NCAA's biggest basketball event, March Madness, concludes with a series of clips of memorable moments throughout the tournament, both good and bad, culminating with a shot of the winning team. The segment is called "One Shining Moment." As I write, I'm making plans to attend three of those culminating events at Ignite Christian Academy – our graduation ceremonies.
I look back at the memorable moments we have had at the academy this school year. Last summer, our faculty implemented a new rubric in most of our coursework that gave our students more constructive feedback on each of their projects. We then shut down for an entire week and tested our new student information system, Genius. On September 22, 2011, Genius finally got a green light. Since its implementation, the system has helped us improve communication with parents, identify students who are struggling with coursework, and benefit students. We look forward to another good year with Genius and Ignitia.
We introduced online classrooms last spring, moving them to the WebEx platform in the fall for a more professional look. The voluntary sessions have significantly impacted many of the students who have attended.
In September, we branched out a bit by holding a full day of prayer with our students, repeating the idea in November with a day of praise and thanksgiving. While our Monday prayer sessions haven't drawn the same level of interest, the staff and students who attend continue to look forward to them.
The success of our online classrooms and prayer and praise events led us to realize that our students wanted to interact with each other personally, not just on an academic level. With that in mind, we began developing and planning online social events. Over Christmas break, we dedicated three days to reaching out to around one hundred students. Faculty and staff played Mario Cart with students and took turns entertaining students with games in online classrooms.
The social events went so well that we decided to make them permanent. In February, our elementary students participated in ICA's first Valentine exchange. It was a huge hit. For our high school students, we held February Facts and Fun, featuring a Jeopardy game built around fun presidential facts and black history trivia.
Our fun was not yet over, however. We followed up with a Mario Madness party, which around 48 students attended. As faculty consistently lost tournaments, we discovered that our students had a definite advantage in the gaming arena.
ICA recently concluded its April Spring Thing, during which students tested their numbers skills, their eye for detail through a Google images scavenger hunt, and their drawing skills with a rousing game of Pictionary.
While we're enthusiastic about our upcoming social events, we're even more excited for the culmination of a year of hard work by faculty and students, as well as our graduation ceremonies in Dallas, Sioux Center, and Orlando. These events are the true shining moments in ICA's 2011-2012 ICA school year.