The Seed Tree Group

I’ll never tire of Max stories.

A couple weeks ago, I was speaking in chapel at Vail Christian High School and I told Max’s story—a story about grit and growth mindset and having a vision, then working harder than anyone else to achieve it.

After chapel, a young lady came up and explained that her own dream is to attend the The Culinary Institute of America and go on to work at The Alinea Group just like Max did.

I reached out to Max to connect the two of them, and Max sent back a picture of himself and Chef Achatz blowing the famous Alinea balloons underneath “The Bean.”

So often we focus on frustrations or the problems with certain generations, but when I see students like Max and I meet students like the young lady in the audience, I realize that the future is filled with people who are chasing their dreams with the determination and follow through to see them happen.

And that inspires me.

Wait, wait, wait - forest bathing and entrepreneurship?

I agree, it it is strange (and even the phrase “forest bathing” was wild to me when I first heard it) but here’s the why:

We don’t just teach entrepreneurship at Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy—we teach the entrepreneurial mindset, which means we help students radically transform through the renewing of their minds (Romans 12:2).

This also means we don’t teach the entrepreneurial mindset in a vacuum—we teach it in our culinary arts classes, in our financial literacy classes, in our horticulture classes, in our marketing and sales classes, and it is woven throughout much of our programming at the school (even our elementary students are walking through this in meaningful ways).

We decided to offer an alternative to the traditional health class by creating “elevated wellness” which harnesses the power of the entrepreneurial mindset and helps students understand the need to live lives of balance and purpose—not to give in to the unceasing demands of hustle culture.

As part of this class, we constantly look for ways to engage our students. Thanks to the efforts of Kate Caccamo, Andrew Ivanovics, and Erin Barnhill, our students benefit in many ways—including goat yoga and now, forest bathing, which is a practice of connecting with God and nature by immersing all of your senses in the experience of the forest.

When we take time to ground ourselves in the beauty of God’s creation, we come back refreshed and ready for healthy growth.

The future of education is bright indeed!