All Life Is Education

Mark Twain once quipped, "Education [is] the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty."

With that, welcome to the 2016-17 school year!

Just kidding.  Let me try again and find someone who's not Mark Twain:

"All of life is a constant education."

That was Eleanor Roosevelt, and that's more our style.  In fact, she hits the nail on the head.  If all life is education, then Preschool-12th Grade is just warming up the truck, revving the engine, and muscling through neighborhood streets in low gear. After that, there are still endless mountain roads to get to.

So it's just the beginning, but it's still a time of tremendous importance -- whether starting Preschool or Kindergarten or 10th Grade. Frankly, it's a little scary, too.  Scary and wonderful, and a lot in between. But it is all just the beginning, as Roosevelt implies, and it is all redemptive through the merciful hands of God.  The warm-up phase is long, but we're preparing them today for that big day later -- Commencement -- a beginning, not the ending -- the day when real independence and real self-learning begins.

During In-Service training this past week, teachers have discussed ways to even better understand who our children uniquely are at this important moment in their lives, how to recognize their changes and growth from last year, and how to continue to give them both knowledge and open eyes for the future.  We are eager to teach them how to learn and how to see -- but why?  Because when they leave ACA and spread their wings in a few years, we want them to fly further and dig deeper, not to close their minds and fall to the ground.  We want them to be ambassadors for life-long education who are full of thanks for God's unreasonable gifts to us.

Welcome to the new chapter of your child's story.  It's a real page-turner, and our teachers are eager to begin with you.