The California Christian Educator
Tips, tricks, and teaching methods for the people God put in the classroom
“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” — Proverbs 22:6
Why a newsletter, and why now
I spend my weeks driving between Christian schools up and down California, and I keep hearing the same thing in different teachers' lounges: “I wish somebody had told me that.” A phonics trick that saved a first-grade year. A tax deduction nobody mentioned. A new law with a school's name written all over it. This newsletter is my attempt to be that somebody, once a month, on the first.
It will always be short and it will always be practical. Every issue carries one teaching method you can try on Monday, a handful of tips and tricks, and a plain-English watch on the laws and dollars that touch Christian schools. This first issue adds something I have been formulating over the last year: the Ten Commandments of AI for a Christian classroom.
If something here helps, forward it to the teacher down the hall. If you have a tip of your own, send it in. The best material in this newsletter will come from you.
The Ten Commandments of AI for the Christian Classroom
Artificial intelligence is already in your students' pockets and, if we are honest, in some of our lesson plans. The question is no longer whether to use it but how to use it without surrendering the things a Christian school exists to protect: truth, character, and the teacher's calling. Tape these to the wall.
- Thou shalt remain the teacher. AI assists. It does not replace the person God placed in the room.
- Thou shalt not bear false witness with it. Check every fact, quote, date, and verse before it reaches a student or a parent. It will be confidently wrong.
- Thou shalt guard thy students' names. Never type a child's name, grade, diagnosis, or family detail into a tool you do not control.
- Thou shalt read what it writes before thou sendest it. Every word that leaves under your name is yours.
- Thou shalt teach students to think first and ask second. The blank page comes before the prompt. Struggle is where learning lives.
- Thou shalt be honest about its use. Set a class policy, tell parents, and keep the policy yourself.
- Thou shalt not let it grade the heart. Use it for rubrics and drafts, never to judge a child's effort or character.
- Thou shalt test it against Scripture and good sense. It has no worldview. You do. You are the filter.
- Thou shalt keep the parent in the loop. If AI touches homework, the family should know what, where, and why.
- Thou shalt use it to buy back time for people. The hour it saves belongs to a student, not to another screen.
Three ways the new federal law reaches your school, and what to do about each
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act became law on July 4, 2025. Most of the coverage was about income taxes. Buried in it are three provisions written, more or less, with Christian schools in mind. Here is what each one does, what California has and has not done, and the one move a school can make this month.
1. A $1,700 federal credit for scholarship donations, starting in 2027
Beginning January 1, 2027, any taxpayer can give up to $1,700 a year to a Scholarship Granting Organization and get the full amount back as a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit. Not a deduction. A credit. The organization then awards scholarships to K–12 students from families earning up to 300 percent of the area median income, which covers most of the families in most of our schools. Unused credit carries forward five years.
- Credit
- Up to $1,700 per taxpayer, per year
- Starts
- Gifts made on or after Jan. 1, 2027
- States opted in
- 31 as of this summer
- California
- No decision as of press time
The catch: a state has to opt in, and California has not. Sacramento's deadline to make an advance election for 2027 is January 1, 2027, with its list of approved scholarship organizations due February 15. The Governor's office has declined to comment. Nearly six million California children would qualify, more than any other state. If the state stays out, California donors can still claim the credit by giving to a scholarship organization in a participating state, but that money educates children in Nevada or Texas, not in your school.
Put it in front of your families. One paragraph in the parent newsletter, one line from the pulpit at your supporting church, and a form letter to the Governor's office signed by your board. The Assembly already has a resolution (ACR 229) urging the Governor to opt in. Schools asking in their own voice, with their own numbers, is what moves a decision like this. Then start talking with your association about which organization would serve as the scholarship granting organization for your region, so you are ready on day one if California says yes.
2. 529 plans now pay for curriculum, tutoring, and testing, up to $20,000 a year
Starting with 2026, a family's 529 college savings plan can be used for $20,000 a year of K–12 expenses, double the old limit. The list of what counts grew too. It now includes tuition, curriculum materials and textbooks, online instructional materials, tutoring outside the home, standardized test and AP fees, dual-enrollment courses, and educational therapies for students with disabilities. For a family that has been saving for college, that is the textbook bill and the tutoring bill handled with tax-free growth.
The California catch: the state has never conformed to the federal K–12 rules. On a California return, the earnings portion of a K–12 withdrawal is taxed as income plus an additional 2.5 percent tax. The federal benefit is real and the state penalty is real. Families should run the numbers with a tax preparer before they withdraw.
Add one sentence to your re-enrollment packet: “Many families now use 529 plan funds for tuition, curriculum, and tutoring. Ask your tax preparer whether it fits your situation.” You are not giving tax advice. You are making sure nobody finds out in April that they could have done it in January.
3. Teachers can finally deduct what they actually spend
For 2026, the familiar above-the-line educator deduction rises to $350. The bigger change is new: teachers who itemize can now deduct all of their unreimbursed classroom expenses on top of that, with no dollar cap and no 2-percent-of-income floor. Books, supplies, software, a classroom laptop, professional development, and for the first time athletic supplies for PE and coaching. It applies to K–12 teachers, aides, counselors, and principals working at least 900 hours in the school year, and it includes private Christian schools.
Start the shoebox now. Every receipt from January 1, 2026 forward goes in an envelope or a phone folder, with a note of what it was for. Most teachers will still take the standard deduction, and the $350 is theirs either way. But a teacher with a mortgage who is close to itemizing may find that a year of classroom spending tips the balance. You cannot claim what you did not keep.
Nothing here is tax or legal advice. The newsletter reports what the law says; your tax preparer applies it to you. Sources: IRS, “One Big Beautiful Bill provisions,” scholarship credit section 70411; Treasury temporary and proposed regulations under §25F, released October 1, 2026 (T.D. 10057, REG-117199-25); Revenue Procedure 2026-6 on state advance elections; The 74, July 28, 2026, on California's status; ScholarShare 529 and the Franchise Tax Board on California's non-conformity; IRS educator expense guidance for tax year 2026.
The three-question warm-up
The most reliable finding in learning research over the last twenty years is also the cheapest to use: pulling an idea back out of memory strengthens it far more than reading it again. Teachers call it retrieval practice. Students call it “that thing we do at the start.” It takes four minutes and no materials.
- Three questions on the board before they sit down. One from yesterday, one from last week, one from last month. Short answers. No notes open.
- Pencil on paper, four minutes, silent. Guessing is allowed and expected. The strain of trying to remember is the point.
- Check it together, out loud, no grade. Students mark their own. You watch which question stumped the room; that is tomorrow's two-minute reteach.
- Rotate what you ask. Keep a running list of past questions and cycle the old ones back in every few weeks. Forgetting and recovering is what makes it stick.
Kindergarten through second: do it out loud or on whiteboards: “Show me the sound for sh. What did we read about yesterday? Count by fives to fifty.” High school: let the third question be the hard one from a month ago that half the class missed on the test. They will groan. They will also remember it in May.
Five for October
- The 2-by-10. Pick the student who wears you out. Two minutes of conversation a day, ten school days running, about anything but school. By day ten the classroom is different. Old idea, still works.
- One sentence to leave. End every lesson with each student writing one sentence that says what today was about. Collect them. You will know in thirty seconds who got it, and you will have the first line of tomorrow's warm-up.
- Name what you want. “Voices off, eyes here” works better than “Stop talking.” Children do the last thing they heard, so make the last thing the behavior you are after.
- The three-line parent email. One true good thing. The concern, in one sentence, with no adjectives. The ask, with a date. Parents read three lines; they do not read ten.
- The gratitude wall. A bulletin board, a stack of index cards, one card per student per day from November 1 to Thanksgiving: “I am thankful for…” Read the whole wall aloud on the last day before Thanksgiving break. Keep the cards. Hand them back at graduation.