By Angela Ann Traylor, 12th grade
Special to The Tribune by students of FCCS
Melissa Jordan is the administrator of Faith Community Christian School in Trussville, Alabama, founded in 2005.
“My oldest son was in a home-school group in another church,” Jordan said. “We didn’t love the group and we felt like there was something better out there. So we talked with another home-school administrator and she encouraged us to start our own home-school group and she walked us through how to get started.”
Jordan enjoys being a home-school group administrator. Her job is talking to new families, helping them learn how to home-school, handling all of the money, teaching home-school seminars, overseeing that all activities run smoothly, the overall vision for the school group, and support for the families.
“I’m available for anything our families’ need,” she said. “I can help guide them in preparing lesson plans, choosing a curriculum for their students, identifying problems in their curriculum or learning difficulties in their children.”
Some of the challenges that Jordan faced in the beginning was learning how to run a home-school group, balancing running a home-school group while also home-schooling her own young children, deciding the best way to run a home-school program, figuring out the fees, creating the admission process and creating all the forms and filing systems.
Jordan would like to see continued support of the home-schooling community and more meeting places to accommodate large groups in the future.
“Some of the toughest things is, if we have a family that is not complying with our rules and we have to ask them to leave,” she said. “That is the hardest thing for me.”
Jordan said she loves running a home-school group.
“I really do enjoy it,” she said. “I love having relationships with our students and with the parents.”
Her favorite activities to do with other home-school families are field trips, co-op and community service.
Parents looking to home-school or looking for a cover school can find more information at
www.fccstrussville.com.
In honor of the state of Alabama’s 200th anniversary approaching in 2019, Governor Kay Ivey launched the Alabama Bicentennial Schools Initiative in December 2017 to give 200 Alabama schools the opportunity to participate in a year-long project representing their state’s history and achievements.
Nearly 400 K-12 schools statewide submitted proposals for the program, and each of the 200 chosen schools received a $2,000 grant to complete their project.
Among the schools chosen for this honor were five home-school groups, one of which was Trussville’s own Faith Community Christian School (FCCS).
For their project, the students of FCCS are collectively writing a book called Everyone Has A Story, which will profile noteworthy Alabamians, selected by the children.
The middle and high school students took a six-week Journalism class in the fall where they learned to write profile news stories about everyday heroes, while the elementary students are writing biographies of famous Alabamians.