Brain Friendly Resources for Christian Educators
A place where Christian educators can explore educational research from a Christian Perspective
Come see me at the League of Christian Schools Educators Conference in Daytona Beach!
November 14 and 15, 2024 at the Ocean Center!
I will be speaking on Neuroeducational issues for Preschool teachers!
Virtual options available. Click on the LCS Logo for more info.
What is Lightbearer Learning?
Lightbearer learning is a place where Christian educators can explore material related to trends in educational research from a Christian perspective.
With Lightbearer Learning, I can share what has been most useful for me from the fields of neuroeducational and neurotheological research, as well as from other educational topics relevant to today’s students. I will also make available my own thoughts, curriculum pieces and ready made Professional Development options that can be used in your own setting.
As a Christian educator coming from a field that relies on Evidence Based Practice, I became quite frustrated with the lack of Christian resources that truly follow the findings of educational research especially in the areas that traditional academics and Bible teaching may not always address.
I noticed that the students in my classroom seemed to be developing differently from those in previous generations with an increase in learning disabilities, learning differences, ADHD, ASD, anxiety and other social emotional disturbances. Sadly, the current research supports my observations and while some secular schools are making changes to reflect the research, many Christian schools are slower to do so. This change in educational practice has become even more imperative as our students try to make up ground that may have been lost during the Covid pandemic.
Of particular interest to me is the field of neuroeducation, which is producing similar findings as those being developed in the emerging field of neurotheology. As Christian educators we can use both to fuel our classroom pedagogies for the richest learning experiences for our students.
Educational research addresses a wide variety of topics beyond academics that we need to be aware of and utilize within the Christian school environment. In my opinion, pedagogies related to such things as Brain Friendly Teaching, Social Emotional Learning (SEL), the role of play in learning, positive behavior supports, and Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning, can be best explored within the Christian school environment. We can pair what research discovers with the guidance provided by God’s Word to take these findings to a whole other level. We can use research, not only to best help our students become independent learners, but to also help them discover who God intends for them to be. For example, when doing SEL exercises we do them from the perspective of spiritual formation for a deeper, more meaningful experience than would be found in a secular setting.
Who am I?
My name is Rayanne Woodruff and I am currently serving as the neuroeducational specialist for Excel Christian Academy (ECA) in Lakeland, FL. I am a licensed speech-language pathologist with 30+ years experience as a therapist and educator. I am a consecrated Lutheran deaconess with chaplaincy training which allows me to address the emotional and spiritual needs of my students. My current role involves facilitating social emotional learning, brain friendly practices, pragmatic language and executive functioning at ECA. I have implemented a PlayLab at my school and provide speech, language, and cognitive therapies with a wide variety of diverse students. I am currently working on my doctorate in educational leadership with a focus in special education.
About Our Student Support Services at Excel Christian Academy
Excel Christian Academy is a K4 through 12th grade private school in Lakeland Florida. As a private school we have the freedom to create and practice a reformed model of education that is brain friendly, research based, student centered, and strives for true educational equity.
Our student support services are different from the average special education program as we do not operate from a medical model of disability. We do not just serve those in the margins, we work to eliminate the margins. Our school culture prioritizes an inclusive mindset and we encourage and support our teachers to utilize a universal design for learning in the classroom. This model of education normalizes the use of accommodations, provides student choice, differentiates according to student needs, and facilitates student agency.
Excel continues to grow our student body each year and to better meet the needs of our diverse student body we partner with the Contentment Foundation (contentment.org) to enhance our social emotional learning curriculum, and Propel your Future to provide afterschool programming including therapies and tutoring.
The difficulty, however, in providing a brain friendly educational model is that we need to cap our class sizes. This limits our income as an organization so we do need to rely on grants and private giving to sustain our quality of service. I am deeply grateful to be part of a Diaconal community that understands the needs for systemic change and educational equity as we strive to eliminate the achievement and behavior gaps in our country. I encourage all visitors to my website to prayerfully consider giving to our students support services as we continue to expand and grow. I look forward to the day when the achievement gap, the behavior gap and the school to prison pipeline are all relegated to history.