CHS Blog

Is more always better? It depends, of course. More hot fudge and whipped cream? YES!  More traffic on the Merritt? No thanks. When it comes to learning, more is better. It just depends on what the “more” is.

Research identified various learning styles, or modalities, decades ago. You might identify as a visual learner, enjoying graphics and pictures, or you might feel you get more out of an audiobook than you do turning pages.

The truth is that we may have preferred learning methods, but science also shows that we shouldn’t learn everything in the same way. Depending on the content, we should experience all the different learning styles.

Yes, you might like learning through visualization, but is watching a soccer game more impactful than being on the field and playing? Will you get more from reading a script or from sitting in the front row listening to our performers belt out their lines? Do you get the same experience hearing about someone’s beach trip versus feeling the sand in your toes and smelling the fries from the boardwalk yourself?

Like muscles in our body, our brain needs to have all of the various modalities stretched, trained, and put to use.

At Christian Heritage School, we know and understand the importance of training the brain. Matthew 22:37 tells us we are to love the Lord with our hearts, souls, and minds. So, how do you train a brain? It's easy — with variation.

We design our elective programs to stimulate the contemplative student, the creative student, the competitive student, the engineer, and the musician. And here’s the secret- I just described one child. Our students aren’t simply right or left-brained, pigeonholed in one track or the other. In our development of the whole child, we provide opportunities to train in various modalities.

Walk our halls, and you will see a student working on 3D Engineering schematic and 2D drawing project.

Come to a sporting event, and you will see our athletes trade their uniforms in the fall for a prop and a costume in the winter.

Attend our art show and see our student's gifted eyes with their digital photography gallery and gifted ears with digital music playlists.

Listen to our students lead a class discussion on Wednesday, then lead our worship band on Thursday.

Peek into our science labs and see students testing a hypothesis, then follow those same students to Philosophy class as they discuss Heraclitus.

By the end of a school day, your student will have flexed various parts of their brain, exercised their socialization muscles, and possibly stretched past what they knew they excelled in into areas where they might feel as confident. Our job at CHS is to make sure our programming provides the well-rounded educational opportunities our students need to stimulate and grow their minds, as we have been called to do. 

This year our blog posts will be highlighting all of the various ways we do this, from community events to therapy dogs.  We will be hearing from our CHS experts on this subject in upcoming blog articles.  So stay tuned!
 

Mr. Karl Simon is beginning his 22nd year in Christian Educational Administration and his fourth year at CHS. He enjoys reading, woodworking, watching the Patriots and Red Sox, and arguing with students who think the Yankees are better. He also coaches at CHS, where he enjoys spending time with kids outside the classroom on windy sidelines and on long car rides to away games. Mr. Simon feels serving as principal of the CHS Upper School is a great privilege, and he enjoys his relationships with his colleagues, students, and families.