Teacher Viola and her class
This is exciting ! And a little bit terrifying ! We are raising $2,500 to buy high school curriculum for the DOORS Mission school. This is equally exciting and terrifying because our boys have finally reached a high school level through the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum ! We are beyond proud of the hard work and ownership they have put into their education and meeting their personal educational goals. The curriculum we need to purchase includes the mandatory subjects, as well as supplemental learning materials for science labs, understanding math concepts, and speaking English. We need to purchase these materials by May 1! If you are interested in partnering with us to invest in the DOORS Mission school, please read below and follow the link to our blog where you can donate online.
From the time we began the DOORS Home in 2012, we started an up-hill battle of trying to educate our boys in the home. They didn’t fit into the Ugandan school system. We had sixteen year olds that didn’t know their alphabet, fifteen year olds that hadn’t been to school in six years, and eleven year olds that were testing back into Primary 1 class (first grade). We homeschooled for a few months, hired teachers to tutor on the weekends, and the boys spent hours each night reading and studying trying to get ahead in class. Yet their dreams of finishing school and going to university were constantly being shot down by other children in the school nicknaming them the “grandpa’s” of the class, or teachers calling them out saying “you’re a man, and you don’t know this answer?” and schools merely passing them in different subjects because they were too old to be in the younger classes they were in, even if they didn’t understand the material.
There were many a night when the boys would come home from school, discouraged and beaten down. Their goals of finishing school appeared to be unreachable, and that led to a lot of rebellious behavior that stemmed from the belief that there was not a good future in front of them.
As a staff we had to address this on two levels: the first being to teach them to trust the Lord that there is a good future in front of them - a future that is better than they can imagine, dream, or ask for !! The second: we began to pray and seek for alternative ways to educate our children.
A friend of the ministry had mentioned the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum to me, and I began to research whether or not that could be a curriculum that our boys could excel in. As I studied the curriculum, I began to believe that our boys could begin this curriculum and be completing more than one grade of school in a year, and that we could use A.C.E. to rehabilitate our boys into the classes that they needed to be in. Our staff began to pray about this, because we didn’t have any contact to A.C.E. or any experience working with them. Later that week, I was at the basketball court of all places, and I made a new friend. A friend who asked what I did, and then introduced himself as a teacher who was trained in this homeschooling curriculum called A.C.E.
God’s never late and never early….. He is perfect in timing and perfect in His ways !
With the help of our new friend, we began with one homeschooling classroom and targeted our older boys who were the furthest behind in school. Boys who had spent over a year and a half in school, yet still couldn’t read or speak English. Within three months, they were all reading and all speaking English. Within one year, most of them had covered at least two grades of school and were leaving elementary school behind. Not only completing these classes levels, but excelling in them!
Now, our homeschooling classroom has grown into the DOORS Mission School - a school that is targeting children within DOORS Ministries that are either within our homes or children of our staff members - that aims to meet each child’s specific educational needs. We have nineteen children within the school that are separated into three classrooms to best ensure and benefit each child’s learning, three teachers, and a school administrator (all who have now been trained and certified in the A.C.E. curriculum). Our school day consists of a morning worship service, the children working within their classrooms, and extracurricular classes each week of dance, football, p.e., or art.
Our teachers are phenomenal. Most of them have left behind their previous jobs as a response to God’s call to work with underprivileged children. They can not just “do their job,” its a huge personal and professional investment working with our children, and they do it with an excellence that comes after seeking God’s heart for his people.
The fruit that the DOORS Mission School is bearing (both physically and spiritually) is a testimony that the soil is good ! A soil built out of a belief that God has a plan for each one of us, a soil consisting of hearts that are humbled by the opportunities before them, and a soil that is focused on making sure that each individual receives the love, empowerment, time, and education that they deserve.
To the right on our blog is where you can make an online contribution via paypal, if you are interested in investing in the DOORS Mission School and helping us purchase the curriculum we need.
