The NorthStar Narrative
The NorthStar Narrative
NorthStar Academy Core Values
Join us for an uplifting episode as Allen Hester, our Spiritual Life Director, hosts another episode to dive into the essence of our core values and how they influence our decisions and unify our community. You'll hear personal stories, laughter, and heartfelt expressions of gratitude that showcase the dedication of our faculty and staff to fostering both spiritual and academic growth.
Discover why knowing our 'why'—serving an incredible God—is central to our mission and how it enriches our students' lives. In this episode, we also spotlight the vibrant and collaborative culture that sets NorthStar Academy apart from typical online schools. Explore the dynamic student council, diverse clubs, live classes, and mission trips that create a truly engaging community. Parents are not left out, with dedicated communication channels and live meetups enhancing their involvement.
Hi, this is Stephanie Schaefer and you're listening to the North Star Narrative, a podcast from North Star Academy. I want to thank you for joining us. I hope you're encouraged, challenged and motivated by what you learned today.
Speaker 2:Enjoy the story again to the North Star Narrative, one of our favorite items to listen to during the week. I hope it is for you, it is for us here at North Star, and so thanks again for joining us. My name is Alan Hester and I am the Spiritual Life Director here at the school. Once again, we have turned the tables on Ms Schaefer, our school director, and we're going to ask her some questions today and pick her brain a little bit about something that is very important to any organization or ministry, and that is the core values. Ms Schaefer, welcome, we're so glad you're here today. Thanks again.
Speaker 1:I love you getting to host for a while.
Speaker 2:Well, don't get used to it, because we need you back. We need you back in that host chair very, very soon. How's your week going?
Speaker 1:Anything fun, exciting, special happening this week Fun hanging out with my family at home and we're actually having a concrete porch board. We lived in this house, haven't had a porch for a decade and I love being outside spending time with God there, having people over. So we're finally finally doing it. And it rained and he's doing dirt work and it's like mud. I'm like, oh, how is this going to turn out? Is it going to work? Please, god, give him wisdom, help this guy know how to use his machinery. Yeah, so anyway, that's in my mind, because it's right outside my door?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Back in June, we had our in-person graduation celebration weekend there in Mississippi, where our students and their parents, our graduates, our underclassmen, even alumni, show up for this wonderful weekend of celebration, which involves not only our actual formal graduation ceremony but also fun games, activities, worship gatherings, tons of opportunity for just collaboration, connection and coming together. I just wanted to ask you from that weekend, when you left it, what did you walk away with from it? What were some fun moments for you? What did you think about the weekend?
Speaker 1:Oh, it was incredible. As always, I can still see all the parents' faces and students' faces and hear their voices and the excitement. It is just incredible. Excitement that comes because some of these students know each other well but have never met in person, some of them are just meeting for the first time. And to see them immediately start an incredible friendship and just have so much fun To hear the parents give testimony after testimony of how their students have enjoyed, have loved, have thrived, have grown spiritually, academically, been challenged at North Star, and the fact that they would come from all over the world, get on many flights to be able to make it here, and that families would come that aren't even graduating, because they want to hang out, they want to be a part of what North Star is doing.
Speaker 1:It's so motivating and it's just so fun to hang out with them because they're laughing and whether they're hanging out with you, alan, driving you crazy, chasing you down, telling you not to go to Chili's because they want to protect you, or we're having a graduation party and, of course, the ceremony, seeing them give roses to their parents on the way out after the ceremony. So we're not only celebrating the students' achievements but the parents' achievements as well, because they put so much into their kids' education and spiritual life. So, yeah, and then the reception, getting to hang out afterwards and seeing the incredible tables that the parents have set up for their students with all of their memories and you know, the photos, and just cherished time, so just all of it really is an experience that I don't want any of our families to miss.
Speaker 2:Such an amazing weekend and we couldn't not pause for just a second here to thank Ms Carpenter, ms Armstrong Thank you both for the incredible amount of work that you put into making this weekend happen and all of our faculty and staff who participate. It's really a great, great time, and so absolutely I hope all of you can show up at one of these one day and join us. Well, we want to talk today about something that I think is very important for all of us to consider, and that is core values. Now, in every ministry or organization, there is a mission statement, there's a vision statement, and most pause to actually think through and identify core values. So my first question to you is why is that important? Why does that even matter? Why do we need to consider and talk about core?
Speaker 1:values when it comes to our school at North Star, Because core values drives everything we do, how we do things, what we're doing, how do we make decisions, and so it gives us, I think, a framework. But I like to start with the why. And companies, organizations, ministries that have a why and know it and live from that thrive compared to those who don't. You know, we're not our why is not okay. We provide a great education for students. We're a school.
Speaker 1:That's not our why and that's not where our core values come from.
Speaker 1:You know our why and that's not where our core values come from. Our why is because we serve an incredible God, who we talk about all the time on this podcast, that loves us so much and that has freedom for us and that we want to share that with others. We want people to not just come get a great education, which they do, but also be to minister to and challenge, to grow in every area, and so we know our why. I won't go too much into that, but from that our core values come from him and from what he is doing here and we see, and so core values give something for everyone to hang on to, to be unified in to understand, and so when things maybe get a little hazy or a little hard or we can go back to, hey, let's celebrate. So I think it shows us what we can celebrate because as we see those lived out yeah, look at that we can encourage one another. So there's so many reasons that core values are extremely important to the core of what you're doing.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well. Why don't we dive into that? So we have identified or we emphasize kind of three areas here for us at Northstar. Why don't we take these one by one as we talk about them and share a little bit about some of your thoughts on not only why these are core values but how they might be lived out here at Northstar Academy? The first one that we want to talk about is innovation and lifelong learning. Can you speak to that a little?
Speaker 1:bit. Oh yes, I love any time we say those words lifelong learning, and I've grown to love innovation. That was a challenge for me because that means change and when I first came to Northstar I was like, can we put on the brakes? Surely we can stop. Means change, and when I first came to North Star I was like, can we put on the brakes? Surely we can stop the change. Now I love the change. More change the better, because it's just more exciting, even though I know it's really hard and I have to slow down often for everyone else that doesn't like change because it's hard.
Speaker 1:And if you want to hear more about change and transition and how to care for yourself and others in that, in order to innovate, in order to grow, you have to be learning.
Speaker 1:I love that. We do that as a community in so many ways, whether it's professional development that we have for our faculty and staff, which they then are learning and growing, and that trickles down to their students going to conferences and just doing book studies together, like Alan's always challenging us in morning meetings and so just constantly having that mindset oh, I have not arrived. I can continue to learn and grow and find ways to change things, innovate, flourish, and so innovation is very important right now, with the way education is changing and going and technology, all the stuff with AI and things. We can't just say, oh, this isn't really happening, or oh, this isn't really happening, or this isn't good. We're not going to pretend like it's not happening. No, AI is going to change the way jobs are done and we're going to say, yep, we agree with that, and so we're going to make sure our students know how to use, understand AI appropriately, and so that's going to mean more learning for everyone and innovation that's going to mean more learning for everyone and innovation.
Speaker 2:That's wonderful to think about that, because here at Northstar, we don't want your students to come through this program and just check boxes and take courses. We want your students to become and be critical thinkers who are able to process, to think, to innovate. We want them to have a love for learning that sees their potential in the Lord, and so thank you so much for sharing that. And, yeah, innovation, that's where we want to be, and so we're looking forward to continuing to grow in that as we learn all throughout our lives. Well, the second area that we're emphasizing as core values are mission and global-mindedness. Tell us a little bit more about that.
Speaker 1:Well, we all love and know that North Star is a global school, which is so cool, because anytime we're in meetings, we could have several different continents represented and different time zones for everybody. And so you're just that's learning. You're learning constantly. I love that all of our faculty and staff, all of our students, get to learn from one another, and so not only true to our mission do we get to learn how God views things through his lens, from a biblical worldview?
Speaker 1:We're also seeing things, whether it's geographically different cultures, how he's created so many people in the world and so many differences, but how we can all come together and find things to learn from one another. So many people in the world and so many differences, but how we can all come together and find things to learn from one another. And so that really excites me too, whether it's the blessing project we're doing or going on a mission trip together or in our courses, just learning about different cultures and then how to interact with one another. Well, in that, learning is so much fun. And, of course, our mission. I love that we are founded on God's word. I love to say that because we were created for Wycliffe missionaries, and so our mission today is because of who God is, because of his word, what he's done for us. We want to personally invest in each person that we have the opportunity to do and then again that we get to do that globally.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I'm just thinking about the global-minded part in that we have created a new series of Connects this year that is called Culture Cruise and it's sort of just a metaphor or a fun way of approaching it, almost like we're on a cruise ship and we're cruising into different locations where we'll hear from local people who talk about the culture and talk about the life that they live there. Already on the schedule, we have a cruise stop we call it the Port of Call, Lagos, Nigeria, coming up in a few weeks, and then also we have another one in Colombia. We're going to be scheduling these kind of all around the globe, the culture cruise that we cruise into. And that's just one example of many of these opportunities that students have, and I love that.
Speaker 2:I love that a student who may be living in Mississippi today is interacting and classmates with a student who's in Switzerland and another one that is in Zimbabwe and another one in Niger. So I love the global aspect of our school. It's really really amazing, really unique. The missional part we are looking forward this year, if I can just share this we're going to have a global missions week in the spring semester where we hear from people that are purpose and intention to honor the Lord, and also is globally minded. We want to see things from lots of different perspectives. And that brings us to our third area of emphasis, and that is community and collaboration. So what can we expect as we think through this idea of, yeah, community and collaboration as a core value?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so important to live in community because, back to the relationships, god created a relationship, community with him. We see it right from the very beginning of scripture community. You have God, the creator, jesus, his son, the Holy Spirit, all at the very beginning, and we see that continuing and how he gives us community with one another through our local church, through schools like this, like North Shore Academy, through our family, and so he wants us to operate in relationship with one another, and then he wants our community to thrive, and so our team is incredible here, bringing in the lifelong learning of how to continue to create community, how to help it flourish, like that is one of our main goals, and so everything we do is this building community. How can we encourage, for instance, our student council is amazing, and so our welcome committee has been developing each year, and so this year they have some awesome ideas about how they want to immediately welcome people when they come and share with them what is happening at North Star Academy.
Speaker 1:So that is creating community. Hey, we have a place here for you to come and grow and meet maybe your best friend that you'll ever meet in your life. And continue that friendship outside of North Star and do your courses in community learning from one another, and then the collaboration goes right along with that. So I love how we have courses where you learn to collaborate. You know work in teams and we definitely do that in our staff and faculty of how we can challenge one another to grow and come up with new ideas, as we hear other people share their ideas, and so everything we do is coming out of collaboration. There's no one in a silo working by themselves, and so I think an organization thrives when you have all of these core values all of these core values Awesome.
Speaker 2:I'm even thinking about some of our discipleship groups that gather on campus as part of that collaborating and community process of building strong relationships, and so I'm wondering, as you think over these core values, how do they perhaps help set North Star apart? What is it about these that that influences who we are? Because I think some people when they hear online school, they imagine sitting in front of a computer, clicking through things, finish it, check the box done. But North Star is so much bigger and so much more expansive than that. How would you say these core values influence who we are and what we offer, which might set us apart or might be attractive to a family who's looking for a school today?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, definitely attractive. When most people hear about Northstar, they become very intrigued and listen like, oh, you have that, you have that. And then once they become a part, they're like so excited that they did. Because I believe that we do offer a lot of things that a lot of online schools can't offer. Maybe they wish they could, but they don't have the resources. But God's provided an incredible team, like I've said here, and the resources to be able to give students so many different opportunities.
Speaker 1:Every student is not going to want to participate in everything, but we have enough different opportunities that every student can find somewhere where they can grow, whether it's a club on a special hobby or topic they like, or, yeah, bible study or spiritual emphasis events or a live mission trip or an NSA live class where you meet with the students and teachers. But you have even the community of a lot of time with your teacher, one-on-one and maybe through their feedback. So everything we do is to create that relationship, and so I think that does definitely set Northstar apart, because we're so focused on it. It's not just hey, if we have time, we're going to make sure we have some community going on here. No, like we hire people. We spend our money on making sure we have people with the availability and the time to pour into this community, because it is something we're going to do.
Speaker 1:I know some people might have core values. Like we have core values and we are emphasizing them, we are talking about them, we are doing them. So this isn't like hey, look at North Star, I've got something to say over here, we've got this plaque on the wall with our core values. No, like we are intentionally doing these. Right, alan? Like it is something that we're pursuing.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. I heard you speak about how these core values are offered to students. I've heard you speak about how our faculty and staff are pursuing these core values in the way that we are not only personally growing, but how we're able to provide services and a quality education for our students. What about parents? Is there anything for a potential parent or supervisor? What do we have in regards to that, if anything?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have all kinds of communication that we like to keep in front of them, but we also have live meetings, whether it's a parent chapel or a parent just get-together, or parent webinars where they can learn more about a certain topic, like we have live meetups at graduation. Parents have their own special room and time to get to know one another. We have parents that come on and welcome. So when you go through the orientation as a new parent, you have to go in teams and say Hi, I'm Stephanie Schaefer, I'm a new parent of a ninth grader and I'm so glad to be here and other parents will come and say, hey, thank you for reaching out. We're here for you if you've got questions.
Speaker 1:So at all times, 24-7, a parent can write a question in teams and know that they're going to get an answer at some point, depending on the time zone and stuff. But so we have intentionally created spaces for community and we have those that really, really want it. We know sometimes you don't have time for the community Every season in your life is not going to allow that but it is here and we're always open to ideas of how to continue. We're asking our parents what is something you would like to lead, and so now we have parents leading out. It's not just staff, so that's building a culture.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I wish you all could have been live at the graduation gathering that I spoke about earlier, but one of the things that happens during that weekend is there is a gathering of parents of seniors who are graduating and an opportunity is given for them to speak and to talk about their experience with North Star, and I have heard from many of our staff who were present in that gathering that there's just story after story after story of transformation, of how a student came in from an adverse or negative situation. They weren't thriving, they weren't doing well, but then, during their time at North Star, brand new things began to change and happen in their lives, where suddenly a kid who was not really connecting with others is now very active in the community and is now leading. And so we're seeing these amazing stories of transformation and we thank God for that. And so I would just say again to any of you that are considering us we'd love to tell you more of those stories, we'd love to share more of those stories.
Speaker 1:You can see the parents telling the stories themselves on our YouTube channel. So if you go to Northstar Academy one no spaces in that, then, and it's the number one, northstar Academy, and the number one you'll be able to find our graduation videos and parent testimonies, student testimonies. We're adding and so and we'll have Jessica put the link here with the podcast too. So, yeah, don't just take it from me and Alan, you can hear it from parents too, if you're interested in knowing about Northstar and don't already know.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. Well, I definitely encourage everybody to go check that out. Check out our school website. Yeah, connect with us. We want to know you and we want to be part of your journey. If we can be of support and be a blessing to you, Definitely. Well, Ms Schaefer, thank you. This has been awesome to think through our core values. I'll just list them again so that we can begin to think a little deeper about them. The first one was innovation and lifelong learning. The second was mission and global mindedness, and the third was community and collaboration Core values that we embrace here at North Star and are intentionally pursuing these as we move forward. So it's exciting. It's an exciting time to be part of this school and an exciting time to see how God is going to use these as we live out the how and the why behind what we're doing here at Northstar. So thanks for talking with us today and agreeing to get on the other side of the mic to answer a few of these questions here today. Any final thoughts that you have for us today?
Speaker 1:to answer a few of these questions here today. Any final thoughts that you have for us today? Yeah, just thank you, alan, so much for just taking time to talk with me about this and to intentionally pursue. You're doing that so well in so many ways at Northstar and so I'm so thankful God has brought you here and kept you here for this season. And yeah, so, parents, if you're already with us, you can share these podcasts to your friends that need schooling. You can go on and share our YouTube channel so they can see the parent testimonies. So share, share these podcasts, like Alan said, last one on transition. If you know somebody that would like to speak, share that with us as well. We would love to share people's stories and if you've got a story, let us know. But share these podcasts because there's so many different ones and each guest that comes on here they have such good nuggets of wisdom, they have some practical advice, they have some great encouragement, so don't forget to share.
Speaker 2:Thanks again. It's going to be a great year here at North star and we'd love for you to be part of it. Join us in this exciting adventure and we look forward to our next podcast, having Ms Schaefer back in the chair interviewing special guests. And so please do subscribe, where you can, to our podcast on whatever platform you choose to listen to these on. And, yeah, keep listening, keep joining us and give us some feedback on what you hear and what you experience and any ideas that you may have. Thanks again, everybody, for tuning in this week. We appreciate you and we are asking God to help us to live boldly these core values that he's placed before us this year. Thanks everybody, have a good one. Bye, everybody.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for listening today. If you have any questions for our guest or would like information about Northstar, please email us. At podcast at nsaschool, we love having guests on our show and getting to hear their stories. If you have anyone in mind that you think would be a great guest to feature, please email us and let us know. And don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss out on upcoming stories.