final Capstone project, I feel like I really get to know our grads. They are such a joy to teach.  

The curiosity that my students displayed for one another demonstrated their appreciation and love for one another; ultimately, their curiosity was a form of care.

I’m a bit of a restless guy. I like doing stuff. When I’m done that stuff, I’m often in a hurry to do more stuff.

I eat too fast, sometimes skip over details too soon, rush on to the next “thing” too quickly.

Like you, I’ve experienced a steady parade of cancelled meetings and celebrations and parties during this pandemic. Some of that has actually been kind of nice, a lot of it not so much.

Every morning I’d wonder, was the small chocolate going to be a wreath, a snowman, a candy cane? Either way, it was a fun break from my otherwise typical morning breakfast routine.

Waaaaaaaaaay back when I was a student, it felt like school was a code that needed to be cracked—a game to be figured out with students and teachers as the players.  Like all games, there were rules that guided the players and strategies that led to success. So, without really knowing it at the time, I spent a lot of time figuring out how to play the game of school.

When you think back on your time as a student, what do you remember? The Pythagoras theorem? The periodic table? Shakespeare’s plays? Sure, these elements of the curriculum can be inspiring. Still, when I think of my time at school, I think about the camping trip when our tent flooded, or the time I overcame my fears and…