An end of term note to all parents of KingsWay School.

Thank you for supporting us to achieve a successful first term. I would especially like to than the PTA for running the ‘Karnival’.

I had the privilege of attending an Easter Camp this year and was taken aback by the level of involvement in the camp by KingsWay alumni and current students. Many were in key leadership roles and the camp ran like clockwork. I also heard that the major Easter Camp at Mystery Creek was a huge success and featured Joshua Sanford (past Head Boy) as a keynote speaker. It is encouraging to know that, as a KingsWay community, we are all playing a role in not only shaping this generation but preparing them to shape the next.

According to an extensive survey done by Dr Zigarelli on cultivating Christian character, gratitude is the characteristic that most distinguished high-virtue Christians from average-virtue Christians. Dr. Zigarelli goes on to say, “In my study of Christians, we found solid, confirmatory evidence of this. Growing one’s gratitude has a radical and transformational effect on character because it is one of God’s primary vehicles for inducing other Christian qualities.” (Zigarelli, 2002).

Dan Egelar (The President of the Association of Christian Schools International) suggests that to provide an antidote to the disease of “affluenza”, Christian schools’ staff and parents need to develop appropriate educational strategies to teach students:

• To resist the consumptive lifestyle,
  
• To identify and counter the cultural lie that wealth is the measure of a person,
  
• To cultivate a heart of gratitude,
  
• To never accept the option of quitting and to learn to persevere,
  
• To become self-disciplined and to embrace and celebrate delayed gratification,
  
• To overcome the temptation of self-indulgence.
  

Egelar goes on to say that, “Confronting the disease of affluenza and the cultivation of a heart of gratitude are central to fostering spiritual maturity in young people. Christian schools should not just throw up their hands and accept that this is the way our culture is and there is nothing we can do about it. Christian schools need to strive to be counter-cultural and the cultivation of Christian character is what should set Christian schools apart from their secular counterparts. As such, it would behove us to recognize the threat of this disease and to be intentional about confronting its insidious impact on the lives of our young people.”

I trust that the KingsWay community will continue to seek out ways to educate our students in ways that both challenge the status-quo while still encouraging them to maintain an attitude of gratitude.

Regards

Graeme Budler
Executive Principal