Christian school mixes classic, home model
Plenty of schools celebrate the end of the school year with ceremonies. Not as common are schools that have costume parties for completing a book series — one that the principal has read out loud to students every lunch period since they started elementary school four years ago.
Then again, Trinity Classical School isn’t a typical school.
“Are you ready to meet a real life Narnian?” Neil Anderson, the head administrator at Trinity Classical School’s Bethel location, asked the cafeteria of more than 200 excited first- through fourthgraders who had been listening to him read C.S. Lewis’ “The Chronicles of Narnia” for the past eight months.
Whispers of who the visitor might be — Aslan, the White Witch, King Peter — passed through the crowd of kids dressed up like knights, princesses and various animals.
Anderson, standing by the leather chair on the stage that he reads to the students from, announced the guest — “It’s Mr. Tumnus!” he yelled — and a school administrator dressed like the fawn from “The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe” entered the cafeteria. The kids reacted like a rock star had just walked in.
At Trinity Classical School, a private Christian school that combines a classical liberal arts curriculum with a collaborative schedule where students spend half the school week in class and the other half being homeschooled, he might as well have been a celebrity.
The school, which opened in 2009 and serves students from preschool to 11th grade, operates under a classical education model. As opposed to the progressive education model found in most U.S. public schools, which emphasizes teaching students skills they’ll need to function as members of society, classical education prioritizes students learning for the sake of learning. Subjects like logic, literature, Latin and philosophy, as well as more abstract qualities like wisdom and virtue, are taught from a Christian worldview.
“We study math, not ultimately to become an engineer, but because understanding math helps us understand God,” the Trinity Classical School handbook states. “We believe the goal of education is the attainment of wisdom, not — as the world would tell us — simply to prepare students for the work force.”
Grade levels are structured around “the Trivium,” a classical education term used to describe the three phases of learning that students pass through. There’s grammar, from pre-K through fourth grade; logic, from grades 5-8; and rhetoric, from grades 9-12. The education model has roots in Ancient Greece and the Middle Ages, and Anderson said it celebrates learning and education in a way that the progressive education movement doesn’t.
“Here’s another way to think about it,” Anderson said. “We still believe in education as a garden, as opposed to education as factory. Think about those two things juxtaposed. Education as a factory is utilitarian, pragmatic, get it done, produce workers. Education as a garden is tended, it takes time, it bears fruit, encourages students to be intuitive and learn what is it to be human.”
There’s also the school’s collaborative aspect, which splits teaching duties between the school’s teachers and the students’ parents. Students attend class at one of the school’s two campuses — Bethel or the Heights — on Mondays and Wednesdays, but on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, class takes place at home.
Parents don’t need teaching experience, the school’s handbook states, and one of the goals behind the unique schedule is to allow parents to “retain ownership of their children’s education.” The school provides parents with detailed lesson plans to work with — which they can supplement as often as they want — and students complete athome assignments that are separate from the assignments they’re given in class.
For Summer Husband, who had previously home-schooled her kids full time but wanted to add a classroom experience and more social interaction to their experience, Trinity Classical School’s hybrid approach aligned with what she was looking for.
“We started at (Trinity Classical School) thinking we could go here and it’ll be great or it could be a gentle on ramp to a five day-a-week private school,” she said. “The home days, they’re very structured. You have a challenging list of things that need to happen — it’s not like you’re just winging it or figuring it out on your own.”
Younger students require more parental involvement, Howard said, and as children get older the homeschool side of the school’s curriculum is more focused on independent work.
“It teaches kids to manage their own time and learn how to be proactive,” Husband said. “With the majority of my second grader’s work, he needs someone alongside him but my ninth grader is working on his own mostly.”
The collaborative model extends to extracurricular activities, too. Trinity Classical School offers one athletic program — cross country — as well as a few fine-arts electives, like choir, theater and visual arts. Anything else is handed off to the parents, who can set up schoolwide sports leagues and clubs that operate outside of the school’s official offerings.
“If you really want your kid to play basketball then you can send something out to other parents with kids in that grade and try to set something up,” Howard, who helped organize a student book club, said.
The parental involvement — both academically and with electives and sports — allows the school to better focus on education.
“Our families shoulder extracurricular activities both financially and in orchestration,” Anderson said. “They let us focus on what we’re here to do. We have like 10 baseball teams and we don’t run anything.” Olivia Ober, a member on Trinity Classical School’s Board of Directors, said that the collaborative method — and the expenses that saves the school — is a big part of why enrollment numbers have increased every year since Trinity Classical School opened.
Catha Jaynes, admissions coordinator for the school, said that in TCS’ first year there were 21 students. By the 2014-2015 school year — when Trinity Classical School opened its Heights campus — that number had increased to 406, and enrollment for 2018-2019 is now at 650. A 12th grade will be added next year, too, which is when the school will graduate its first class of students.
According to the school’s handbook, tuition is $1,870 per semester per student, plus an optional $293 per semester for the school’s fine arts electives.
“We’re not a full service school,” Ober said. “We’re not providing every activity or elective. We’re on campus about two-fifths of the time other schools are, so the cost is less than other private schools.”
Of course, affordability isn’t the only appeal. Ober said that from what she’s seen, Trinity Classical School’s combined educational model is a unique approach to learning that simply provides a service for families that can be difficult to find elsewhere.
“It’s different things for different families,” said Ober. “The ability to have a partnership approach, to have specific plans and spend time with the kids without spending too much time preparing material. I think there’s a high demand for the Christian approach and the friendships that can lead to in the classroom. We’re so thankful for this curriculum and we believe in the work we’re doing.”