Academics

A Classical Approach to Christian Education

A classically-oriented Christian education harmonizes intellectual and spiritual formation, cultivating wisdom and virtue in students through the Biblical worldview.

This approach nurtures a profound appreciation of truth, goodness, and beauty, guiding students toward a life of faithful stewardship and God-honoring influence in contemporary society.

Grammar (K-5th)

Grammar students (K-5th grade) receive instruction on campus two days per week and study under the instruction and support of their parents (or other designated co-teacher) on the remaining days of the week.

In the grammar phase of your child’s education, the parents are acting as a partner teacher, supplementing and reinforcing the classroom instruction with tailoring specific to their child’s strengths and weaknesses. As the child grows and develops, so does their independence. Grammar-level development is characterized by exposure to knowledge and memorization: developing the natural inclination of young children towards memory, song, and repetition.

In the Grammar School years, your child develops the necessary tools to be successful in the Logic and Rhetoric stages and wherever God leads beyond that. We seek to do this by:

Sharing the gospel early and often by weaving the Gospel into all areas of study. As we do this it is our hope that students will learn that “Christ is the light through which we see and understand everything.”* It is our chief aim that they should understand that Christ is their greatest need.
Building godly character into our students by examining godly character attributes as a school and recognizing that it is our inward values that determine our outward actions.
Developing a love of learning during this early stage of their education through the employment of hands on learning, multi-sensory materials, manipulatives, great literature, song, etc.
Creating a strong foundation in mathematics and language arts that will serve them well in all their future studies.

* From Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning by Douglas Wilson

Logic (6th-8th)

Logic students (6th-8th grade) are on-campus three days of the week and study under the supervision of their parents the remaining days of the week.

As students move into the Logic School, the expectation of independent study and discipline increases. Parental supervision is still important but students are encouraged and expected to show greater ownership and responsibility of their education. During this phase your child is taught to reason and debate. They are exposed to the great literature of Western Civilization and the big ideas of history and how to analyze and think about them critically.

During the Logic School years, your student expands on the knowledge acquired during the grammar years. At this level, the student possesses a greater ability to think critically and deeply about subjects, both academic and otherwise. At this stage, teaching methods tend to shift from songs and chants to discussion, debate, and argument. Students continue to exercise the “tools” that they acquired in Grammar School, but the emphasis becomes the new dialectic tools. Students are taught socratically in a classroom environment which fosters inquiry, discussion, and debate, with an emphasis on reason and analysis. This emphasis corresponds with the middle-school student’s bent toward exploration, questioning, and a desire for deeper understanding.

rhetoric (9th-12th)

The Rhetoric school (9th-12th grade) is the culmination of the prior phases. At this point your child is modeling a university-style education with on-campus instruction three days per week and independent study the remaining days of the week.

The University Model affords time with family and oversight and accountability but your child is now practicing independent study in a university-style schedule. In this phase, the focus shifts to the expression of well-reasoned ideas in oral and written form adorned with graciousness for their audience.

Our Rhetoric program has a unique partnership with LeTourneau University. LeTourneau is a premiere Christian, Polytechnic University with many degree programs in engineering and the sciences. Through this partnership, our students are able to take college courses with the support of Providence staff facilitators while obtaining both high school and college credit. This program is an element of our mission of transforming dependent learners into independent thinkers, ready for college.

“We have looked at three things that will never appear on a transcript, and yet are vital to the classical tradition of education. First, the primary purpose of education is wisdom and virtue, and every part of the program should serve to teach learners how to think and act rightly. Second, humility is vital to the pursuit of virtue because it keeps us teachable. Third, our approach to knowledge should be relational, synthetic, so that we develop a foundational understanding of the unity of knowledge and our own place in the universe.”

~ Karen Glass