The First Week of Class Is Under The Belts!

Greeting from beautiful Kaikoura!

This past week, September 9th -13th, the students had their first week in the classroom!

The upstairs classroom at The Old Convent
was used by the nuns & the priest
 to hold services.

Here at CCSP, classes are taught in one week or two week long blocks. Students have 3 hours of class in the morning and 2 hours of class in the evening, Monday through Friday. This is a new format for most students, but it invites them to jump into the material straight away and become active in their class environment.

The first class is called Sustainable Community Development. This week long class was taught by the incredible Michael Duncan aka Mick. Currently, Mick is the pastor at Manurewa Baptist Church in South Auckland. In addition, he is a visiting lecturer at a number of colleges in NZ and Australia. His particular passion continues to be as a speaker, calling people and groups to be all that which they were created to be and do.  

Mick is truly a gifted speaker and he has a unique way of engaging people through the art of storytelling. The students were immediately drawn into the stories about him and his family having lived and served in the slums of Manilla, Philippines for 10 years.

Some of the student's reactions to the class were:

"Eye-opening!" - Jacob Pelkey 

"Great integration between students and professor." - Leah Werkhoven

"Thought provoking and challenging. A blessing to have a teacher with great wisdom for our first week of classes." - Diane Rodriguez

"I found Mick's class to be challenging and insightful, and a good start to our semester." - Rebekah Benson

"Mick was great because he shared all sorts of opinions and values/ideas that he holds, and it was really evident that he had years of experience and reflection backing them." - Rob Wheatley

*If you want to learn more about the experiences of Mick Duncan, check out one of his books Costly Mission: Following Christ into The Slums.


Into the future!
This coming week is called appropriately named, "Reading Week." Students are responsible for reading the texts in preparation for ALL of their courses. In addition to the HEAPS of reading and preparing that the students will be doing, an enriching course about the indigenous Maori language will be taught in the evenings by a local Maori resident, Brett Cowan. The course "Te Reo Maori" is sure to be a great way for students to interact with and learn from the Maori language!

*If you want more info about CCSP or you are interested in studying abroad, check out our website: http://www.creationcsp.org/


Cheers,


Student Life Coordinator (SLC) - Adam