OnSite Report

Jackson Christian School, January 29-30, 2009

Jackson Onsite Program – Great Success!!

Since 2000 we’ve conducted successful Onsite Programs with the Jackson Area Home Educators. In fact, JAHE hosted one of our three pilot programs that launched a statewide effort that has now trained thousands of students and collaborated with dozens of schools and home school groups throughout Michigan.

This year, for the first time, we were extremely pleased to be joined by Jackson Christian School and Pioneers Home School Co-op for a two-day event at Grace Church involving fifty students. Although there were a couple of SSI alumni in the crowd, most of the students were experiencing SSI for the very first time. As usual, many of them had initial expectations that were not very positive. Here’s what a few of the Jackson Christian students had to say in evaluating their experience.

• "My experience at SSI was a great one, but let me tell you, I was not expecting it to be."
• "I had a lot more fun than I had planned for."
• "Going into SSI, I was completely and utterly nervous and unresponsive. SSI was a lot different than I thought it would be. This was actually really fun, and I’d like to do it again."
• "I was not overwhelmed with excitement. Little did I know that I would soon experience the funniest time that I have ever had with an event related to school."
• "People thought that this would be a really boring trip and that we wouldn’t learn anything. Many of those people were proved wrong and ended up really enjoying this experience."

Tim Barsuhn the JCHS Government teacher wrote, “The students genuinely enjoyed and learned a lot from participating in SSI. We look forward to working with you in the future.”

As you can imagine, we were extremely blessed by the responses, and hope to make this an annual event.

Special thanks are due to the following people.

1. All of our VIP’s, including two Circuit Court Judges, two law enforcement officials, a Jackson County Commissioner, the Jackson County Prosecutor, some Pastors and a Spring Arbor University Professor. Your generous gift of time really helped SSI be a realistic experience and tremendous learning opportunity for all of the students.

2. Our volunteers really went the extra mile to help make everything run smooth. Jim Dolson, Tim Barsuhn, Aaron Metzcar and Lori Davis from Jackson Christian all contributed greatly along with Pastor Ed Utz and Patti Sailor from Pioneers and JAHE. We simply could not have done it without you!

3. We are deeply indebted to our event underwriters for their generous support. A couple of years ago, Gerry and Neita Gerweck (should not link, site is not up) agreed to help bring SSI to Jackson Christian and their lead gift really helped make it all possible. In addition, it is a great honor to have the financial support of Spring Arbor University. We are hoping that SAU might host our next Onsite in Jackson and we’ll be talking about that soon.

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