Although she has lived in four states and numerous cities, Rebecca Hawley’s heart has always been in Ann Arbor. After graduating from an Oklahoma high school, she returned for her undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. There, she met Patrick who, after a few years, became her husband. Two more states and several moves later, Rebecca currently lives in Brighton, enjoying time with her four adult children and two (soon-to-be three) grandchildren.   

In the early 1990s, Rebecca earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Social Studies with a Teaching Certification from U of M and worked at Lincoln High School. Then, she became a home educator, serving in two home school co-operative groups for many years and pursing her Master’s Degree in Teaching Composition and Rhetoric along the way. In addition, she taught at the Writing Center at U of M Flint and runs her own private writing tutoring business. She has worked with teens in several performance ministries as well, starting and leading drama and worship dance groups. With her children building their own families, Rebecca is excited to return to the classroom full-time and contribute to building the AACS high school.

When Rebecca first embarked on her teaching career, she had determined that the goal of education should be developing critical thinking skills. After 28 years of teaching, she firmly holds to that belief and, as a believer, incorporates using a Biblical worldview to critically evaluate texts. Within that framework, Rebecca enjoys working with students and building their confidence in their literary analysis and writing skills.

In her free time, Rebecca does many crafts including painting, knitting, and baking. This year, she’s made three wedding cakes, dozens of festive cookies, and numerous cupcakes. She’s sure to bring a few treats in for AACS faculty and students over this coming year! Also, be prepared for enthusiastic discussions about college football; she bleeds Maize and Blue!

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AACS is thrilled to welcome Coach Isaac London to our community. Isaac has over 30 years of coaching experience, with 25 years coaching volleyball specifically. 

Coach London started as a middle school coach while completing his Bachelor’s Degree in Education at Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina. After graduating he went on to become Head Volleyball Coach at C.A. Johnson High School in South Carolina. Ministry led Coach London back to Michigan where he continued his career as an educator and coach. Coach London has experience with beginner, middle school, high school, and collegiate level players, coaching for a plethora of schools and club teams. 

Mr. London holds a Master’s Degree in Educational Leadership and is currently a doctoral candidate in Educational Leadership with an emphasis in Athletic Business Management. Coach London is also a certified personal trainer, specializing in training young athletes participating in volleyball, track, football, basketball and rugby. Coach London is a loving family man who has dedicated his personal and professional life to improving the lives of young people.

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Dane Peterson, a talented musician who works with Cru campus ministry at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, will be teaching a year-long music course combining instruments and vocals. The course will also serve as the basis of our praise team for chapel. Dane has a Bachelor of Music Performance, Saxophone from Long Beach State University, CA and has taken graduate choral conducting courses at Eastern Michigan University and missions-oriented courses at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, IL.

The first time I remember being moved by the Holy Spirit was sitting in church in Spain as a child.  The men were singing, “Sing hallelujah to the Lord”, echoed by the women with a counter-melody, “Sing hallelujah to the Lord”, all in Catalan.  This and many other experiences grew in me a reverential fear of God, an appreciation of His Holiness and mighty works among the nations, and a desire to partake in worshiping the King of Kings with music and my whole life.  

As an adult, God has taken me and my family to places like South Asia to share His love and greatness.  I currently have the opportunity to serve South Asian American students at the University of Michigan with Cru.  I am also excited to serve Christ with the staff and high school students of AACS this coming year as a music performance teacher.   I hope we also get to draw near to God in worship as we develop musical skills and grow a heart of service. 

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Born in Utah and raised in Ohio, Brett Kilgore is grateful to call Michigan home and will soon be joining the high school teaching team. He first moved to Ann Arbor to pursue his bachelors degree in Economics from the University of Michigan. It was there he met his wife, Meghan. After graduating, the two spent the early years of their marriage in Seattle, WA, where Brett did marketing work for a Christian radio station and volunteered as a junior high school football coach. The coaching experience was enough to convince him to return to school and become a teacher. He made his way back to Ann Arbor to earn his masters degree in Educational Studies in 2015 and never left.

Since then, Brett has worked seven years at Community High School in the AAPS, teaching Economics, Geometry, and Forum. He prizes the opportunities smaller schools provide teachers to deepen connections with students and families, and he is thrilled to join the AACS community to launch a Christian high school right here in Ann Arbor. The school was very impressed with the strong and consistent comments from Brett’s references about his faith, character, maturity, and commitment to biblical values being instilled in teens.

The Kilgores – Brett, Meghan, and their two children – are members of Knox Presbyterian Church. As a family, they love spending time together outdoors, traveling, and discovering delicious cuisine wherever they go.

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With over 25 years of experience guiding high school students and their families through the college selection and admission process, John Boshoven will be working with our new high school as a consultant as we launch next year. Widely considered an exceptional college counselor, John recently retired from Ann Arbor Public Schools in that capacity, but still stays involved with the district in other roles while also maintaining his personal business of providing private consultation to families on the college admission process.

In his consultant role with AACS, he will provide several workshops during the course of the year to our 9th grade students and parents in order to provide some early education about college admission. In addition, John will provide some times during the year for more individualized conversations with families. Lastly, he will work with the high school staff to offer suggestions and ideas to ensure we have a high school that is not only competitive for college acceptance but also remains Christ-centered and healthy. John also has experience as a social worker.

John also attends Huron Hills Church (now Grace Ann Arbor North Church), the location of our high school campus. We see this alignment as another example of God’s provision to us as we launch the first interdenominational high school in Ann Arbor. We are grateful for John and the wealth of experience he brings to our new high school.

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Ann Arbor Christian High School is thrilled to have Nolan Wolffis on board to coach Boys Basketball.  Nolan grew up in the town of Lynden, WA where his family attended Bethel Christian Reformed Church. Nolan went to Lynden Christian Schools, where he played 3+ years of varsity basketball and won a state championship as a senior.  After high school, Nolan went to Calvin College (now Calvin University) where he majored in English and spent two years coaching middle school basketball at Ada Christian.  Following college, he then worked for 3 years as a youth director at a church in the Grand Rapids area and spent multiple years as an assistant coach at South Christian High School and Hamilton High School, respectively.  Eventually, he moved to the east side of the state with his wife Lauren (who is from Dexter and is a 2008 AACS graduate!) and got his Masters degree in Secondary Education. Currently, Nolan is a Social Studies teacher at Jackson High School. 

Nolan has been married to his wife of five years, and they live in Dexter with their one year old English Springer Spaniel named Curry.  He is a HUGE fan of Michigan sports and the Golden State Warriors.  Nolan and Lauren are members at Grace Bible Church in Ann Arbor, where he serves on the greeting team and Lauren serves on the worship team (among other roles).  Lauren’s parents, Bruce and Marcia Mitchell, are long time AACS supporters whose four kids all graduated from AACS over the years.

Nolan cannot wait to help our young men of AACS High School grow their faith through basketball and help bring a Christ honoring, winning mentality to the program we are building at the AACS high school.  Go Eagles!

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We are pleased to announce that Autumn Lytle has signed on to be the head cross country coach for Ann Arbor Christian High School. Autumn is the sister of AACS alum Jack Burin.

Autumn is a lifetime runner. She ran cross-country for Salem High School, was the president of Grand Valley State University’s running club, coached middle school cross-country as well as Girls on the Run teams, and has completed 17 marathons. She recently moved back to Michigan with her husband, son, and daughter after living in Seattle while her husband completed his MBA. Running and faith are deeply intertwined in her life and she is so grateful for the opportunity to encourage others to run with perseverance the race marked out for them.

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We are very excited to announce that Carolyn Corey has been hired to teach at Ann Arbor Christian High School this coming Fall! 

Carolyn has strong roots in Ann Arbor, where she went to Pioneer High School and attended Knox Presbyterian Church. She received her degree in Secondary Education and Group Social Studies from Grand Valley State University in 2021 and currently teaches Multimedia, Business Law, Government, and Economics in Grand Rapids Public Schools. 

Carolyn loves hiking, being outside, and enjoying the Great Lakes. She and her family have a 22 year tradition of attending Cedar Campus (now Cedar Bay) on Lake Huron in the Upper Peninsula each summer for Family Camp. She has spent the past 4 summers working at Cedar Campus on the recreation crew, eventually becoming the Crew Coordinator for the summer staff at Cedar. In high school, she played volleyball and water polo, where they won the State Championship her junior year. 

With a sincere love for high schoolers and the energy and joy they bring, she also enjoys the in-depth content she is able to teach at the high school level. She is eager to extend the mission of AACS to bring a high quality, Christian high school alternative to the Ann Arbor area that truly meets the needs of teens. She cites the later start time of 8:30am as one good example of this, which she finds better coincides with teens’ circadian rhythms. Carolyn’s experience and insight are a welcome addition to the staff and entire AACS community. 

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Ann Arbor Christian’s new High School was recently featured in Ann Arbor Family magazine with an article by Mary Rose Kulczak. Click here to read the article.

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We have some exciting updates about fall sports at the AACS High School!

Girls Volleyball: The schedule for the fall is complete. Additional details will be coming soon.

Co-ed Cross Country: We have also officially decided to offer an AACS cross country team. This will be a co-ed team.

Boys Football & Soccer: We have officially decided to enter into a co-operative agreement with Father Gabriel Richard for football and boys’ soccer.

More details to come shortly about our fall season, but we are thrilled with our developing plans for the fall!

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Our beloved AACS middle school teacher Tami Michele will be headed to teach at the AACS high school this fall.  While she will be truly missed at the middle school, she will bring her tremendous talent, charisma, and the unique “ethos” of the AACS community with her to the second site. 

Professionally, Tami has many years of experience teaching high school and working with high school students.  She says she enjoys high-schoolers because they have a lot of energy and are full of life.  Her first job was teaching high school math at Franklin Road Christian School (now Novi Christian) from 1996 to 2000.  During a stint in Iowa from 2000 to 2004, she contracted with the ACT writing math questions for the exam.  Returning to Michigan in 2004, she developed a successful high-school math tutoring business, and later began working part time at AACS, increasing to full time in 2020.  Tami was on the AACS school board years ago when they laid initial plans to pursue developing a high school.  She frequently remembers reminding Wayne that, “when we open a high school, I want to teach there!”

Tami is a natural at explaining math. In junior high “zero hour” before school, she found herself helping fellow students with their math homework. In high school, when the basketball coach found his players on the verge of becoming academically ineligible to play, he sent them to Tami for math help. Originally a business major at Calvin College with dreams of becoming the CEO of a large company, she resisted the idea of being a math teacher like her dad.  But when a girl she had never seen before knocked on her door Freshman year saying, “I heard you’re good at explaining math, can you help me with Calculus?” she gave up and switched to a major in education.

Setting Tami apart is her family legacy of Christian education. As a child in South Dakota, her father rode a horse each day from his family farm quite a distance to the nearest one-room Christian school, where he was the only child in his grade. Her parents, herself, her husband Dan, and their children all attended Christian schools, their sons Justin and Collin graduating from AACS.  Knowing that her grandparents and her parents made many sacrifices to send their children to Christian schools, she admires the families that are now making sacrifices to open the AACS High School.

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There’s no better way to get a feel of Ann Arbor Christian and our new high school than to visit us! Because we understand that touring an empty facility has its downsides as we prepare to launch in August 2023, AACS is hosting a several days in which prospective 9th graders may spend a day at our main campus on 5500 Whitmore Lake Road, Ann Arbor with our current 8th graders, most of whom will be joining the 9th grade class. Start the day at our main campus and end the day with a short 2pm drive over to our high school campus. A pizza lunch will be provided to our guest students.

Our current 8th grade class is excited to welcome you!

Dates: 

• Friday, March 17 (Shamrock Shuffle fun run at lunchtime + a middle school chapel will end the school day)
• Wednesday, April 5
• Friday, April 14 (All-school Resurrection chapel will begin the school day)
• If you prefer a standard tour instead of Spend-A-Day, please schedule one here.

Times:

• 8:00am-2pm (see below)
• At 8:00am, a group of our current 8th grade parents will be available to welcome parents and to sit down with them to talk about AACS and our high school
• For families who have not visited our Upper Campus, at 2pm, we will drive 15 minutes over to our high school campus on 3150 Glazier Way. Parents should come to help drive their students.
• Please email Head of School Wayne Sit to schedule your Spend-A-Day.

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In preparation for our opening in August 2023, the school has set up a new computer lab at our Upper Campus. Next year, each 9th grade student will be assigned his or her own individual Chromebook. These laptops are important and helpful learning and productivity tools for our students. Knowing that high school work will become increasingly complex and involve juggling multiple windows on their Chromebooks, the computer lab will allow students to plug their Chromebooks into large 24-inch high definition monitors. This will allow our high schoolers to have a larger screen for their school work, as well as to screen to share during partner work. We appreciate the support of donors who make such resources possible, and who passionately believe in our vision to launch into high school grades.

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Ann Arbor Christian’s new High School was recently featured in The Sun Times News with an article by Editor Doug Marrin. Click here to read the article.

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What a fantastic turnout! This past Friday, the school hosted an evening of fun, fellowship, and touring at our Upper Campus. We had a great turn out of over 60 people – both current 8th grade families at AACS and guest families with 8th graders from other schools. During this time, we enjoyed a delicious catered meal of Mexican food. While parents toured and talked, the students enjoyed exploring the facilities and playing various games, with some of the activities led by a few AACS alumni students who came back to help. Please keep spreading the word about our new high school opening in August!

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AACS is looking for the following coaches to kick off our high school athletic program:

JV Girls Volleyball (fall)

JV Boys Basketball (winter)

JV Girls Basketball (winter)

Qualified applicants should be committed followers of Jesus Christ, and have previous playing and/or coaching experience in the sport that they are applying for. Interested applicants should contact Bryan Diemer at bryan.diemer@annarborchristian.org for more details.

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We now officially have our first rising 9th grade from outside of Ann Arbor Christian signed up for our new high school opening next year. In addition, as her family got to know AACS, they decided to not only enroll her for our high school, but also to start her in 8th grade (and her younger siblings) for the reminder of this year. We praise God for bring us a new school family and for opening a new high school opportunity for Christian families in the area. Several other families from outside of AACS have also started their high school applications. Please keep telling others about the AACS high school!

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Bob Ause, the recently retired chair of the Science Department at Greenhills School, is currently serving at AACS as the long-term substitute for 8th grade science this year.  Bob has also volunteered to consult and be a resource for the high school leadership team as they continue to develop the AACS High School science curriculum. With a passion for science and languages, Bob has a Bachelor’s degree from Willams College in Massachusetts in Chemistry and Classics. He went on to get a Masters of Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary in 1995 and a Masters in Education from the University of Michigan in 2010.  He has 28 years of experience teaching high school and middle school students, mainly teaching biology, chemistry, AP chemistry and physical science.  

Bob says his favorite age group to work with is high schoolers. He served on Young Life staff from 1987 to 1994 doing youth outreach in Vienna, Austria and Hungary, where he learned to speak Hungarian and met his wife Tammy in Vienna in 1989.  They have two daughters in their 20s, Emily and Erica, and have been members at Knox church since 2008.  He attributes his love of teaching to having great language teachers in high school, great science teachers in college, and a unique experience with Young Life before his senior year of college teaching basic health care and first aid at rural drug dispensaries in Uganda. 

With his unique professional background, his concern for high school youth, and his understanding of the stressors and challenges facing high schoolers today, Bob will be offering insight and expertise to the high school leadership as they continue to create a healthy AACS High School environment and a strong science curriculum. 

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As we begin to consider what kinds of clubs and activities we might have at the new Ann Arbor Christian high school, we decided to survey the current 7th and 8th grade AACS students to see what they think sounds fun and interesting! They were very excited to give input on this and the results have been tallied. More details to come about how many/which things will be offered and we will continue to work with our students to understand what other options are out there (many of our 8th graders are the oldest in their families), but it’s fun to see what their interests are and start the planning. In addition to our athletics program, we know that the student leadership and learning opportunities that come from clubs and activities are an important part of high school culture.

The top vote getters were:

• Ski and Snowboard Club
• Ultimate Frisbee Club
• Board & Card Game Club
• Community Service Club
• Coding (Web & Game Development) Club
• Speech & Debate Club
• Table Tennis Club

Following those were: Improv Club, School Newspaper, School Yearbook, Cooking/Baking Club, Computer Science Club, and Pickleball Club.

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The school is thrilled to share that well-respected and seasoned educator Brian Baird from Dexter High School is joining the Ann Arbor Christian School staff in February to help with the planning of our new high school. With his 30+ years of high school experience (which includes holding leadership roles, serving on various committees, and working closely with the counseling department to support students with their mental health) and often praised as one of the best teachers at Dexter High School, Brian will bring invaluable insights and advice as we continue our planning between now and summer. In addition, he spent a number of years teaching in an inner city high school, which gave him new perspective and heart for students.

Brian has degrees from the University of Michigan (BA), Eastern Michigan University (teaching certification), and Northeastern Illinois University (Masters). We are so grateful for God’s provision of people like Brian who feel drawn to our school’s vision to expand strong and Christ-centered education for the community. In his application, he wrote: “To be at a new beginning and to help shape a school and a culture is about the biggest dream a life-long teacher could ask for. ” What an amazing sentiment! Brian and his wife attend 2|42 Community Church in Ann Arbor.

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