1. Whatever their aptitudes or talents, all students have been created in God’s image and must not only be treated with the dignity that is inherently theirs but given the chance to exercise their unique gifts as well. Therefore, Westminster must honor the divinely ordained abilities of all students and offer a program that provides students with diverse skills and interests an opportunity to thrive.

2. Education must be more than the dissemination of information. Information is important; students must grasp the “Who?”, “When?”, “What?”, and “Where?” if they are to discover their place in God’s world. But this is a springboard to a personal understanding of how the information connects with them and how they can use it to make a difference in this world.

3. Students must recognize that while all knowledge and wisdom come from God, Christians do not have a monopoly on truth. Therefore, it is appropriate and fitting that students explore how God has used Christians and non-Christians alike to reveal how He has shaped the world and has acted to influence the lives of men and women throughout the ages.

We realize Westminster is not the educational norm—our school exists to offer Christian families a distinctively Christian education for their children. This presents our faculty with the unique opportunity to help define what Christian education should look like.

Center for Teaching and Learning

Through the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), we communicate a consistent message of our beliefs about education so that the entire faculty understands both what effective instruction looks like and how best to facilitate student achievement. CTL programs include a two-pronged induction program, a mentoring program, an evaluation program, and an ongoing professional development program.

Educators flourish when they engage in work that propels them to create and care for the places God has placed them and commission others to continue that good work that has been started.

To that end, the CTL ensures Westminster teachers have the resources and training to elevate the essentials (coherent curricula, straightforward, traditional literacy practices, and lessons built around effective elements of good teaching) and boldly innovate wherever possible.

Westminster University

Westminster University exists to enhance student learning by creating a sustainable, integrated culture of learning among faculty that enables all teachers to better fulfill Westminster’s mission to help students discover, embrace, and integrate a biblical view of the world into every area of their life. It does so by offering courses for faculty to engage in throughout the year that address the following priorities:

• All teachers should have a solid understanding of basic Reformed doctrine and how to teach from a Reformed perspective.
• All teachers should embrace a mindset of continual improvement and be aware of current thinking concerning pedagogy and methodology.
• All teachers need to understand and embrace the wisdom expressed in such foundational documents as the Template for Literacy, the Philosophy of Curriculum, and the Principles of Pedagogy.