Jim Mcalister

I consider myself blessed to have the opportunity to teach History at Renew Christian Academy. My wife, Lois, and I homeschooled our own children for several years and know the value a quality Tutorial program can bring to those efforts.

I came to teach by an unconventional path, but believe that my background, education, experience, and passion allow me to fill such a role with excellence. My business career of 45 years rapidly evolved to roles in Product Development, Marketing and Sales, predominately in challenging new ventures, including two “start-ups”, where effective packaging and communication of new concepts and methods was essential.

It was during a study session for a Civics test in 1998 with my 8th grade son, then enrolled in a college preparatory school, that I was enthusiastically relating the “back story” on the Constitutional debates, as I understood it at the time from my personal reading and admittedly limited knowledge of antecedent Western and English history. Evidently, much of this information was “news” to him, and at one point he exclaimed, “Dad, this stuff is really interesting – I wish you were my teacher!”

That moment was a key turning point in my life. I began immediately to both read with increased intensity and purpose and to research how I might further my education, at mid-life, while holding a demanding managerial position. I was enrolled six months later in a distance-learning Master’s degree program through the civilian branch of Norwich University in Vermont, one of the U.S. Military academies, studying American History with an economic emphasis, particularly as it regarded the role of Property Rights in the unfolding of the American story. The program’s emphasis was research and writing and over the course of 21 months, I produced 299 pages of academic writing comprising 4 major papers and a 128-page thesis document.

The emphasis I chose in my studies required a wider focus than is often the case for an American History degree. This included a broad understanding of the origins and development of Western thought (directly and primarily descended from God’s instruction in the Mosaic Law and Christ’s full application of it in His life and teaching) regarding secure property as an essential element of liberty, which framed the context of the Colonial disputes regarding taxation, slavery and westward expansion, the Constitutional debates, and the antebellum slavery debates and the Civil War. Since receiving my degree in 2002, my studies have continued unabated and I have amassed a personal library of nearly 1500 volumes, with the goal of understanding not just facts, but context.

I taught Economics and Civics for three years at Franklin Classical School before the demands of my business dictated that I reluctantly leave. I taught numerous Christian worldview classes in my role as an elder in a local church for 17 years. Now that I have recently “semi-retired”, my goal has been to return to the classroom, and by God’s grace, this opportunity presented itself.

We RCA teachers support your desire to fulfill your parental mandate to raise children who are becoming and will be mature Christians who interpret and live in our world well. That worldview is the only one that, because of its understanding of God’s gift of his image in mankind, as well as our selfish fallenness, can have a truly balanced approach to the evaluation and interpretation of History, avoiding perfectionism and “chronological snobbery” as well as cynicism or fatalism. My privilege will be to help lead and train your child to do so discerningly and with grace.