10:10 Curriculum

The 10:10 curriculum is unique to Emmanuel.

It is our model for our broad curriculum - a curriculum designed to nurture the whole student: “heart … soul … strength and … mind” in order to equip them to “live life in all its fullness” (Luke 10:27 and John 10:10).

The curriculum is based on 5 points:

  1. As a Christ-following school, we serve a God who loves every aspect of each of us. The Bible has various ways of expressing this truth. One of the most succinct and important, is found when Jesus describes our whole selves in terms of “all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind”(Luke 10:27) and we use this ‘heart, soul, strength, mind’ as a starting point for our understanding of what the whole person is.

    If God loves that whole person, we feel we are called to nurture the whole person: ‘heart (emotional and social intelligence) and soul (spiritual artistic intelligences) and strength (including having a healthy lifestyle) and mind (what might be called the academic intelligences.) Further, God does not seem to see any of these four aspects of the person as being more important than any other.  He sees them all as valuable, so we too value each equally.

  2. We recognise that one of Jesus’ ways of explaining his core purpose was to say that: “I have come that they might have life in all its fullness”.     

    We love Spurgeon’s definition of this life as a life which is founded in Christ and which is therefore “bright and vehement, like the fire upon the blacksmith’s forge when the bellows are in full blast. Christ has come that His people may have life in all its fullness!”  Therefore, we seek to equip our students to fully grasp that life.

  3. As a Christ-centred school, we recognise that one of the keys to that enjoying this “bright and vehement” life in all its fullness is to choose to use the freedom that God gives us to “serve one another humbly in love”(Gal 5:13). In this, we recognise a truth which has been identified by philosophers and psychologists for millennia: that the “ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve” (Albert Schweitzer), hence our motto, “to know, to serve”.
  4. As a Christ-following school we also love the fact that God gives us the free gift of his Holy Spirit who shows us that another key to that life in all its fullness lies in His fruits: in “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,  gentleness and self-control” (Galations 5:22 and 23).
  5. Meanwhile, as an Australian School, we embrace the ideals of the Melbourne Declaration, and the desire to teach “equity and excellence” and help “young Australians become: – successful learners – confident and creative individuals – active and informed citizens”.  Indeed, we feel these completely accord with our Christ-centred vision to be a provider of:

    “Christian education of the highest quality,” through which “we aspire to:
    -  enable our students to develop the character, skills, courage and desire to bring about change for the good
    - grow leaders with a global vision, who take Christ into their everyday life
    - change the world, one student at a time”

These five points have led us to construct a curriculum which nurtures the whole person, which encourages our students to become “successful learners – confident and creative individuals – active and informed citizens,” and which reflects the fruits of the Spirit.

The four major learning areas are bound together and inter-fused with our fifth, and most important learning area, our Compass and Spiritual learning, which enables all learning to happen with love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

In practice, this does not always mean that everything we do falls into one of these boxes. Often one subject will fall into several areas – for example, history is an ‘academic’ subject, but the study of historical events involves ethical and empathetic responses, which might fall more naturally into Compass learning and even spiritual and pastoral learning. However, the aim of this framework is not to constrain learning; rather it is to ensure that we offer a genuinely balance broad curriculum.

We believe that is the best grounding for living life in all its fullness and for enabling our students to become: successful learners – confident and creative individuals – active and informed citizens.