The Coronavirus guidelines basically kept the school shut down for about a month. However, during that time, we were not idle. We were busy working on plans for reopening the school and continuing to train our students. After about a month, the government eased some of the restrictions on institutions of higher learning. While they encouraged schools to use online programs as much as possible, we were allowed to resume classes of fewer than twenty people at a time. Since we are a small school, this meant that we were allowed to have in-person classes. However, there were still concerns about finding childcare for some of our students.
In the end, we decided upon a plan to use pre-recorded videos to finish out our classes from the first term. We were able to do this in large part thanks to a private donation from a member of the Killen (AL) church of Christ. This donation had allowed the school to purchase several Samsung tablets. Dad and I were able to record videos and place them on the tablets for the students to watch. We then delivered the tablets along with the assignments to each of our students. At the end of the week, we swapped out the videos and gave them new assignments. This allowed us to ease back into the program.
On May 19, we were finally able to resume in-person classes. We have had to revise our schedule in order to allow our students to still be finished with the school year in time for graduation (October 31). We are now following a schedule with two classes being taught at a time (one morning and one afternoon). Each pair of courses run for two or three weeks. We have unfortunately had to cancel all of our planned evangelistic campaigns (due to both the lost time in the schedule and the continued travel and assembly restrictions). However, we have set time aside during our personal evangelism course for doing evangelistic outreach.
Since resuming classes, we have completed four courses. Rocco Pierce and Emosi Sailo co-taught a class on the book of Acts. Emosi Sailo taught a course on 1-2 Timothy and Titus. I have taught a course on Christian Evidences and a course on Greek Grammar (which has basically been a review of what we had learned before the coronavirus guidelines shut us down). This week, we will be beginning two new courses. Rocco Pierce will be teaching a class on Bible Geography, and I will be continuing teaching Greek Grammar.
At this point, I must take time to compliment our students! When we first decided to resume in-person classes, we were not sure how many of our students would return. However, on the first day of classes, all of our students were present and accounted for! Since resuming, they have all been enthusiastic in their studies. In fact, the general response has been that they missed being in class, and they have a greater appreciation for the program. We continue to see this new group of students grow closer together. We look forward to the opportunity to continue teaching them.
Each year, we make it our goal to bring in six visiting short course teachers. We believe that it is important that our students have the opportunity to learn from a variety of different teachers. The students always love coming for short courses. Unfortunately, the coronavirus has really impacted our short course program this year. As I mentioned in our last letter, we have already had to cancel our April and May short courses. We had hoped to reschedule them for the end of this school year. However, the continued restrictions, mandatory quarantine times for visitors, and the closing of Fiji Airways has made this impossible. We have already had to cancel most of our short courses. We do have one teacher who will be pre-recording his classes and sending them to us. We have another who is still hoping to come, because he had already purchased his airline tickets. While we have not been able to have short course teachers to visit us this year, we remain hopeful that we will be able to schedule teachers for next year. Please pray that the travel restrictions will be lifted so that we can continue bringing in quality teachers to help educate our students in the word and work of God.
NIGHT PROGRAM
There is one other thing that I need to mention. As previously reported, we had started a night program that was a shortened form of our program that was offered one night a week for Christians who work during the day and cannot attend the full-time program. Unfortunately, we have had to suspend this program over the last few months due to the curfew and travel restrictions. As those restrictions ease up, we will be revisiting the program. We hope to be resuming those classes as soon as possible.
Jason Pierce