in the streets of tulip time enjoying another great day and we have glen boss with us from howling christian schools and he's a next superintendent that we'd like to talk about now glenn how long have you been involved in education  it's a little embarrassing to say but this is my forty forty third year and being in education wow if i count my own education i've been going to school for about sixty years it's been quite a journey  that's my life yeah while that is cost so you probably have gone through teacher principal superintendant is that how it went that's the that was the path i was first a math and science teacher in a high school thought that was the best job in the world and then i was a high school principal i thought that was the best job in the world and now the superintendent of holland christian which has just been a delight i've been here sixteen years which is hard for me to even believe that we've been in holland that long but this a great community as you know and it's it's a very unique place education is valued my friends are the folks that i work with in education the fellow superintendents that doesn't happen everywhere and the opportunity for nonpublic public charter schools to work together that's a very unique it is really mad an easy time to be a leader in whatever the capacity and it can be kind of a lonely thank you know it's your own kind of all the law office and the issues that education is having to deal with now are really historic when she say that i think they are there's never been a time where there's been more expectation from parents and more guidelines if i c use the kind words from government and yet we're caught in that tension we all want to do education differently we know how kids learn but we're but we're evaluated on test scores were evaluated on things th e you know our result of good teaching but it's not how we would like to teach not to see if we could get that test score up but to see if we could get kids to really learn at the best they possibly can yeah and really when you ask someone about what they remember from their fourth grade math lesson it's not so much that fourth grade math lesson is that no it's a fourth grade teacher it's relationships and you have to make sure that those continue to be strong in the school today you can't just  pretend that they're going to happen you have to be intentional about it you have to create opportunities for kids to belong and you know we spend a lot of time on that we have we have we pay attention to see how kids learn we really think the future of education is going to be a very personalized approach every child might take a different tract to get to the result that's needed the industrial model of teaching everybody the same way was a fish and but i'm not sure it was effect so we're we're reconsidering how kids learn and i think what schools have done and i can say that for every school in this community we've changed from being in an institution of teaching to being an institution of learning and the teacher should we shifted the emphasis from the teacher love i'm still need i'm there that they're there they're the most critical part of the school but we shifted to the student now what do you want to teach but how do these kids learn so the student is the customer  are case the student is the customer but so is the family because they also pay tuition so we have a few customers that we have to pay attention to and those expectations come along when a parent writes that check specifically to you the expectations come along with it that you'll do well you will make sure their kids are well educated well prepared and really in our case receiving a very distinctive christian education not just one more page in the book but what are we really doing to form their faith as well as educate the child yeah so as you think about the future and it's hard to predict what government's going to do and what are the next things that are going to be laid  education so to speak as it is compared to the business community but what are you kind of thinking in the back of your mind might be a direction or a future kind of goal for how in christian that you could share y ou know we talk about a lot of things i i'm not sure that our our our model right now for education is sustainable we depend a lot on donors just like colleges do and we have a very benevolent and a very supportive group but how long until we're a what generation is that going to continue we have to find more non to wish in revenue sources that are sustainable you just can't have enough car washes to pay for a school you need to find some ways to get some significant amount of money so that you can support families to keep it affordable and that's the other part of this esteemable model we can just continue to raise to wish and expect parents to continue along their their income has not has not gone up significantly and so we have to pay attention to that and yet the tension is the quality of the product the value has to continue to increase and so that's where we find our challenge and my colleagues have the same well and we just have different funding sources yeah i know you get up every morning i think well you know they'll be the immediate problems and then there are the long term problems and the new problems that are kind of looming and so it's it's not an easy task well no it isn't but you know there's a it is it's an important task and i'm not trying to be self aggrandizing here but i think we have the responsibility to look out teachers and  parents are thinking about today and if you're sitting in a leadership position you have to be thinking about what's happening three years from now what happed what's happening five years from now because if you're not you're never going to be prepared so we spend a lot of time doing strategic planning  now do all those plans come to fruition probably not but it sets a course on a path for us to be on so that's we're constantly looking at you know the rhythm in the cycle for a school leader today is that you maybe get to enjoy this school year in september and october but by november rolls around you're spending more time in the next school year and by this time of year you're spending time in the year after that already and so we we we certainly have our feet planted here but our minds and our thoughts are often further down the road but we just appreciate your continued leadership that kind of cat knew that he is there's a great thing for a system to be able to think about today and understand it but be able to also plan for tomorrow and to have a team around you that you can have a really great relationship with and and can tackle those new challenges together and have a trusted trusted relationships which is really the essence of education it is and the delightful part of this community is there are some initiatives that are starting to roll out i think next week at the chamber we're talking about a program called future prep probably implement my colleagues talked about that but that was a joint effort that was ever school in town and that just doesn't happen and that's a very future design kind of program saying how do kids learn what do we need to do to prepare them for the workplace how do kids know what skills they need how can we teach those soft skills so that that's been really really important and a great deal of fun to be part of that conversation because you're not swimming in those waters alone or as i say you jump off the cliff but you held hands with somebody when you jumped off the cliff so that's that's ok to do you know at the same time we are we are working on a lot of things before uniquely for us as well we continue to add more technology this year we added  pads for gate grades k through four so all of our kids now k through twelve have a one to one device which has changed learning more than you can imagine and really impact us  and we're strengthening our relationship with another aspect of education in this community that's the home school families we always had a home school family connection that met one day a week in our school for grades k through all next year it's k through six we also next year adding grades seven through ten and it's a little different program but these kids come to school for a couple of days and they're taking high school courses and high school credit it's a great connection for us and it provides a service that we can give to the community and something that the home school parents are looking for so while things have changed since that one room schoolhouse kid the home or whatever and you don't have that opportunity you should come and see what happens in the school today you can drive by forever but you really don't know what's happening unless you stop and we'd love to show people what we're doing i've every school would be like that because it has changed significantly you know yeah really and really that is the heart of the future of our community of us children and it's so exciting to be among them and to watch the excitement on their faces and to see them learning and in the real world of education and not just something out there that people talk about and evaluate in and all of that and to see that relationship between the teacher and student that is so significant you know that's still the critical part of education today is still the relationship between teacher and child we can put all kinds of programs in place we can talk about a lot of things but it's the connection between a child and a teacher is where education happens so you need to value that you need to facilitate that to be maximize and that's what we spend our resources to do and you know i think each school finds a unique pathway that's right for them but that's really the crux of education and this community i think the strength of this community is that it values education people here want their children to succeed but they also want them to experience a very very good education they expect their kids to be ready to go to the workforce ready to go to college and i think the schools in this community are doing that and we have world class companies that compete on a global level and we want to produce world class children that are ready to step into that don't we yes well we thank you so much glen for being here and taken time out of your busy busy schedule to  us a little glimpse into what's going on at how in creation we hope people step in to to get a real personal experience with children in whatever school district they choose to check out today so thank you so much glen it was my pleasure