Christmas Letter from Mr. Zehender

Dear Families,

As we approach the Christmas season I am reminded not only about the gift of salvation, but of the many gifts God gives us here at Immanuel. Here’s a few gifts, in no particular order.

*The gift of new amazing first and second grade teachers. ‘The gift of dedicated teachers who go over and above.
*The gift of being awarded the title “Distinguished Lutheran School” by the NLSA.
*The gift of chapel baptisms.
*The gift of a church that cares for its school.
*The gift of being able to daily immerse our children in God’s Word.
*The gift of weekly prayer for each student and staff from the parents and friend’s prayer group.
*The gift of student led service projects throughout our community.
*The gift of the coolest activities’ bus in B.A.

This year our staff has been reading Dare to Lead by Brene Brown. We are learning to be vulnerable in our discussions. We are going to be FREE to discuss and be “daring” when we are discussing the “hard” things about education. These discussions include raising the academic bar, building community and culture and teaching God’s word in truth and spirit. The NOW initiative (MS/HS focus), has identified several areas of needed growth. One of our goals was for the majority of our eighth graders to be taking algebra. This will come to fruition next year. A second goal was raising our HS ACT scores. This year we had a 2-point increase from 21.5-23.2 (the state average is around 20). This is significant.

The ILCA elementary program is excited to share with you that the purchase of MobyMax

All elementary students in grades K-8 now have the opportunity to use MobyMax, a web-based curriculum, in the classroom and at home. MobyMax Suite provides lessons in math, reading, language, social studies and science that will cover the state standards and be tailored to each student’s individual needs. This package gives the elementary teachers not only access to lessons for these subjects but also assessments. Using Moby Max in a consistent manner throughout our elementary program will provide our students with a solid foundation with which to successfully build on as they acquire more learning experiences in the subject areas. It is our goal to provide a consistent learning platform that will increase individual student learning making MobyMax a successful asset to our elementary program at Immanuel.

We continue to add more Dual Credit college classes taught by our teachers, on our campus. Statistics and Pre-Cale were added this year.

Please join us at Immanuel Lutheran Church for all our Christmas season worship opportunities. Log into ILC website at immanuelba.org. These services are filled with beautiful Christmas music, scripture and messages.

May the God of peace fill your hearts with joy and good cheer! Stephen Zehnder
Headmaster