Teach Us to Number Our Days
By Stefan Wilson
Teachers spend 1,395 hours a year with their students ... let’s leverage it for kingdom impact.
The role of teachers in a child’s growth and maturity is undeniable. You likely can remember the teachers who impacted your own growth and maturity. Students spend 180 days in a classroom every year, giving teachers an incredible opportunity to form the next generation of Christians in their classroom. To reach students, we must start with the teachers, which is why our mission at Colson Educators is to invest in teachers.
Plenty of excellent organizations focus on Christian curriculum development. However, the effectiveness of even the best Christian curriculum hinges on a teacher’s formation in the Christian worldview. A curriculum can only go so far. At Colson Educators, we pour into teachers so that they can effectively use whatever curriculum they have, because they’ve been equipped to use it well.
"The effectiveness of even the best Christian curriculum hinges on a teacher's formation in the christian worldview."
Our approach at Colson Educators focuses on two critical areas of teacher development: biblical literacy and cultural fluency. Some organizations focus on biblical literacy, and others cultural fluency. Colson Educators is unique because we focus on both. By teaching the Christian worldview as a whole-life philosophy, we help teachers address ever-shifting cultural questions through a biblical lens. We desire to see educators encouraged in God’s calling on them to cultivate clarity and order in their classroom amid a chaotic world.
Since 2021, Colson Educators’ focus for equipping teachers has been on delivering accessible, digital content on biblical literacy and cultural fluency, including topics such as:
- How to navigate cancel culture
- How to be a force for life in a culture of suicide
- How to build a worldview-shaping lesson plan
- How to cultivate a campus culture that embodies the Christian worldview
What’s Next?
What’s Next?
The Colson Education Collective is a new program, designed to equip educators to shape students according to a Christian worldview. This new initiative invests in teachers by investing in entire schools at a time.
Teachers in participating schools go through a three-tier process:
Learn: Building a worldview foundation.
Live: Applying worldview knowledge.
Lead: Multiplying worldview influence.
The Colson Education Collective will provide content, coaching, and support over a multiple-year timeline, developing staff in three key areas: worldview knowledge, classroom instruction, and relationship cultivation. The result is growth in teachers’ cultural fluency and biblical literacy, resulting in increased worldview competency.
Your investment in the Colson Education Collective helps fund the creation of three types of support and coaching needed to make this initiative possible:
Digital: Colson Education leaders will create relevant, accessible digital content for educators to grow in their knowledge and application of Christian worldview concepts in the classroom.
In-Person: Colson Education leaders will provide in-person training throughout the year, bringing opportunities to both learn and practice worldview instruction in the classroom.
Ongoing: Colson Education leaders will work directly with select staff to create a culture of replication within the staff, facilitating mentorship between veteran teachers and growing teachers.
Ultimately, entire schools will become self-sufficient in a teacher worldview-formation model and be able to guide neighboring schools through the same process. This regional school replication phase will expand the reach of the Colson Educators exponentially. Colson Educators will continue to provide digital, in-person, and ongoing support to these new regional schools. Six pilot schools with 600 teachers are currently participating in the initiative, with a reach of about 7,000 students. As our regional schools pass the baton to other schools, the Colson Education Collective will reach six to ten times more students per region. We’re not just adding, we’re multiplying.
We need your help
We need your help
Through our digital content alone, God has allowed us to reach over 30,000 teachers worldwide. The first phase of Colson Educators is focused on creating more digital content to engage as many educators as possible. We need to ensure that our digital content hits the exact target in a culture that’s changing rapidly, especially considering the prevalence of issues like anxiety, depression, and progressive sexual ideologies. Teachers want and need content that addresses these topics from a Christian worldview.
We need investors to support the creation of new, relevant content on a regular basis. Each new Colson Educators course costs roughly $20,000 to produce, with multiple courses needed for issues on the horizon.
Additionally, we need investors to support the in-person, ongoing equipping and coaching of schools, which costs roughly $10,000 per year, per school. Our goal is to add 12 schools over the next school year.
By God’s grace, the next few years will bring exponential growth through the replication of regional schools committed to forming their teachers in biblical and cultural fluency. The Colson Education Collective isn’t theoretical; it’s practical and personal. Your giving supports the formation of teachers who will profoundly shape the faith of their students. The result? Students rooted in a solid Christian worldview who can face our chaotic world with clarity, confidence, and courage.
“Students who are rooted in a solid christian worldview foundation and able to face our chaotic world with clarity, confidence, and courage.”
BY STEFAN WILSON
BY STEFAN WILSON
Stefan Wilson is the Director of Colson Educators Collective at the Colson Center and is a PhD candidate at Midwestern Seminary. As a former educator, he's passionate about the holistic formation of students and discovering how the whole person is shaped by Christ. He lives in Arizona with his wife and two children.