News

Psychology Students Gain Experience In Mock Counseling Sessions

We’re thrilled to share the latest highlights from this past year from our Psychology program led by Webb Barnes. Over the course of the year, students researched various mental health topics, engaged in mock counseling sessions, and wrote about these topics applying gospel truth to real life situations. 

In their final project, students conducted 50-minute-long mock counseling sessions where one student role played an individual with their researched diagnosis and another student would engage them in conversation and provide godly counsel. 

For example, Morgan Walters’ cumulative coursework provided a powerful learning experience when he embodied his research into anxiety and played the role of someone struggling with anxiety. 

Mr. Barnes emphasized how this learning experience fostered important skills: “This experience taught the students essential communication skills. If they can provide biblical counsel, they build friendships and resiliency will grow. At the very least, they learned to sit shoulder to shoulder with someone, to be present, and to share the gospel. I love it!” 

We are so grateful for all of our wonderful faculty who create meaningful lessons and academic experiences that integrate the gospel into every content area!

Exploring The Exciting Connection Between Magnetism & Electricity

Our high school Physics class had great excitement as they explored the fascinating connection between magnetism and electricity. Guided by Science Teacher, Marcia Siebert, juniors and seniors utilized project based learning to deepen their understanding through a variety of experiments and building electromagnets, simple motors, and a working telegraph. They also utilized online simulations to aid in their understanding of electrostatistics, static charge transmission and series and parallel circuits. 

Mrs. Siebert emphasized the persistence students displayed throughout the projects and the payoff afterwards, “It was wonderful to see the students persevere and press through the struggle with the materials, but then having the ‘ah-ha’ moments when they saw a breakthrough as everything came together.” She further shared how she was encouraged by the way students embraced the learning process and rose to the challenge, “I was so impressed by the way students engaged in challenging material and were able to experience the thrill of learning.”

Senior Evan Seay further emphasized how meaningful this was to him, “I love getting to apply what we learn through experiments. For example, seeing the coil in the battery when it gets electromagnetic force from the battery, and then causing the coil to spin."

The biblical integration in this lesson was clear, the intricacies of magnetism and electricity remind us that it is Jesus, as Colossians 1:17 teaches us, that holds all of these things together. We engage in science because God is the Designer and Sustainer of our world.