Mondays with Mike: Welcome Back to PCA
What We’re Building Together
PCA Families,
Welcome to the 2026–27 school year!
To our returning families, I hope this summer has brought rest, meaningful time together, and space to enjoy God’s gifts. To those joining PCA for the first time, we are grateful you are here. You are becoming part of a community drawn from many towns, churches, backgrounds, and stories—but gathered around a shared hope for our children.
This week’s Mondays with Mike begins a four-part welcome-back series.
In this opening episode, I reflect on the importance of meaningful beginnings, PCA’s commitment to educating the whole person, and the responsibility leadership carries to ensure that our daily practices increasingly reflect what we say we believe.
Listen to “Welcome Back: What We’re Building Together”
Key Takeaways
- We are preparing to begin again
Teachers and staff will soon return to campus, classrooms will take shape, and our educators will begin preparing and praying for the students entrusted to their care.
Students will arrive with excitement, questions, hopes, and perhaps some nervousness. A meaningful beginning asks something of all of us. - PCA is committed to forming the whole person
We want students to know important things, develop real skills, ask good questions, think carefully, communicate clearly, persist through difficulty, and receive correction. We also want them to know that they are made in the image of God, to follow Jesus, seek truth with biblical integrity, pursue excellence with humility, and use their gifts for God’s glory and the good of others. - We are grateful—and we are listening
Families affirmed much that is good at PCA: Christian formation, caring teachers and coaches, strong relationships, meaningful opportunities, and a community in which many students are known and encouraged. You also asked us to grow in academic strength and consistency, course delivery, communication, classroom expectations, and leadership follow-through. - There is much for which we should give thanks—and there is work we must do.
That work begins with leadership
As Head of School, I am responsible for how our educational commitments translate to real life. That includes conveying clear, coherent expectations, building and sustaining strong support and coaching for teachers, paying closer attention to patterns across classrooms, and following through appropriately when the student or family experience falls short of our commitments.
Work is already underway to clarify our philosophy of teaching and learning, strengthen the coherence of what students learn from year to year, and establish a schoolwide focus on writing as a way to think, reason, revise, and communicate more clearly.
Over the next three Mondays, Nate Paul will join me for conversations centered on three questions:
- What should strong teaching and learning actually look like at PCA?
- What did our families tell us—especially in the difficult parts of the spring survey—and what responsibility are we accepting?
- What should students and families expect to notice during the coming school year?
I hope you will listen or read as you are able and join us in praying for our students, teachers, staff members, and families as we prepare to begin again.
Grateful to begin this year with you,
Mike Runey
Head of School
Portsmouth Christian Academy
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