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Standing in front of the classroom, the teacher patiently waited for the student to answer. The student bit his pencil nervously. If he answered incorrectly, he would let his classroom down. He carefully responded.
“What is . . . the Panama Canal?”

“Timmy, that is correct! Five hundred dollars for your team!”

She tapped the board next to her, resembling a big screen TV the size of a white board, and a new question magically appeared.

What is this remarkable board allowing a classroom to play jeopardy and permitting the teacher to change what is on the screen with the touch of a hand? It is called a Promethean board, the newest in educational technology. The person we have to thank for ushering in this cutting edge advancement is Sherman Glenn, Turlock Christian’s new superintendent.

Sherman Glenn might be new to Turlock Christian this year, but it isn’t his first occupation involved with education. After graduating college, he taught elementary, junior high, and high school for eight years. Later he worked on staff at First Baptist Church as associate minister of counseling, in addition to running a counseling office in Modesto, California.

A private man, Glenn describes himself as a homebody who enjoys reading historical fiction, watching sports, and occasionally sailing on the open sea. He has two daughters: Heather, who is 39 years old, and Holly, who is 29 years old, and a grandson, Eli, ten months old. “He is really the delight of my wife and I. He has certainly taken our hearts. Being a grandparent is very fulfilling,” says Glenn.

Surprisingly, Glenn isn’t brand new to Turlock Christian (back in the 80’s he created our school mission statement) but declined the chance to come back as superintendent when first offered the position by then current superintendent, Jack Mayer. Mayer asked if he would reconsider. Glenn replied he would think about it.

After a great deal of prayer with his wife, Glenn says his thoughts changed. “God began to change our hearts to the point of when I was asked to put an application in, I said yes.” There was a condition however. Glenn told his wife that if it wasn’t unanimous, he wasn’t going to come. Later in the week, Mr. Nelson called Glenn to tell him the decision was in fact unanimous for him to join Turlock Christian.

Glenn feels as if everything he has done up to this point has prepared him for the position he is in now, but must undergo one challenge. “I am accustomed to having contact with the students. Now, I’m not around the students as much as I would like to be, but that’s the nature of the job,” says Glenn. Still, he has a plan to overcome this barrier. “I’m going to attend as many sporting events and meetings as I can.” Additionally, Glenn has met with some of the soccer and football players. “My door is always open,” he proclaimed.

Now what about those Promethean boards? Glenn explains, “The boards are electromagnetic; they’re like a whiteboard that is four by seven feet long. They have an electromagnetic field in front of them, with an arm coming from across the top that has an LCD projector attached to it. This projector shines back down on the board, so that anything commonly done on a computer can be projected to the class. If a teacher has a power point presentation, they can run it through. They can then tap the board with a stylus, and it will flip to the next page.”

According to Glenn, the boards should be installed shortly, first appearing in Mr. Erickson’s, Mrs. Johnson’s, Mr. Garman’s and Mr. William’s room, making TC the only school in the Stanislaus County that with Promethean boards.
Technology is great, but Glenn confesses to seeing something of greater value here at TC. “There is a passion for life, a passion for the Lord that gives students the ability to live life abundantly. At See You at the Pole, someone prayed, ‘Thank you God for the staff loving on us,’ and I thought, what a tremendous compliment from a student to a teacher, that they felt so loved on. It was almost as endearing a term that you would hear a student make to their parent. TC is like family. It’s that kind of thing that I look forward to becoming more a part of.”