About Us
COMPASS is a growing network of schools in the communities of British Columbia. At present, we have campuses in Langley and New Westminster and are working towards opening additional campuses in Gibsons and Vancouver. Our students are educated, discipled, and mentored by our teachers and learning assistants as they pursue their courses of study.
Compass Community Learning Centres is a unique alternative, distinct from both government and private schools and homeschooling.
Affordable
As Group 3 Independent, COMPASS Schools do not receive the government funding that other Christian schools rely on. Despite this fact, we plan to keep our fees affordable for families. CCLC’s administrative costs are covered by a combination of volunteer work and donations. Churches who share our vision graciously provide our campus facilities. The tuition fees paid by families fund teacher salaries and curricular resources.
Full-Time
Our office hours of operation are 8:30 am to 4:30 pm on weekdays.
Classes run 8:30am-3:00pm, Monday through Thursday, in Langley, and 8:45am-3:00pm, Monday through Friday, in New West. Before and after-school care may be available at some campuses. Contact our administrative office for more information.
Community-Based
Local churches who share our vision provide CCLC’s learning communities with campus facilities (classrooms, washrooms, activity areas). Each host church has its own student body and establishes its own Parent Advisory Committee (with representatives from its member families) contributing to the unique ethos of each campus. Families from other nearby churches are also invited to apply to register their children as students. We have a high teacher-to-student ratio: each grade-grouped classroom has a limit of 15 students, for a maximum of about 60 students per campus.
Christian
The purpose of true Christian education is to partner with parents and the church in fulfilling the scriptural mandate of Deuteronomy 6:5-7:
“And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”
Our educational model is (non-denominational, Protestant) Christian, without compromise, as per our Articles of Faith. Our faculty will teach and model a biblical perspective. At the same time, students are taught how to think soundly, logically, critically, and wisely, so that they will be, in the true sense of the term, free thinkers, with the courage to speak and live the truth, both graciously and in love, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.
Classical
Education is much more than facts and ideas being poured into an empty vessel; it’s about learning how to think rationally, critically and how to communicate effectively. It’s about developing an accurate and healthy worldview as well as values, character, wisdom, and discernment. It is the mentoring of future leaders, parents, entrepreneurs, employees, and citizens.
CCLC’s Christian classical approach to learning invites young people into the ongoing conversation about what is beautiful, good, and true… and what is not! Classical, liberal arts education was the learning paradigm that prevailed from the medieval era until the early 20th century. It produced leaders, thinkers, and writers like Thomas Aquinas, Galileo Galilei, William Shakespeare, John Donne, Rembrandt van Rijn, Blaise Pascal, Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Friedrich Handel, Isaac Newton, Johann Kepler, Louis Pasteur, Michael Faraday, and C. S. Lewis. And thousands of others!
The classical paradigm recognizes three main learning stages in the development of a child: 1) the grammar stage; 2) the logic stage; and 3) the rhetoric stage. During the grammar stage, young children are sponges ready to soak up information. In the middle years, the logic stage, children grow in their ability to assimilate information and make connections, which leads to questions and discussion of ideas. They are increasingly interested not only in the who, what, where, and when but the why and the how of things! This is the time for them to start developing an understanding of sound reasoning and an ability to recognize faulty argumentation. During the high school years, students move on to the rhetoric stage, during which they continue to grow in true wisdom, while developing their ability to express ideas, both in speech and in writing, accurately, elegantly, and persuasively.
Much has been written on the need and means for re-establishing the classical liberal arts education, beginning with Dorothy Sayers’ 1949 essay on Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning. Our own approach aligns most with that of Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain’s perspective in their book The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Christian Classical Education. Their paradigm advances four key goals which are to “foreground the centrality of Christian formation… celebrate and music and art and respect human embodiment… offer a robust vision of both the language arts and mathematics… [and] offer a path forward for integration – in both thought and life.” (Preface xii)
“Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.” Galileo Galilei
“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Isaac Newton
“Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts” C. S. Lewis
Mission
COMPASS aims to establish a network of school campuses throughout the communities of British Columbia. Our mission is to provide an innovative approach to affordable, full-time, in-person, community-based, biblical-worldview, liberal arts education to children in grades K through 12.
Operations
Our students are instructed and mentored full-time and in-person by our Christian teachers as they pursue their courses of study both individually and in the community.
COMPASS Community Learning Centres is a unique alternative distinct from government schools, private schools, distance learning, and homeschooling.
Governance
CCLC is registered as a BC Not-for-Profit, Charitable Society governed by a Board of Directors.
COMPASS Community Learning Centres is a certified Group 3 Independent School Authority. We currently have two campuses, one at Christ Covenant Church in Langley and one at New West Community Church in New Westminster.