A Distinctly Christian Education

At Grace Academy, our understanding of God as Creator and of his saving purposes in Jesus Christ undergirds all of our teaching and conduct.  We believe a distinctly Christian education should place special emphasis on the following:


    Lordship - Honoring the Lordship of Jesus
    Christ over all things.  Acknowledging that all
    truth, all beauty - everything in all creation -
    was created by him, reflects him, is sustained
    by him, and exists for him.

    Worldview - Teaching from a rich curriculum
    that communicates and is held together by
    an orthodox, biblical view of the world.

    Wisdom - Applying biblical truth to all of life
    so that the heart and mind of a pupil,
    quickened by the Holy Spirit, might know,
    love and obey God.

    Excellence - Doing everything with vigor and
    industry, as an act of worship to our God,
    with all our heart, mind and strength.


We seek to nurture young people who have a genuine love of learning, who are equipped to live as vibrant Christians in their various callings, and who can articulate and defend the Christian message with clarity, creativity, and conviction.



Academic Excellence

Our faith calls us to do all we undertake, including learning, wholeheartedly and with all our might, as an act of worship to God.  At Grace Academy we place a high value on excellence and effort, with special emphasis on the following:


    Tutors - Attracting and training gifted tutors
    and holding them accountable to the highest
    standards of teaching and character.

    Pupils - Inculcating exceptional habits of
    study.  Challenging pupils to use and develop
    their God-given gifts to their highest potential
    to the glory of God alone and in humble
    service to others.

    Curricula and teaching materials - Using
    carefully chosen classic works as well as
    more modern materials, we will put the best
    possible teaching tools in the hands of our
    tutors.

    Academic pace - Offering a program which is
    rigorous and comprehensive while taking into
    consideration the individual needs of the
    child, and so providing a challenging pace for
    most pupils.


Our desire is to see God at work in our school, drawing our pupil's hearts to love Christ and shaping their minds to be active, vigorous, and informed by biblical truth.



The Charlotte Mason Influence

Our view of the way children learn is influenced by the ideas of Charlotte Mason.  Mason herself was a classical educator from mid nineteenth century England.  Classical education in her day, as in ours, emphasized highly cognitive teaching, driven primarily by memorization and drill.  Charlotte Mason pioneered teaching methods that took advantage of a child's natural curiosity and delight in discovery.  Her ideas engaged a child's heart and imagination in the learning process and avoided the tedium and exasperation that can creep into overly rote teaching environments.

At Grace Academy, we believe that children learn best with a balanced approach that is both experiential and disciplined, that engages both the mind and heart, that develops cognitive ability, igniting curiosity and passion.  Many of the ideas and methods Charlotte Mason developed achieve this balance beautifully, and we have incorporated these tools in several ways over the various developmental stages of their learning:


Language-Eliciting Activities: Narration, Dictation, Recitation, Literature - Our children are encouraged to describe, in oral and written form, what they have read, seen, experienced, or heard.  in the process, they discover new ideas and learn how to describe what they have understood, developing skills in reading, comprehension, writing, and expression.


Cultivation of Good Habits - Recognizing that childhood is the time when people are forming habits, we emphasize developing habits of virtues such as kindness, listening and attentiveness, respect, order, and follow-through.  Habits in young children not only establish their character but also become their future academic practices.  We talk explicitly about these habits and their fruit and incorporate them into the daily routines of the school.


Discovery of Living Ideas - We seek to bring ideas and history alive through biography, fiction, art, drama, and active discussion.  The books we read are carefully selected works of proven excellence which are age-appropriate both in reading level and content.  We try to take advantage of a child's capacity to memorize and their natural curiosity to discover.

A Classical Framework

Grace Academy is classical in its embrace of the trivium, its emphasis on the classics, and its study of Latin.


The Trivium

The trivium (Latin for "three ways") is the core of a classical curriculum.  It was practiced during Greco-Roman times, formalized in the medieval period, and nearly universally embraced by educators in the English-speaking world until the early 20^th century.  The trivium recognizes three developmental stages of learning typical of children: grammar, logic, and rhetoric.  Trivium-based education "organizes learning around the maturing capacity of a child's mind" by using teaching methods and materials specific to each stage of development (Susan Wise Bauer, The Well-Trained Mind, p.3). For a more detailed explanation of the trivium, see "The Trivium" section below.


The Classics

We study classic works of literature and history, introducing our pupils to the great ideas and debates of the past.

At Grace Academy, we define a "classic" as any work that every generation has read, studied or cared about either because of its beauty and excellence or because of its influence and commentary on life.  Included in our definition of classical works are the Bible and the great poetry, hymns, and literature wrought from Christian devotion.  At Grace, our pupils will study these classic works in the grammar years, analyze them in the logic years, and debate them in the rhetoric years.  They can then develop a strong base of knowledge from history's great people, thinkers, and writers and learn to understand the consequences of theories, ideas and actions.


Latin

Latin was regularly taught in American schools through the 1940's and considered essential to a fundamental understanding of English, history and the writings of Western civilization.  At Grace Academy, we believe Latin is still an important tool for several reasons.  Latin:

    Trains the mind for orderly thinking and
        expression.

    Builds English vocabulary and increases
        reading comprehension - 50% of all words
        in the English language have Latin roots.

    Prepares the mind for the study of other
        foreign languages.  The Romance
        languages derive their structure and
        vocabulary largely from Latin. The
        structure of Teutonic languages also
        comes from Latin.

    Lays a foundation for future studies in
        science, medicine, law and philosophy -
        disciplines that draw heavily from Latin.

    Enables serious scholars to enjoy and study
        those works in their original language.

At Grace Academy, we begin the study of Latin in the fourth grade, although the classes are open to all ages.


The Trivium

The three roads of the trivium offer three insights for educational practice.  First, every discipline has a grammar (that is, a set of rules and vocabulary to explain those rules), a logic (organizing principles and standards for evaluation), and a rhetoric (its stories, discourses, and its applications).  Secondly, any topic can be taught in a way that includes its grammar (what is there - factual knowledge), its logic (cause and effect, scope and sequence, and rationale), and its rhetoric (implications).  Third, the trivium affirms the developmental nature of learners - that is, children develop in stages, and we should tailor our pedagogy to each stage.

The Grammar Stage: Younger children have a natural fondness for memorization and repetition.  During this stage, children learn primarily the facts or grammar of each subject studied.

At Grace Academy, we see this as a unique time in a child's life not only to master the rules of reading, writing and math, but also to memorize scripture, poetry, and hymns.

What distinguishes our approach from many classical schools is the combination of typical classical methods with those pioneered by Charlotte Mason.  We use both self-discovery tools and memorization.  We seek to engage the imagination as well as train the mind.

The Logic Stage: In the middle grades, children's capacity for abstract thought expands rapidly.  At this stage they become attracted to argumentation and abstract ideas.  The introduction of formal logic shifts the focus from mere facts to understanding relationships.  Pupils learn to reason as they identify critical assumptions, logical fallacies and inconsistencies.

At Grace Academy, we believe this is a significant stage not only to emphasize logic but also to lift up the Lord, in whom all reasoning holds together.  As Christians we prize clear and disciplined reasoning as a tool to grasp and communicate truth.  We also recognize, however, that mere logic which either denies God or does not acknowledge his activity is futile, as Paul says in the first chapter of Romans.  Grace Academy seeks to teach logic in an environment in which the gospel of Jesus Christ is fully embraced.

The Rhetoric Stage: Pupils in the upper grades integrate grammar and logic into creative and persuasive communication.  In speech, writing and debate, pupils develop clarity and beauty of expression in addressing vital and sometimes controversial issues and philosophies.

In the words of Dr. Abraham Kuyper:

Wherever man may stand, whatever he may do,
to whatever he may apply his hand, in agriculture, in commerce, and in industry,
or his mind, in the world of art, and science,
he is, in whatsoever it may be,
constantly standing before the face of his God,
he is employed in the service of his God,
he has strictly to obey his god,
and above all, he has to aim at the glory of his God