Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. (Luke 2:11-12)

The angel offers guidance.

And the shepherds were the ones who were sent on the journey.  “You will find.”  Each one of us is sent to find.  Some of us get there right away. Some of us wander following another star.

A foundational part of Journey’s approach is to support each hero find the calling to the journey. This personalized distinction uses the latest technology in a self-paced learning environment to fosters responsibility, goal-setting, and teamwork. Guides are then freed up to come alongside heroes and their challenges as well as to exhort them to even greater discoveries.

As each hero in the Early Learning studio works on math at their own pace, Elias discovers patterns. Here he shares some of his discoveries enabled by a technology supported individualized learning environment.  (note: volume is loud)

As an emerging reader during distance learning last year, Lola worked hard with her parents. As Lola developed literacy skills on her journey into the fall, she would ask once she met her goals if she could read a book to me.  And just last week, Lola led read-aloud for the Early Learning Studio.

She was confident and excited by this new step of leading.  With the mix of  a “gamified” platform focused on phonemic awareness, decoding and comprehension, a rich and diverse classroom library of books, regular, deep and engaging read-alouds as well as on-time coaching from Ms. Sarah, Lola leveraged the tools and companions she needed for this next step of her literacy Journey.

Jonathan is our oldest hero and during his portfolio review he reflected that writing has been his  greatest developed skill. During our Writer’s Workshop focused on narrative he developed You Are Under A Rest.

As each hero learned common guiding points about the genre of narrative writing, they would implement these into their own narratives that they were developing on their writer’s journey.  Additionally, they would study mentor texts of experienced writers adapting moves from reading as a writer.  Jonathan paid attention to leads and worked them into his fictional narrative.

Each hero during independent reading (also known as D.E.A.R) chooses the books, they want to read.  As they complete their books, Miss Cheryl invites them to create a Deep Books Project.  Clara created a mobile to represent her reading of the biography George Mueller: The Guardian of Bristol’s Orphans. 

While others were selecting reading fiction or non-fiction close to their experience, Clara chose to dive into the life of this 19th century missionary and prayer mobilizer.  Mueller wanted to follow God’s will and he started an orphanage because his reading of the Bible told him to take care of orphans.  His faith then led him to ask God to provide for his following of God’s will.  He proceeded to only ask in prayer for provision and throughout his life the orphanage was provided for, right on time.  One hero reading about another hero about taking the journey.

Reading, Writing and Math.  At Journey, we call these Core Skills. In turn, we develop interdisciplinary skills, social-emotional skills as well as Kingdom skills.  But those are other stories for another time. Today, we are grateful for how God is developing the skills these heroes need.

We believe it when we tell the heroes, “you will find. . . ” They are building capacities. They are going to find treasure.  They are going to change the world.  Let’s join them.

//Dr. T//

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