Cumberland Christian School (CCS) is an old established Christian school founded in the first wave of Christian schools in the 1940s. We just celebrated our 60th Anniversary. For many years CCS was a Christian prep school, turning out well prepared graduates, more than 90% of which went on to higher education. Five years ago, after a change in administration, we decided to re-examine our mission and vision. We felt that although what God had called us to do over the years was wonderful, there was something more we were now being led to consider. For years I have been impressed with the needs of children who learn differently, some of whom may have cognitive impairments, some of whom are extraordinarily gifted. So often, these children find themselves in a difficult learning environment because they haven't been received by many Christian schools.



After considerable soul searching, we adopted a new mission: "Reach the Minds, the Hearts, and the Hands of Young People for Christ." But what did this mean? Who were we to reach? With more prayer and preparation, we adopted a new vision-to provide Christian education to all parents in our region, regardless of their children's abilities. And so the challenge was given.

Two years ago, as we were seeking new ways to reach our students, we decided to form our CyberSchool @ CCS. The program is provided for any student in our school who needs it or desires to enroll. We have a special classroom/lab which houses the CyberSchool. Each student has his own computer networked to Switched-On Schoolhouse (SOS). We allow up to nine students to work with each teacher. Both talented and gifted students and special needs children enroll, as well as other students who are excited about using this technology for their learning program. The full-time students are in the CyberSchool for all of their major subjects. They go with the other students for homeroom, lunch, and their special subjects, such as PE, music, and art. This gives them contact with friends in their traditional classes.

Another thing that the CyberSchool enables us to do is to provide for the occasional schedule conflict. Often, when students transfer in from another school (especially in the high school), it may be difficult to duplicate their schedule or meet all of their academic needs. We reserve a few class openings for these "special schedule" students to take a course, as needed in our CyberSchool.

As we have worked to fulfill our vision of reaching children of all abilities, we have found SOS to be a helpful tool for enrichment or extra practice. The teachers may form a custom curriculum just to help a child through a particularly difficult unit. They can assign sections that students can work on in our library, which is also networked to SOS.

One other program, in which we use SOS, is our Summer School. All students who need to take review courses do so with this material. We set up the program in the CyberSchool, and operate with the same pupil/teacher ratios. Another summer program, in which we will use SOS as an assist, is our new "Get an Edge" program. This program is designed specifically for academically challenged students. The idea is to "pre-teach" concepts to these students that they will face in the coming school year, so that, when they come to them, they are not really new. We are blending some sections from the SOS curriculum with individual tutoring to accomplish this.

Finally, in our Discovery Center, we use Switched-On Schoolhouse as a tool for our tutors in our Learning Lab. Here again, we can mix and match with one-on-one tutoring, using the custom curriculum format to isolate specific skills we want to work on.

It has been an enriching experience to extend our reach to more and more students. The SOS program has been a prominent tool making this possible. We feel it further enables us to fulfill our mission to reach minds and hearts for Christ!

Wayne P. Baker
Headmaster
Cumberland Christian School
Vineland, NJ