Great Lakes Adventist Academy

Well hello. Welcome to our inaugural blog post! For those of you who don’t know anything about our school, let’s start with introductions. Great Lakes Adventist Academy, affectionately known as GLAA, is a Seventh-day Adventist boarding high school located in Cedar Lake, MI. I’m a student who works in the Advancement office. Our goal is to connect with parents, alumni, and current and future students. As a third-year Junior here, I have a unique insider’s perspective that I hope to share with you. So, now that we’re all friends, let me tell you a little bit about our awesome school.

What is GLAA all about? Many people look to our tagline, Uplifting Christ – Pursuing Excellence – Serving Others. Sure, sounds great, but how does a group of 135 high-school students live that out? 

As a Seventh-day Christian school, our first and most important priority is Uplifting Christ. This is seen daily in our chapel talks and dorm worships. We also pause twice every school day for something we call DEEP, which stands for “drop everything except prayer”. In addition to the corporate opportunities for worship, we also have a lot of student led groups that give us the chance to share our faith and encourage our peers. We had an amazing Week of Prayer already this school year that ended with seven students making decisions for baptism, and 25 volunteering to lead Bible study groups.

Now let’s talk about the excellence piece. If you attended GLAA anytime in the last couple of decades, you will instantly remember the rigor of the infamous Carter and Heslop classes. To say these classes are challenging is like saying the climb up Everest is a tough hike. These two teachers get affectionately picked on more often than some of the others because they have been here for a while and they have built a reputation on their push toward academic excellence, but they are not alone in this goal. All of our teachers and staff believe in providing an environment that prepares us for the future. Some of us will go on to college and breeze through math (thanks to Mrs. Heslop). Others will go into the trades with a foundation already laid from the welding and auto classes. Every student here works to help pay their tuition, and in those jobs, we develop a strong work ethic and practical skills for the future. Whatever our pursuits, we will strive for excellence, thanks in part to the training we receive at GLAA.

Last but not least is Serving Others. What kind of Christians would we be if we kept all of this for ourselves? GLAA gives us opportunities to reach out to our community and share our faith. We have a gymnastics team and music program that tour to a combined 25 schools and churches throughout the US and overseas. The gymnastics team also holds regular Gymnastics After School Programs (GASP) for the community. Almost everyone who attends is non-adventist, so it’s a great way to connect with people we otherwise wouldn’t get to meet. We also have service days 5 times each year. Some of the things we’ve done are help sort clothes and clean at the Heartland Center. Clean, paint, do odd jobs at Daniel’s Kitchen. Make blankets for Women and Children’s shelter. Outdoor clean up jobs. Groom horses and clean the barn. Crochet or knit blanket squares to send to South Africa for blankets for AIDS orphans. Various jobs to help elderly people in the community.

So, sure, at first glance, our tagline may sound like a commercial, but it’s not. It’s a way of life for us here at GLAA. We strive to live this mission every day – in our classes, in our dorms, and in our communities. We’re all getting ready to go on Thanksgiving break, and I pray that we will hold on to the lessons we’re learning here, and take them home to our families and churches.

Thanks for sticking with me through this first post. We hope to share weekly/monthly  stories, pictures and more here throughout the school year. If you would like more information about Great Lakes Adventist Academy, check out our Facebook and Instagram pages or go to GLAA.net.

See you next week!