How to Thrive in High School

1. Learn How to Study

School is for learning and to learn you need to study. It’s not just about what you can absorb while in the classroom, but how you interact with the material outside of the classroom as well. Studying may look different depending on the subject or project, but it is something you need to get good at. Find out how and where you study best.  A few tips are to rest or get a snack before studying, so hunger or tiredness do not distract you. Also, finding a good study environment is key. Don’t study in your bed as your mind associates it with sleep, or a place where there are too many distractions, whether it is in the form of television, music, or people-watching. We won’t cover all of them here, but there are plenty of blogs and websites with lists of tips and tricks to help improve your study habits, so go check them out. 

2. Make a Study Schedule

When making a schedule, we often plan out how we’ll make time for our extracurricular activities, but sometimes we forget to block off enough time for getting homework or projects done. One way to manage your time better is to create a study schedule at the beginning of the year and stick to it. Even if you do not have homework in a certain class, you can organize your notes, review the content, and prepare questions for your next class. It may sound like a drag, but it will make paper writing and studying for tests much easier, and will save you time in the long run.  

3. Trust Your Teachers

At the Academy, this should be easy. Their genuine smiles and love for God and others make them the perfect people to deserve your trust. Your teachers have your best interest at heart, so don’t be dismissive if they offer correction or discipline. Also, don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. Teachers are there to help you learn, and they want to make sure you do. When they give you advice, be sure to listen, because they are saying it for your benefit, not theirs.  

4. Be a Friend

Like the old saying goes, “if you want a friend, be a friend,” which is almost just a reverberation of the golden rule applied to friendship. Remember that your classmates aren’t your competition, they’re your teammates, so be sure to show them the respect, kindness, and forgiveness that you would want shown to you. Having a good set of friends, makes the good times better, and the hard times easier. If you have a hard time making friends, then ask someone you know for advice on how to be a better friend. Of course, being a friend isn’t always easy, but the work you put into it is definitely worth it.  

5. Get Perspective

Learn what does and does not matter in the long run. There are a lot of things in high school that seem like they are such a big deal, but will hardly be remembered a year or two later. Whether it was a trending style, an event you did or did not get to attend, or an embarrassing situation, you’ll soon find out that some of these things are not near as big of a deal as they seem in the moment. Other decisions you make will have a big impact on your future, even if they only seem as simple as turning in an assignment on time or being obedient to your parents. Gaining perspective will keep you from being overly dramatic about unimportant things, and keep you focused on what matters most.

6. Honor Your Parents

What does honoring your parents have to do with surviving high school? A little. So why are we bringing it up? Because it has everything to do with thriving during high school. Having a healthy relationship with your parents can make all the difference during your high school years. If you are stressed with all you are trying to do in high school, consider how much more they are responsible for every single day. You can be a blessing to them by ensuring to respect and obey them. This will not only make your parents happy, but God as well. Stress at home affects our school life and can negatively impact your academic performance. How do you expect to succeed  at school if you are unable to do well at home? 

7. Don’t Forget God 

If you are not spending time connecting with God, then don’t be surprised if you are having trouble staying afloat in any aspect of your life, let alone high school. God’s Spirit helps us to stand firm in the midst of trials. By remaining connected to the vine, we are able to be full of the wisdom and life God gives. This will help us walk according to his ways, so that we do more than just get through every day, but that we live it to the fullest for God.

7 Facts about the Academy for G.O.D.

In 2021, the Academy for G.O.D. was recognized for some awards in the Nashville Scene's magazine. In the readers' poll awards of their yearly best issue, the Academy was included among the top 3 in the categories of Best Private School, Best Elementary School, Best Junior High, and Best High School. So what makes the Academy so special? Check out these 7 facts to learn a bit more about how we do education here at the Academy.   

1. Innovative Level System. Unlike traditional schools, we do not have the typical leveling system that puts students into grades. Instead, elementary students are grouped by generals, specifics, and focus levels. Every student has their own uniquities, and thus they may require more time in certain subjects than others. By grouping students like this, it provides fluidity between traditional grade levels, allowing students to learn at their own pace without feeling left behind.

Principal Castro teaches an SEL elective course to an upper elementary level class. Students are challenged to develop their social intelligence especially as peers and classmates together.

2. No Letter Grades.  Another big way in which the Academy is reshaping education is by doing away with letter grades in elementary. Young students are often unable to disassociate the grade on their work from being a grade on themselves. This can lead to unhealthy mindsets that can prohibit learning. Instead, the students are given benchmarks for each course they take, and then evaluated on how well they understand that aspect of the course topic. This keeps kids from stressing about grades too early, and instead allows them to better enjoy the learning experience. 

3. Students have Lead & Course Teachers. When a student is at the Academy, they are put in a class with similarly aged peers under a lead teacher. These lead teachers are responsible for overseeing the students' holistic education. However, the students also have course teachers who instruct on their areas of expertise, to ensure the students are receiving the best education possible. At a 14:1 average student-teacher ratio, the Academy is much lower than the state average. 

4. High School Academic and Creative Track for Graduating. A highly project-based track focused on development in the creatives is available to the high school students alongside the common academic track. This option is a special opportunity for students who are wanting to increase their knowledge and abilities in certain creative avenues. Upper-level courses like, “Directed Studies” and “Student Internship” allow older students to hone in a specific area of learning or skill set.

5. Variety of Online Education & Hybrid Options. If you feel like you are missing out because you are a bit too far away to send your kids to the Academy, then don’t worry. There are a number of options for online education, even allowing students to take individual classes a la carte. There is also a hybrid option for homeschool students who still want to receive some face-to-face learning. 

Elementary students enjoy recess before their lunch break. All elementary students receive three recess blocks every day at the Academy.

6. Exciting Courses. One of the ways the Academy implements its focus on holistic development is by offering courses on social and emotional intelligence. Along with this, new courses are routinely being developed based on the curiosity of the students. This keeps students excited and interested about learning as they are able to cater the education to meet the needs and interests of the students. 

7. Special Events and Extracurricular Activities  The Academy has a variety of fun extracurricular activities. Not only do they have great team sports like soccer, basketball, and volleyball, but there are also a number of clubs for students who have other interests such as geo-caching, yoga, chess, or pokemon.

Biblical Education Put into Practice: Monthly Service Project Highlights

At least once a month, Jr High and High school students have the great privilege of serving those in need in our community and the greater Nashville area. It’s a practical way our students are learning to put the biblical education they receive in the classroom into practice.

This month, students served both on our school campus and neighboring communities. It is such a joy to see our students work together, strategize, and display teamwork to meet needs. Here are a few highlights:

Life Care Center- A group of students went to the Life Care Center, an elderly home in Madison, TN. They sang three worship songs and played bingo with the residents. One of our students even got to call out the bingo numbers for the game! The presence of youth brighten the day for the residents, and it’s a blessing to see our students shine in this way.

Hopewell Neighbors- A group of students also planted flowers at an elderly woman's home across the street from our school and raked leaves in one of our neighbor's yard!

School Playground & Elementary Students - Students weeded our elementary playground and the memorial garden to beautify our school campus.

Parents Day Out and Pre-K - Students weeded around the Parents Day Out Program building to beautify our entire campus.

Ugandan Students - Students wrote letters to our home education students in Uganda and encouraged them in their studies with midterms taking place. They were so precious as they have felt more and more connected to these students over the years and looked forward to connecting with them in this way.

The Elderly at McKendree Village & Chippington Towers - Students used their time yesterday to plan for a Christmas party at McKendree Village and Chippington Towers. This is a highlight for the residents each year!

“In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” - Matthew 5:16

A Prayer to Be Enduring Problem Solvers

On Monday morning this week, my 7th grade Mixed Media Art class began with a student led prayer that has impacted me all week. The words of this student’s prayer included, “Lord, give us the patience to be effective problem solvers. Help us to not get down on ourselves when we have to try something again, because we are students and we are still learning.”

Sit with that. Read it again. Think about a 13-year-old student asking for this type of help from the Lord for herself and her classmates.

Natania, a senior at the Academy, joins us for a portion of each art class for her Teaching Practicum course. This course is designed to give seniors practical skills related to teaching concepts to younger students. She is learning to communicate with students in a way that effectively helps them think through visual art processes and encourages them towards good work. She is pictured above helping a student talk through the process of making a brown paint color for the skin tone of a girl from India. It's been a blessing to have her join us.

These words are profound for a few reasons. First, teens today are faced with all kinds of social media that promotes fast paced pressure for them to have an appearance that they have things figured out. This prayer directly opposes what the culture they are living in demands and instead, sticks closely to God’s hopes for them. Second, our values here at the Academy resonated in this student’s prayer. She not only acknowledged herself and her classmates as students, but took the humble position that they are in need of continued growth because they are learning. Finally, she acknowledged that this would take patience and isn’t something that can be faked (James 1:22).

To make God proud (Law #3 - Exodus 20:7), these students are implementing what it looks like to uphold God’s reputation. They are learning to recognize that their efforts to become effective problem solvers can only come from God’s presence in their life, their knowledge of the word of God, and their ability to walk it out in obedience. Their hard work and faithfulness to the tasks and projects given to them is a sign of their obedience.

After the class collectively said “Amen,” I was able to encourage the students that learning to be effective problem solvers according to God’s word is a lifelong practice. The adults around them engage in problem solving every day and we are prayerful in our considerations along these lines as well. I pray that they can continue to hold this type of reliance on the Lord as they are becoming the people that God needs in the world.

After this wonderful moment, students dove into their art workshop developing class murals. Their first quarter project is to collectively create a mural that expresses a value that they chose from God’s word that has been highlighted during their time at the Academy. One group chose the theme of “Unity” with an emphasis on people from around the world working together. The other group chose the theme “Rise Up” and are working through the resurrection motif that comes with our school's mascot, the Phoenix.

Students are engaging in higher order thinking skills related to creating artwork that communicates a theme or concept based on their knowledge and ability to apply and analyze it. This project has required students to problem solve with measurement (more math than they would have imagined fitting into an art class), color mixing, and painting. Students are also engaging their SEL skills of teamwork and communication to effectively problem solve their project as a team. I’m seeing wonderful fruit during this first quarter of Jr. High!

Exploring the Visual, Auditory and Physical Styles of Learning: The Benefits of Various Teaching Styles

Simply put, learning styles are the different ways in which a person intakes information. While there are multiple ways to analyze this, one of the easiest ways to break this down is through our senses. Students learn through seeing, hearing, and handling the subject matters taught to them. Some children are more prone to retaining information when presented in a certain way, and thus one student may learn more quickly through hearing a teacher’s lesson while another may better grasp the concept if that same information is formulated into a graph. With that said, here is a quick breakdown of some of the learning styles and how they can be used.

Visual: Here are some ways in to use visualization to your advantage: Use multiple colored pens when taking notes to color-coordinate certain ideas, create graphs, charts, webs, and illustrations to depict the information you were taught, make a mind-map to see how various ideas connect to each other, or put facts on images and make a review collage. 

Auditorial: Some people prefer learning through hearing the information, so here are some study ideas: Listen to energizing but not distracting music while studying, memorize facts by putting them to the tune of a popular song, download lectures and re-listen to them in the car on the way to soccer practice, read through your notes out loud, or take turns with a study partner re-teaching each other the information by putting it in your own words. 

During a lesson exploring the digestive system, students participate in hands-on experiments to guide their understanding of the course material.

Physical: Get moving! This style of learning requires you to use your body: Act out what you are trying to learn as if rehearsing for a play, read your notes while walking or chewing gum to keep your subconscious busy with movement to help your mind focus on what you need to memorize, put choreography or dance moves to the information you are trying to memorize, or place index cards of facts around the room and connect them with string. Anything that gets your body moving in sync with your brain as you digest the information can be beneficial for a kinesthetic style of learning.

For rather obvious reasons, the smelling and tasting methods are rarely used. While delicious, writing your notes in icing on a cake and then eating it is neither practical nor efficient, even if you do technically digest the information. 

What’s a way to wrap all of this into one useful study tip: draw your notes. Edutopia explains how drawing while notetaking can increase retention rates by utilizing multiple learning styles at once. The student is intaking the information audibly by listening to the lecture; by depicting the information in charts, symbols, or pictures, they are constructing visuals; and by using their hands to draw, they are keeping their body physically active. 

While certain learning styles may come easier to some than others, we should avoid pigeonholing anyone to a specific style. If not understood correctly, a student may lay blame on the way a topic was conveyed rather than trying to take responsibility for trying extra hard to understand the concept. Rather than looking to strengthen a weakness, they may turn it into a handicap. This may be why the developer of the multiple intelligence theory, Howard Gardner believes it best to leave behind the term “learning styles,” even though he does highly encourage educators to “pluralize” their teaching methods. 

SOURCES: 

Northern Illinois University Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning. (2020). Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences. In Instructional guide for university faculty and teaching assistants. Retrieved from https://www.niu.edu/citl/resources/guides/instructional-guide  

“Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences.” Northern Illinois University. (visited 24 March 2022)

https://www.niu.edu/citl/resources/guides/instructional-guide/gardners-theory-of-multiple-intelligences.shtml  

Cherry, Kendra. “Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences.” VeryWellMind.com. July 28, 2021 (visite 24 March 2022) 

https://www.verywellmind.com/gardners-theory-of-multiple-intelligences-2795161  

Terada, Youki. “The Science of Drawing and Memory.” Edutopia. 14 March 2019. (visited 4 April 2022)

https://www.edutopia.org/article/science-drawing-and-memory