In her book, The Power to Transform: Leadership That Brings Learning and Schooling to Life (Jossey-Bass, 2006), Stephanie Pace Marshall poses the term generative learning communities. She describes generative learning communities as “life and soul affirming” places that “nourish and sustain the conditions necessary for life and deep learning to thrive” (14-15). In her words, generative learning communities:

• Invite, develop, and nurture each child’s multiple learning potentials and natural predispositions for continuous learning – for meaning making, integration, exploration, discovery, invention, creation, and wisdom.
• Reconnect our children to the natural world; their communities; the human family; and the unity, wholeness, interdependence, diversity, novelty, and boundless creativity of life.
• Reengage our children’s rich interior lives – emotion, intuition, imagination, love, experience, and spirit – in learning.
• Nurture the potential of each child to wisely advance the human condition and cocreate our future by developing their capacity to discern meaning from patterns, think systematically, take the long view, and act with moral purpose.

Where can the four aspects of a generative learning community take place better than in a Christian school?

Don’t be shy – here is a perfect place to share- what is a way your school is a distinctively Christian, generative learning community?