"Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it."
 

Proverbs 22:6 NIV

Mission

School Alive partners with home and church to start children off on the way they should go by developing Christlike character in pursuit of lifelong learning and service led by faith over fear.

Vision

School Alive is a world leader in authentic education that comprehensively prepares and inspires students to fulfill their God-given purpose.

Value

7 Characteristics

   🔒 Safe

   🪟 Transparent

   ✝️ Christ-Centered

   🇺🇸 Patriotic

   🧬 Authentic

   ☝️ Individualized

   📚 Transdisciplinary

 

7 Practitioners

   🏥 Caring Healthcarist

   🎨 Colorful Artist

   🎲 Calculated Mathematist

   🔬 Curious Scientist

   🖥 Clever Technologist

   🔨 Creative Engineerist

   ♾️ Communal Religionist

 

7 Ships

   ✝️ Discipleship, Disciples, God, Faith

   🤝 Fellowship, Fellows, Life, Family

   🇺🇸 Citizenship, Citizens, Country, Freedom

   ❤️ Survivorship, Survivors, Health, Fitness

   💰 Stewardship, Stewards, Wealth, Finance

   📚 Scholarship, Scholars, Mind, Fact

   🧭 Leadership, Leaders, Kingdom, Force

 

7 Heavenly Virtues

   4 Cardinal

   ⚠️ Prudence

   ⚖️ Justice

   🛑 Temperance

   🦁 Fortitude

   3 Theological (1 Corinthians 13:13)

   ✝️ Faith

   ⚓️ Hope

   ❤️ Charity

 

7 Capital Virtues Over Capital Vices

   🔑 Chastity Over Lust

   🛑 Temperance Over Gluttony

   💰 Charity Over Greed

   🔍 Diligence Over Sloth

   ⏳ Patience Over Wrath

   🤝 Kindness Over Envy

   🪞 Humility Over Pride

 

7 Armors (Ephesians 6:14-18)

   🥋 Truth

   🦺 Righteousness

   🦶 Peace

   🛡 Faith

   ⛑ Salvation

   ⚔️ Spirit

   🙏 Prayer

 

7 Gifts (Isaiah 11:2-3)

   🎁 Knowledge

   🎁 Understanding

   🎁 Wisdom

   🎁 Courage

   🎁 Counsel

   🎁 Piety

   🎁 Awe

 

9 Fruits (Galatians 5:22-23)

   🍎 Love

   🍎 Joy

   🍎 Peace

   🍎 Patience

   🍎 Kindness

   🍎 Goodness

   🍎 Faithfulness

   🍎 Gentleness

   🍎 Self-Control

Story

In short, School Alive was founded by Graham Pierce Lyon to implement revolutionary changes to the educational system. This was first envisioned in 2020 after a spiritual awakening and divine inspiration. Graham has extensive informal education and a doctoral-level formal education including a Triple Major in Chemistry, Mathematics, and Physics.  He is a Christian, Husband, Father, Patriot, Eagle Scout, and National Teaching Fellow.

The educational system is plagued with issues, including a shortage of qualified teachers, high teacher turnover rates, inadequate administrative support, an overemphasis on standardized testing, low flexibility in instruction, outdated teaching methods, a lack of transparency, indoctrination, and unequal access to opportunities. Additionally, the emphasis on STEM education often comes at the expense of other important disciplines such as Art, Healthcare, and Religion. Furthermore, the curriculum often presents content that is devoid of a meaningful context. Likewise, including God, even in a way that is respectful to the freedom of religion, is either off limits or superficial. Not to mention, many students are taught ideologies that are counterproductive to a free society by failing to recognize that freedom is not free. Fundamental truths and values are slipping away.

Fortunately, human-made problems have human-made solutions. Graham's new Authentic HAMSTER Education model focuses on both curriculum and instruction. HAMSTER is a progression from the more common STEM, STEAM, and STREAM acronyms. The seven fundamental disciplines of Healthcare, Art, Mathematics, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Religion rotate like a hamster wheel to illustrate learning as a continuous and lifelong activity with blurry lines between disciplines. Seven is a number of divine completion, wholeness, and perfection relating to the days in a week, continents on Earth, colors in a rainbow, and more.

7 Disciplines

• Healthcare is the prevention, treatment, and management of illness as well as the preservation of physical, mental, and sp iritual well-being.

• Art is the conscious use of the imagination in the production of objects intended to be contemplated or appreciated as beautiful, as in the arrangement of forms, sounds, or words.

• Mathematics is the calculation, measurement, properties, and relationships of quantities as well as logical reasoning and pattern recognition.

• Science is the systematic discovery, construction, and organization of knowledge as a continuous exploration of mysteries in pursuit of predictive and explanatory power.

• Technology is the sum of objects, tools, knowledge, processes, techniques, developers, and users emerging from and driving goals.
• Engineering is the design, manufacturing, and operation of efficient and economical structures, machines, processes, and sy stems based on heuristics and the state of the art.
• Religion is a system of sincere beliefs and behaviors that recognize the sacred which is set apart from society as extraordinary, inspiring awe, and deserving of reverence while establishing a world view revolving around the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe.

There are many educational theories and practices, but can we extract general principles into a practical model of education? Authentic education (system-level) includes authentic administration (administrator-level) and authentic teaching (teacher-level) with the goal of authentic learning (student-level). There are many adjectives that can describe education, but “authentic” seems to capture the essence of what it should look like. If something is authentic, it is genuine, worthy of trust, from an undisputed origin, and executed in a manner to produce effectiveness. Authentic learning is connected to the real world and happens naturally as a biproduct of living and accomplishing goals. It can be said that all learning was once authentic and we need to return to this classical education. Authentic learning is an umbrella term covering more specific types of learning such as situated, experiential, high-impact, Montessori, immersion, service, collaborative, blended, place-based, problem-based, project-based, simulation-based, story-based, discussion-based, case-based, and inquiry-based learning.

Some of the main characteristics of Authentic Learning can be organized into Planning, Progress, Partnership, Implementation, Inspiration, Integration, Evaluation, Expertise, and Expression (PIE) in the categories of Genuine Design, Purposeful Guidance, and Structured Communication (GPS). A good litmus test for authentic learning would involve asking a student why they are learning something. If the learning is authentic, a student should always know why they are learning a particular concept since it is naturally embedded into a meaningful, real-world context that creates unquestionable purpose. For example, you can research how to build a deck for the next month. Learning may take place, but it is not authentic unless you are actually involved in designing and/or building one. Authentic learning builds 21st century skills such as collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, adaptability, global awareness, information literacy, leadership, citizenship/social responsibility, effective oral and written communication, technological literacy, and initiative.

Raising children is a timed event with eternal consequences. You have one shot to help mold their minds and equip them with the Armor of God before they must battle for themselves in this fallen world. The education of a child is perhaps the most important decision a parent has to make. A student will spend approximately 180 Days/Year in the PK-12 school system adding to over 15,000 hours of instructional time. Who is doing that instruction? What is being taught during that instruction?

Government schools as well as many private and religious schools have secular-progressive, anti-American, anti-Western, and anti-Christian ideology baked into them. Much of the problem can be traced to nihilism, a theory that there is no objective truth, value, ideal, order, morality, or meaning in life as well as Marxism, an anti-capitalism theory of class warfare between proletariat (workers) and bourgeoisie (capitalists) creating the basis for the practice of communism. Communism is a form of extreme, revolutionary socialism with a large government abolishing private property and controlling involuntary redistribution of wealth favoring equal outcome over equal opportunity bound to create a dystopia rather than a utopia. Other problematic theories and practices include discrimination based on group identity rather than individual identity, anti-natalism which negatively values procreation, post-modernism which is a rejection of modernism, grand narratives, and objective truth in support of relativism, critical theory with its branches which is a Marxist-inspired movement originating at the Frankfurt School in Germany based on critiquing and changing society, corporatism with big companies creating monopolies, crony capitalism with a corrupt government influencing competition, isolationism with unrealistic foreign policy, and extreme authoritarianism where the government has strong centralized power including totalitarianism, fascism, extreme globalism with a one-world government, extreme nationalism, and tyranny.

We form nations to protect culture, and not all cultures are the same. Power breeds corruption and the consolidation of government power has historically led to the mass killings of Adolf Hitler (Nazi Germany), Joseph Stalin (USSR), Genghis Khan (Mongol Empire), and Mao Zedong (China). Furthermore, politicians stereotypically are untrustworthy, obtain questionable funding, pander to voters, and prefer doing nothing in the name of doing something. In the United States of America, power is supposed to be vested in its citizens with a government composed of the people, chosen by the people, acting for the people.

Accepting government funding, more accurately known as tax-payer funding, often comes with unwanted red tape and restrictions. There is no such thing as a free lunch. The schools that accept this money often have to buy into the standardized testing system, prescribed curriculum, traditional instruction, and more. Basically, all schools fall on a spectrum from home schools to private schools to charter schools to public schools increasing in their level of government control. Even private schools often register with the Department of Education and obtain accreditation to give them access to benefits such as voucher money. School Alive can be classified somewhere between home school and private school. We are a full-time "home school" that provides an alternative option for students opting out of government schools, and we do not accept money with strings attached.

We live in a highly complex, competitive world and find ourselves culturally surrounded in a massive information war with the reinforcement pipelines under control as an educational monopoly. The United States of America needs to tap into the potential of "We the People" to remain the global leader of the free world. This is the battle for the American Mind and the Western Christian Paideia as the cultural fountain. This is a battle for the future of America and our world. This is a battle for our children and grandchildren. School Alive is raising the next generation of kingsmen and kingswomen as lions to protect liberty and truth. We believe that real success is being who God made you to be. We hope you join our family.

 

In God We Trust!