By Michael Worrell
Staff Writer
The Worldview Initiative will soon be fielding another team for its ministries.
The Office of Admissions and the Department of Worldview Formation are partnering to build a new team geared toward elementary students. Pat Wesolowski, homeschool specialist in the office of admissions, and Jason Glen, director of worldview formation, are putting the program together.
The idea grew out of Wesolowski’s work with younger children when she was connecting homeschool communities with Bryan College starting in 2002. She was officially hired this summer as homeschool specialist, and together with Glen, is currently building the team.
Like the current worldview team, the elementary team will focus on off-campus events, and will accompany the high school team when elementary students will be present. It was conceived as a way to reach homeschool communities, which have a broad age group that is not necessarily separated. Homeshool families go to events together, which means that younger children would either have to be passed off to someone else or entertained by someone, according to Glen.
The elementary team solves that. While the high school team is presenting their curriculum, the elementary team will be able to have a program for the younger children that lets them be engaged as well, making it easier to reach the families. The elementary program will be a supplement to the current worldview team, and will accompany them to homeschool events that will have elementary students. It is not an outreach to elementary schools, he continued.
The curriculum is currently being adapted from Wesolowski’s original curriculum. Cameron Brock, logistics intern in the department of worldview formation and Annie Prescott, a member of the Worldview initiative team, plan to have it updated and competed around the end of the fall semester.
Some of the topics it will cover include “What does it mean to be made in the image of God? How do I engage the culture?” says Brock. It will also cover the three main worldviews, basic logic, and social media from a Christian perspective. Brock says that they are making progress, and that “the only major roadblocks are time constraints.”
The Worldview Initiative plans to begin the application process in the fall, and begin sending members out in the spring. The elementary team will be looking for freshmen and sophomores to lead small groups. All members will receive a small scholarship.
