Our two oldest kids, Maggie and Calvin, head back to school tomorrow. School reentry is always exciting, but this first day is not only the first day back to school for our kids, it is also the first day of school for our school.

On Tuesday morning Evangel Classical School opens its (basement) doors to students. Like I said, we’re not only beginning a new year, we’re beginning a new institution.

The plans have been in the making for a little over a year. It’s amazing how much work has been done since last summer and yet we’ve still only dipped a small toe in the river of educational rapids left to ride.

Because we’re small and because I deserve some of the blame for the existence of ECS, I’m going back to school, too. I left the classroom in June of 2007. I had been teaching High School Bible classes for six years and, before that, finishing four years of seminary after four and a half years of college after thirteen years of public education. I remember feeling absolutely no sense of loss when I turned my attention to other things.

Since then, however, God has reordered multiple things. My kids are older and I have an increased desire for them to learn. Not only that, my worldview continues to expand and I realized the need to confess my own dualism. Lo and behold, it is possible to please God without diagramming Greek verses all day. I want students to get the gladness of Christ’s universal Lordship so much that they bleed image-bearing all over the place.

So, I’m back in the classroom. I’ll be the K-6 Bible teacher and the Latin I teacher. I know more about the former than the latter, but cogito ergo sum, ad absurdum, et cetera, et cetera, or something like that.

That’s not all. Our secondary program at the school will include a trek through the Omnibus curriculum. Our headmaster not only wrote an introduction to the program, he’s also going to teach it. The school board decided to offer an opportunity to audit the class for interested parents and other adults who want to “catch up” in their own education. They’re invited to read along and then join the class once a week for discussion. I’ve got my set of books (see the image below) and have made my commitment to participate. Even if I had read all the books I was assigned in High School and college–which I didn’t–I still realize that I’m painfully lopsided and underdeveloped.

the stack

It’s time to go back to school, for our kids and for me as well. I want them not only to learn more than me, I want them to want to always keep learning more than me. That starts with my example. By God’s grace I’m not done growing and this should be just as much fun as it is crazy. Risus est bellum.