Hello fellow educators welcome to podcast number 158. Well we are just one podcast away from finishing for the year. I hope to have a great closing broadcast for a very successful year. I am writing this as I travel home from an eventful trip to Indonesia. Here are a couple of facts for you. Indonesia is the fourth largest populated country in the world. It is probably the most multi-cultural country on the planet. It stretches the width of the United States with less than 20% of the US’s land mass. It is made up of more than 1300 islands with lots of water in between. We were invited by some very significant folks in the Indonesian Ministry of Education. We also meet with College Teacher prep programs and a very significant Christian School organization. It may come as a surprise to some of my listeners to learn that Heritage Christian Schools is becoming a leader in online English as a Second Language instruction. We have become noticed by some very interesting people in places like South America, Mexico, China, Hong Kong and now Indonesia. As we traveled from meeting to meeting, something which was no easy task, Jakarta has the worst traffic problems in the world, we were able to show off the amazing work of our ESL team as well as our online Math and Science courses. Everywhere we went we saw educators experience surprise and admiration that comes from seeing something unique and special for the first time. If you haven’t had a chance to look at two of our special programs I would recommend that you visit our ESL site at www.icos.ca. ICOS stands for the International Christian Online School and also take a look at www.mathonline.ca where you can see samples of our amazing math curriculum. We are distributing and licencing our online curriculum to schools throughout BC both public and independent as well as around the globe.

As we complete our seventh year of Distributed Learning and our Twenty Fifth Year of Christian Education we are beginning to have a global reach. This is not just limited to online. Just two weeks ago we had 25 students return from the Global Citizenship program where they spent 6+ weeks in southern Mexico. Two months ago a group of teachers and students went to Europe in spectacular fashion to complete their studies in Comparative Civilizations. And our students are finding new and exciting opportunities as we look for ways to break the traditional moulds, schedules and closed systems that much of what passes for “good” education these days. We live in a new Globalized world that will require a different attitude towards the programs, places, spaces and paradigms than our old fashion traditional methods.

One of the amazing ways Heritage has grown these last 25 years is in the area of Special Education. If you combine our campus school and online school Special Ed enrolment and funding we are now BC’s largest Special Education program with 185 funded students. We have created very unique programs around each of these students and with the community love that Heritage is so famous for these children are thriving. One of our long term students is also a frequent podcast listener.  Grade 11 student, Mathew Baker also is one of the podcast’s most frequent commentators. Here is what he wrote about last week’s podcast:

 Dear Greg Bitgood,

I just listen to podcast 155 and I really enjoyed you talking about technology in space. It’s was great to hear about how technology can be used for different things in the world. Also I think it’s great how people can use I Pads and IPods and computers. I also loved how you talked about the villains of the wild west that was cool.

Also I thought it was good that you mentioned that this anarchistic spirit of the west, in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s attracted very specific types of people who came there to take advantage of the “lawlessness” I thought that was interesting to hear about.

I really enjoyed this podcast and I hope you have a good day today.

Blessings, Matthew John Baker.

Thank you,  Matthew for being a leader in our Special Education program.

Our home education programs through the Online School are truly innovative and continue to grow. We are approaching education from some very different paradigms. We are finding ways to incorporate the requirements of the BC Ministry of Education and yet preserve the unique approach of home schooling. For those are new to the podcast or to BC Educational opportunity let me explain. We are receiving the same funding for “Distributed Learning” students that we receive for our traditional campus school kids. This funding requires that each student has a fully certified BC Teacher working with the parents to guide and ensure they are following the Educational Outcomes and policies. Heritage has created a tracking system called Encom which allows our families to use a variety of curriculum and approaches to their home education program and yet ensures that the students stay in the BC guidelines. In fact, we track our student learning in Encom far closer than we do with our campus students. HCOS has developed some very unique and exciting programs that bring school to them such as Learning Camps where we sponsor one or two day events all over the Province. Next year we will be launching a very exciting program for our families and students under the guidance and direction of Sarah Bennett. Sarah has been a very important leader at Heritage over the years. She helped us design our school policies and programs from the start of HCOS and continues to add layers of service for the home school family. I talked with Sarah about the new idea of Coops.

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Thank you again Sarah for your amazing leadership. She is a key reason why we have become a meaningful solution for families in the best place on earth to be a home educator. Next week will be my last podcast of the year and it will be your last chance to contribute. Please take a moment and tell us how the Christian Educator podcast has helped you this year. You can email us at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . Thank you for listening and thank you for your commitment to discipleship-based Christian Education.