Learning and Character at Augustine Classical Academy: A Parent’s Perspective

I first heard about classical Christian education from a friend of mine back in Canada many years ago. In those days he was a mentor to me, one of the many I’m thankful to God for. Being about ten years older than me and with kids in public school, he had educational questions I had no answer for, but I was intrigued nonetheless. My friend came to believe that having kids in public school was dangerous for them, so he and his wife opted to homeschool. Coincident with his new-found Reformed faith, he discovered the classical curriculum and went whole-hog with it for his kids. I followed my friend into Reformed theology, and though I didn’t yet have kids of my own (or even a wife!), I became quite interested in this new, but old approach to teaching. Therein I began what seemed like a premature journey into what (in Canada) was a very obscure approach to teaching – and boy, am I glad I did! One of the many takeaways from my study of the classical method was the connection between virtue and knowledge, something that stays with me to this day. As a university professor, I want to imbibe this ancient pedagogy, so that my students grow both in learning and in character. And it’s something that I’m already seeing in my own kids.

In the late twentieth century, when I was first contemplating education, it was apparent that our culture needed a curriculum that taught students how to learn and how to connect knowledge to virtue. Basic facts of life are important, of course, but education should be about much more. This need has been amplified in the early twenty-first century. There is a connection between the moral decay of the gilded-age of Athenian society and our own. When we enter the ancient world we meet a philosopher named Socrates, who, like many of us, was concerned with whether virtue could be taught to the coming generations. In his dialogue with a Sophist named Meno, Socrates demonstrated that truth could be universally known by asking Meno’s slave-boy a series of mathematical questions. Though this boy had no formal education, he could effectively answer a simple formula like 1+1=2 because this truth was universal and was known innately in the minds of all. As it turns out, many things are known innately, including virtue. What was required to access such knowledge was a good teacher who could facilitate good learning.

What I love about the interchange between Socrates and the slave boy is that it proves that education is for all and that young people have the potential to learn and to learn well. This flew in the face of Meno and his Sophist friends who thought that learning was not possible and virtue was absurd. It also flies in the face of contemporary education gurus, who teach to the lowest common denominator, not respecting kids’ ability to learn—and sadly the bar keeps getting lower and lower. Socrates’ approach is the principal and most compelling feature of classical education. Younger generations can be pushed to learn. It’s why the classical curriculum has stood the test of time, utilized by the students in the ancient world of Socrates and Plato all the way to modern greats like Newton. Though classical education was cast aside in the late-modern period, its resurgence in our day is heartening. Augustine Classical Academy is one of the many schools that have adjoined themselves to this ancient pedagogical stream, and I’m glad that my kids are swimming in its tributary. 

At the behest of my mentor, the first text I read on classical education was Dorothy Sayers’ classic essay, “The Lost Tools of Learning.” I appreciated much of what she had to say, but its brevity left me wanting more. I next read Doug Wilson’s Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning and began to see how the classical approach could move from the teaching of the four classical virtues of the ancients to be coupled with and grounded in the three theological virtues of Paul: faith, hope, and love. It is this classical and Christian approach that ACA takes seriously and I see it evidenced in the way the school teaches my kids; there is a real concern to connect learning with character. The best example of this, for me, occurred at the end of last term when my son Jack had to visit the principal’s office. As it turns out, he had to make that long gallows walk past the gym and lunch room to see Mr. Ahern, not because he did anything wrong (phew!), but because Mr. Ahern wanted to address Jack and the boys in his class with ideas about what it means to be a Christian man. I loved this! School is not just about facts, but about character. I’m sure that Jack was at least relieved by what Mr. Ahern had to say, if not encouraged!

ACA has thus alleviated many of our fears since my family and I moved to Colorado in the summer of 2017. In our hometown of Toronto we were involved in a “pilot project” classical school called Westminster Classical Christian Academy, and we absolutely loved it. All of the desires I had for classical learning that I developed so long ago were met at this school, and more. Our kids thrived there, and it felt tragic that we were removing them from such a fantastic learning environment. We were worried that we wouldn’t find the same kind of school for our kids here in Lakewood. It was a relief to find (through an interesting internet connection I had with ACA’s beloved Latinist, Magistra Cohoe) that there is indeed such a school in our newly adopted hometown. And so with hopefulness we signed them up at ACA. The experience has been wonderful. Aside from the very tangible love and care that the school has shown to our family, in so many ways, our kids have learned well from ACA teachers. The Bible is not a tack-on in their classes, but informs all that they learn, at once filling their minds and shaping their hearts. They, like the boy in the Meno dialogue, are respected for their intellectual abilities, and so are pushed to excel. They memorise Scripture, maths, poetry, and the like. They read good books and understand why the texts that they read are important for them. It’s amazing to me that at Colorado Christian University, where I teach philosophy (among other things), my students are only just learning about who Aristotle or Augustine were, whereas my eight-year-old daughter Molly comes home and asks me what I think about these great philosophers! I’m confident that when my kids get to university, they will be well-prepared to engage in their courses at a much deeper level than many of my current students because of the way that ACA has taught them. ACA is also preparing them for a fuller appreciation of life. For instance, Jack and Molly are both involved in the upcoming production of “Peter Pan”; Jack will work behind the scenes while Molly gets to perform as Tiger Lily. More generally, they get to learn about the greatest of artists and composers, from ancient times to today. Vicky and I can’t wait to see where this education will take our kids. Whether they become students of the humanities or follow a more practical path, they’ll have a great appreciation for God and his world. But at bottom, whatever vocation they end up following, we have hope that they’ll take with them the character-building skills that have been instilled in them by their teachers at ACA.

Deo gratia!
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Ian Clary is Assistant Professor of Historical Theology at Colorado Christian University and parent of ACA students Jack, Molly, Kate, and Tom.

Parent Perspective

An early school memory of mine involves the idea of perfection. It was during a third grade spelling test. One of the words suddenly looked unfamiliar when I wrote it down, and I gaped at my friend across the table desperately, so she wrote the word on a scrap of paper and slid it over to me. I paused just a beat, considering if cheating was the right thing to do, but I justified it, because the most important thing was getting all of the words correct.

This pursuit of perfection played out in my life in countless ways – never playing a team sport, because I wasn’t athletic enough; changing majors from engineering to “undeclared” when I got a B in my intro class; generally wallowing in self-reflection and going spiritually cross-eyed from the effort. Even after I became a Christian, if someone had pointed out this perfection as a glaring sin of idolatry, I would have said, “It’s OK, I can fix that.”

The problem, of course, is that I’ll never be perfect, and pursuit of that keeps my eyes off of the One who is. 

Where we want to fix our eyes – and teach our children to fix their eyes – is one of the biggest reasons that my husband and I chose Augustine Classical Academy for our children. 

Our daughters, Adalynn, kindergartener, and Laila, third grader, have attended ACA since preschool. We have loved the teachers, the curriculum, the four-day week (yah for pajama Fridays!), but most of all, we appreciate how God’s sovereignty and goodness is woven into everything, from class subjects, to lunchtime, to field trips.

There is a tension in striving for excellence, while also embracing the struggle that comes from a rigorous curriculum. Or maybe it’s larger than that:  the struggle of growing and maturing. While it is far too easy for students to turn inward and examine all the ways they need to improve, or turn outward and compare test scores, ACA is intentional about pointing the gazes of students, teachers, and parents to God. 

Teachers pray with parents before parent/teacher conferences, hymns are sung in chapel and the lunchroom, scriptures are memorized, and beauty and goodness are unearthed as students study things like Greek gods and goddesses, the four seasons, and math facts.

My girls are being rooted in truth, while rooting for the truth – whether that means digging for it in a literature book or cheering for it when they see it.

C.S. Lewis points out in Mere Christianity that rooting for the truth still includes a goal of perfection: “… you must realize from the outset that the goal towards which He is beginning to guide you is absolute perfection, and no power in the universe, except you yourself, can prevent Him from taking you to that goal.” Check it out, next time you want to feel both unbelievably miniscule and utterly beloved. That guy’s got some zingers.

But I think God is just as pleased by the stumbling, arduous toil of learning and failing and trying again as we are awed by the polished product – the zinger – of someone who has put in the work. And that work is never done. 

While my husband and I attended public schools, in some ways, we are being classically educated now. Adalynn gently but firmly corrects my cursive – and asks me to try again until I get it right – and Laila quizzes us on Latin words at the dinner table.  No seconds or leaving the table until we get them all correct. Our children are learning to work hard and aspiring to get better, not to meet perfection and find an identity in their accomplishments, but to honor and praise a good God who created and ordered the universe just so.

I am thankful for ACA, where my children can flourish with their eyes fixed on God, or more accurately, the chance to look back up after every blink. 

Is it perfect? ‘Course it isn’t perfect. But it is good.

Education as a Gift

One of the reasons the season of Thanksgiving is wonderful is its role as a gospel metaphor. Year after year, we sit at tables sagging with blessings. We enjoy plump turkeys on-demand, no hunting required. We have hot bread, fruits, and vegetables sourced magically from dirt. We mix flour and fat (think "I am the bread of life" and "the fat belongs to the Lord") and drizzle it over the top of our meal. We eat.

This is the gospel, and this is grace: gifts from God's hand received by God's people, and unmerited blessings accepted with gratitude. We were broken, now healed; condemned, now forgiven; empty, now filled.

This grace/thanksgiving/gospel has two sides. A gift is given, but it must also be received. Jesus said, "it is more blessed to give than to receive" (true), but we are also called to receive. We are called to acceptance, gratitude, and guiltless consumption. God gives to us lavishly, and it's our job to grin big and have seconds on mashed potatoes. Then, as we have received so abundantly, we go forth and give freely.

I invite you to view education this way too -- as a gift -- and each day of classes as another rich Thanksgiving table. We are here to serve our children a joyous academic feast, and like mothers who work hard to make their tables beautiful, we want our students to work hard devouring the meals given to them, and then to give back. As David says: "Taste and see that the Lord is good!" (Ps. 34:8)

In this season of celebration, consider a gift to ACA -- a means of both giving and receiving. We are in the heart of our $100K year-end giving campaign for the good of our wonderful school, and God is pleased when we give freely. And when we do, God gives it right back to us: "Cast your bread upon the water, and you will find it after many days" (Eccl. 11:1).

End-of-Year Matching Grant Announcement!

Dear ACA Parents & Friends,

As we reflect on a decade of ACA, I’ve been thinking about how God has used our school to make us courageous: He has asked all of us, over and over again, to trust that He is faithful and to follow His lead. Growing a classical, Christian school is hard work, and God has shown us the fruit of that hard work in our students’ abundant joy, deepening faith, ever-expanding curiosity, and sharp thinking. Our faculty not only equip students with knowledge, but also with wisdom and understanding and a love for truth, beauty, and goodness. Our families rally around each other, in good seasons and in difficult ones.

I have a growing suspicion—Ok, it’s an outright conviction—that all this goodness isn’t meant for us alone: It’s a gift to our children and families, yes, but it’s also a gift to our broader community and to generations of children who come after ours. My biggest prayer for ACA is that in hundreds of years, the school is still a place that disciples young men and women and then sends them out to influence and shape wherever God calls them. I love the idea of countless ACA graduates spread around the globe, leading and serving and glorifying Christ.

Every year about this time, we ask you to prayerfully consider supporting ACA in our annual Augustine giving campaign, and here I am again! This year, donors have offered us a matching-grant of $40,000: Every dollar donated up to this amount is matched by these generous donors. Our goal for the entire campaign is $100,000.

When you join us in this effort, your gifts go to the following areas:

—Scholarships: Ever year—as a matter of carrying out our commitment to making classical, Christian education as accessible as possible—ACA meets families’ demonstrated need and provides tuition assistance in that amount. When ACA awards these gifts, we step forward in faith that God will provide what we need, and He always has.

—Curriculum and instruction: High-quality curricula and good teachers are central to ACA’s mission! Help us continue to support our faculty and use the finest teaching tools available.

—Preschool: As you likely read earlier this month, both of ACP’s campuses are rated an impressive Level 4 by Colorado Shines, the state agency that examines early-childhood programs and rates them on dozens of criteria. Your gifts here allow us to give our earliest learners the best resources and the sweetest introduction to school!

—Related arts: Music, art, and P.E. are among our students’ favorite programs. They bring new ways of learning (and important brain development!) to students’ lives. Our teachers always have need for additional classroom tools and supplies to enhance those robust curricula.

When my family makes our donation this year, I’m going to pray that those dollars don’t simply support ACA this year, but that God multiplies them like the loaves and the fishes to feed students decades and centuries from now. Please join me!

In Christ alone,

Hilary Oswald
ACA Board Vice-Chair

PS: You can make your gift by writing a check to Augustine Classical Academy and dropping it off at the Lakewood campus front office or mailing it to 480 S. Kipling St., Lakewood, CO 80226. You can also give online at https://www.augustineclassical.org/donate.

Classical Education: Mind & Heart Together

It has been said that the most expensive part about having kids is all the wine you have to drink.

In their early years, kids at home or at school all tend to operate like an ant-pile after you jab a stick in it, which is basically Armageddon. Chaos is every child's middle name at some point or other. Yet this environment is just what education is designed for — turning those crazed ants into adults. To put it far more academically, education is about turning monkeys into men, lil munchkins into mothers, and all of them into creative culture-builders.

In short, education is holistic. We have this idea that education is about learning Reading, Riting, and Rithmetic, but that’s only half of it, or a tenth of it. Education is about both the mind and heart, body and soul, intelligence and character.

Character is the mental and moral qualities distinctive to someone. The bible says that even a child is known by his doings, whether his work be pure, and whether it be right (Prov. 20:11). Even a child must develop mental and moral qualities. In other words, a child must develop character, and that is what classical Christian education at ACA is all about. Mind and morals together.

But we have to be careful here. Education takes practice, not just assent to a creed. God could have given us perfectly developed kids, mature and independent straight out of the womb. Instead, he wants us to shape them and help them grow, as a design feature of being human. We have to help our kids practice good mental and moral habits, every day, and practice means pain.

Think of it this way. If you want to have a backyard garden full of weeds, what do you have to do? Nothing. The weeds just come. But if you want a fruitful garden, you have to get muddy and pull stuff up. The weeds in our kids lives want to be there. They’re fun. They feel good. Pulling them up is a daily thing, and it hurts. But this is the way God ordained it.

Each day of each academic year, we celebrate our students’ growth. Their academic growth is plain to see, but so is their moral growth. They are learning to take ownership of their lives. They are learning to avoid being impulse-driven. They are learning to think independently, like adults, with eternity in their minds.

Christ has given us the world as a gift, and as a garden to tend and care for till his return. At ACA, our students are practicing, in many small ways, how to be good stewards of the world for God’s glory and for the good of all people.

ACA's High Quality Early Childhood Programs

In September our Lakewood preschool was rated by Colorado Shines. Colorado Shines is a service offered through the Colorado Department of Human Services Office of Early Childhood. It rates Colorado’s early care and learning programs, connects families with quality programs, and helps early care and learning programs improve their quality.

I’d like to share with you that Lakewood’s preschool classroom received a Level 4 rating, a testament to its commitment to providing a high-quality learning environment that supports the development of children. This rating is one way that ACP demonstrates its quality and dedication to continually improving the services it offers. Our Edgewater preschool was rated in 2017 and also received a Level 4 rating.

The rating program looks at how early learning programs:

• support children’s health and safety.

• ensure their early childhood professionals are well-trained and effective.

• provide a supportive learning environment that teaches children new skills.

• help parents become partners in their child’s learning.

• demonstrate strong leadership and business practices.

I am excited to release thisnewswith you, and I'm grateful for your partnership that makes our rating possible! Congratulations to our ACP-Lakewood Teachers, Ann Rennie and Katherine Weldy!

For the glory of God and the good of all people,
Mindy Tipton
Preschool Director

Dispatches from the Front: Logic & Rhetoric

You’ve likely noticed a band of good-natured young men and women roaming the ACA halls, perhaps whispering about the ridiculous anger-fueled antics of the characters in the 13th-century epic Norse poem The Saga of the Volsungs or discussing the relationship between velocity and acceleration in physics. Sometimes they’re dancing in cross-country uniforms (see ACA’s Instagram feed for a recent example), and other times, they’re in art class, whipping up clay pyramids inspired by the ancient Egyptians. 

Meet our Logic and Rhetoric students, who are building on the rich knowledge they scooped up in the Grammar phase of their education and are now beginning to play with and explore it, learn how to examine it critically, and then articulate beautiful and compelling and true conclusions from it. 

In the Logic phase of the Trivium, students enter a phase that aligns with a development shift in their lives: Instead of merely accepting what we—their parents and teachers—tell them, they begin to ask probing questions. They have capacity for abstract thought. They’re keen on cause and effect, and they are ready and able to apply a logical framework to their learning: Composition isn’t merely descriptive anymore; it supports a thesis. Reading texts involves analysis, not just information-gathering. Science study means learning the scientific method and learning to apply it rigorously; the study of history moves from knowing the facts and narratives of the human story to asking why Muhammad rose up as the founder of Islam or why the Berlin Wall fell. 

This Logic phase at ACA stretches from 7th into 9th grade, which is kind of an overlap year on the Logic-Rhetoric continuum. Rhetoric is what I think of as “the fruit”—the good stuff. It’s all good stuff, of course, but this is the place where students marry the cultivation of knowledge with the rules of logic and learn to express themselves in elegant, compelling, clear language. Students get to wrestle with big ideas because now they’re equipped to do so: What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be in relationship with God? How, then, ought we to live? 

Knowing these stages—but not yet having a child in one of them—I was eager to chat with our ACA Logic and Rhetoric students. They did not disappoint. 

I heard a good bit about Logic class, in which students learn to use truth tables, an interdisciplinary tool used in computer science, math, and philosophy that allows a student to evaluate the veracity of a statement or series of statements. “We’re into really deep questions, like, ‘If God is all-powerful, why does evil exist?’” ninth-grader Hays said. “The ability to look at that statement objectively is pretty awesome.” His classmate Chandler is excited that logic will prepare him for his career: “I want to get a computer-science degree and move into programming, which has a lot of logic in it, so this puts me ahead of the game,” he told me. “I’ll be able to think through my programming steps well.” 

Another classmate, Isabel, connected those big-idea questions with some of the students’ discussions in class: “Our classes are very safe and open environments for lots of opinions and exploring significant questions.” Like what? I asked. “Like…is there a difference between the holiness we can attain as human beings set apart by God and divine holiness?” (I had to ask her to repeat herself.) She explained that Saint Augustine has a lot to say on this topic, and after some reading and discussing, she’s reached a conclusion: “I think humans—through God’s grace and by following God’s example—can achieve the holiness that means ‘to be set apart,’ but divine holiness is only God’s because He’s so far above us.” She made me want to be an ACA student. 

I heard from many students that they feel a sense of freedom in exploring ideas. Seventh-grader Brayden praised the “deep discussions” that the Logic phase employs, and the ways his teachers seem to know to draw out their students. “It’s fun to get to connect to my teachers and classmates in that way, to say what I think and hear what others think,” he said. His classmate Taiden agrees: “We just finished Till We Have Faces; it’s a book by C.S. Lewis. Last year, we would have just talked about what happened in the book. Now, we’re talking more about characters’ agendas and motivations.” (I wondered then if the upper-schoolers were on a mission to make me jealous.)

I’d join them in a heartbeat, if I could, and I suspect they’d welcome me in. Every single student I interviewed mentioned their peers. 9th-grader Hope called them “a family.” 11th-grader Hannah said the best part of being back at school is “getting back into the community because I miss them over the summer.” Hays said they share “an excitement about being together,” and Isabel summed it up best: “If feels like when I’m gone from school, I’m gone from my family.”

Rigor and friendship, logic and theology, curiosity and occasional goofiness, eloquence and mistakes and learning—it’s all here. I left these chats with our upper-school students with a profound sense of excitement for my own children’s educational path. As Hannah reminded me: “You should remind the younger students that it just gets better every year.” By God’s grace, indeed and amen. 

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Hilary Oswald is an ACA mom, freelance journalist, and contributing editor at 5280 Magazine. 

Dispatches from the Front: Upper Grammar School

Upstairs. I don’t know if you’re heard, but Upstairs is a magical place in ACA lore. When a student’s second-grade year comes to an end and he matriculates to the glories of third grade, he suddenly climbs the stairs to the second-floor classrooms—an area full of delight and wonder.

I can confirm the marvels of Upstairs, as I spent time this week asking our third- through sixth-graders about their ACA experiences. Here is what I learned:

Our third-graders are currently passionate students of ancient Greek history. Each one has adopted a Greek god or goddess to study and represent this year: There’s a Zeus in class, an Athena, an Apollo, an Artemis—you get the idea. I got a rather thorough lesson in the antics of the gods, which are sometimes horrifying, sometimes entertaining, sometimes impressive. (Hermes stole Apollo’s cattle once. Zeus defeated giants.) Curious about the students’ take on Greek gods compared with the God of the Bible, I asked: “What’s the difference?” Clement explained, “The Greek gods made a lot of mistakes, and our God doesn’t make mistakes. Plus, they’re myths, not real.” Molly agreed: “Aphrodite can be ill-hearted or kind. What kind of god is that? A zero, I would say.”

But of course, it’s not all lightning bolts and Trojan horses in third grade: The students also reported loving earth science (especially the experiments), Latin vocabulary, and the Phoenician alphabet (“It’s important because, you know, it was the first written alphabet,” Lydia told me, her raised eyebrows suggesting that if anyone could appreciate this significance, it would be a journalist wandering the upstairs hallway.) Before I left, I asked about the most fun part of third grade. The unanimous answer: “Mrs. Elliott!” Need proof? You might ask her to perform her now-famous coin trick.

Next stop: fourth grade. Here, I heard a lot about matter (“everything that has mass and volume,” Charlotte reminded me), medieval history, math games, and literature. Each student held up an element of their history studies as fascinating: Kaylin loves St. Jerome because he translated the Bible into Latin; Bowden is interested in Vikings (though he said he’s glad we don’t bury our dead in ships, as they did); and Saul answered my question about what interests him with a question, “Well, do you know about the Council of Chalcedon?” When I confessed only general knowledge, he proceeded with a thoughtful explanation. Several students spent our time praising Mrs. Brown for “awesomeness,” and others wanted me to know about a P.E. game called “Dead Ants,” also described in superlatives. Bottom line: Fourth-graders’ enthusiasm pervades all aspects of their academic lives.

I found the fifth- and sixth-graders in the lunchroom. Bad news for me, I thought. Who’s going to give up precious eating time to answer a mom’s questions? Turns out, I had a lot of eager participants. Even more surprising, the predominant theme from my interviewees was a growing awareness of ACA’s community. “I love everybody here,” Ellie told me when I asked what it was like to be an ACA student. Abigail and Gloria both said the best part of coming back this year is being reunited with their classmates and Mrs. Kelley. Gloria elaborated: “It doesn’t feel like school here. It feels like…summer camp, where you’re welcomed in and you learn a bunch of things”—such as how to recognize the constellations, how to spot the richness in a novel, and how to speak in Latin (a point of pride several students mentioned). These last years before upper school and a move toward the Logic phase of the Trivium are rigorous, students told me, but they also said their guide—Mrs. Kelley—is the type of teacher who “helps us persevere” and “reminds us that God is in everything.” Good reminders indeed.

Asking our students about their lives at ACA left me with the deep impression that these are joyful days for our children. Most days, they’re delighted to be at school, and as they climb the stairs to the second half of their grammar-school years, they show up knowing that discovery, hilarity, wonder, and community await them. As I wrapped up my interviews one day and headed to descend the stairs, Charlotte in fourth grade offered one last thought: “Parents should have gone here when they were kids.” I suspect she knows that I fully agree.

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Hilary Oswald is an ACA mom, freelance journalist, and contributing editor at 5280 Magazine.

Math at ACA

John Milton Gregory’s The Seven Laws of Teaching, first published in 1886, forms the cornerstone of teaching and curriculum decisions at ACA, and if you look closely, you’ll find these laws posted in every ACA classroom. According to Gregory, teachers must: 1) know the material they wish to teach, 2) gain and keep the interest of the students, 3) use language that is familiar to the students, 4) begin with prior knowledge and attach new learning to prior knowledge, 5) stimulate the students’ minds to action, 6) require students to reproduce what they have learned in their own words, and finally 7) review continuously.

Having a brief understanding of Gregory’s laws and their influence at ACA is the foundation of understanding all of our teaching practices and curriculum choices.

With this in mind, let’s take a closer look at ACA’s math curriculum. For our grammar and upper school, we primarily use Saxon Math. In second and third grade, we use Classical Math published by Logos Press.

John Saxon (1923-1996), writer and publisher of Saxon Math, was a graduate of West Point Academy and earned several degrees in engineering, both electrical and aeronautical. He became a math teacher, textbook writer, and publisher after retiring from the Air Force. While teaching math at a junior college, he realized that most of his students were woefully unprepared in their K-12 education to do basic algebra. Out of this was born the Saxon method. He rejected the idea that students could be divided into two groups: those who were “math people” and those who weren’t. He knew that if he could break math down into incremental steps, all students could be successful in math.

The Saxon method meets all of Gregory’s laws of teaching. The math teacher knows the material to be taught because each day introduces an incremental step in a math concept. Students can easily attach new learning to yesterday’s lessons as they are shown each step and are provided with sufficient practice. Each lesson either starts with a morning meeting or a math puzzle, both of which are always popular with students. From my own experience teaching Saxon Math in 5th and 6th grades, these math puzzles were the highlight of the lesson. Students would race to see who could solve the puzzle first, which gave a nice shot of energy at the start of each class. Additionally, the language in each level of Saxon is suited for their ascribed grade level. The teacher teaches the lesson, which is short, and students are quickly able to get to work. Students are required to show their work, and, best of all, Saxon continuously reviews past concepts.

You’ve most likely have heard teachers use the word “spiraling” when talking about Saxon math. This term describes the incremental and continuous review approach of the curriculum. Students are introduced to a small new concept, they practice that concept, and then they review, review, and review. Saxon Math also uses frequent assessments, which gives regular feedback to both teachers and students on what is being learned and retained, and on what concepts need more work before students get too far behind. This is key. Math is a skill and a language that continuously builds on prior learning, and it must be used and practiced in this way in order to be absorbed. Math is not learned when concepts are given to students in large chunks and then rarely reviewed. Instead, math is truly learned when it becomes automatic by consistent practice and review.

Classical Math by Logos Press is used in the second and third grades. As the name suggests, the curriculum uses a classical approach for the grammar stage: lots of chants, skip counting, and continuous review. Written by a veteran math teacher with over 20 years of experience, Classical Math teaches students to pay attention to detail, read directions with care, and to be consistent with their work. The focus of these years is to solidify knowledge of math facts and fact families. This curriculum was specifically designed for students taught with Saxon Math in kindergarten and first grade and returning to Saxon in fourth grade.

John Saxon once said, “Results, not methodology, should be the basis for curriculum decisions. Results matter.” We agree. Results matter, and Saxon Math and Classical Math are giving ACA great results. God created and gave us math, and we love passing this gift on to our students by using these two time-tested and research-backed curriculums that make math accessible to all.

Dispatches from the Front: Primary Grades

My children pop in the front door from school and give cheerful but vague reports about their day. In response to my questions about how school was, my fifth-grader and second-grader toss adjectives my way—“Good! Interesting! Fun!”—and then raid the ‘fridge and wander off to change out of their uniforms. We do get to the heart of their learning at other times: For example, near the end of the last academic year, my husband and I were talking about North Korea and our then-fourth-grader piped up, “Oh! North Korea’s citizens should write a Magna Carta!” The rich and lively conversation that ensued reminded me (again) of the extraordinary value of this education.

But sometimes, when we’re not deep in discussion, I just want to know their take on what they’ve been doing all day. To satisfy my curiosity—and hear from ACA students about these first few weeks of school—I visited several classes to ask. And guess what? When there’s no fridge to raid, ACA students have a lot to say!

My first stop: kindergarten. The students told me that the best thing they’ve learned so far is cursive letter A, but they suspect that cursive letter Z is going to be pretty exciting too. They gave high marks to Mrs. Alvis for being “the greatest teacher ever,” and I heard a lot about PE games like frisbee and “Sharks and Minnows.” (If you’d like a play-by-play account, set aside at least 45 minutes and visit kindergarten.) Mia summed up her classmates’ sentiments: “I feel happy at ACA.”

I caught the first-graders on the playground, where they were eager to chat about crabs. “I thought they fought with both claws, but they only have one fighting claw and they use the other one to eat,” James told me, eyes wide. Isaac added, “If they get an eye cut off, it takes a year to grow back.” Haley piped up to teach me that crabs come in a lot of colors: red, brown, green, yellow, or blue. We all agreed that God was being really creative when He designed crabs. When I asked about the funniest part of first-grade, they said that phonemic awareness is hilarious. Confused? I was, too. But Kate explained that to practice their phonograms, Mrs. Molen removes one phonogram from a word and replaces it with another sound. “So we get to say silly words that aren’t real!” Sounds like fun to me. 

A short while later, the second-graders gathered around me to talk about…botany. Emery reported that lately, they’ve been learning about “nonvascular plants, like moss.” (Someone had to explain to me what that meant.) “Moss is sort of like a sponge,” Harrison said. “It soaks up the water, but it doesn’t have roots.” Gemma pointed out that in art, they’ve been drawing flowers—a tie-in to their science curriculum that she thinks is “awesome.” And speaking of awesome, all second-graders said that Mrs. Trujillo does the best voices for read-aloud books. The Skippyjon Jones series is a current favorite.

My whirlwind tour through the primary grades reminded me of the wonder that marks these years of learning. God seems to have created young minds to soak up the richness of new knowledge. Crabs and cursive, moss and phonograms, plant drawings and PE games, all doled out by beloved teachers who invent learning games and do funny voices during read-aloud: This is the good stuff, and our kids know it. They don’t just know the information; they know that it’s good, and as they experience the goodness of it, they begin to love it; and as they love it, they share it. And when they shared it with me, they blessed me tremendously. 

I’ll be continuing my conversations with students and sharing them here from time to time. I hope to give us all a glimpse into the daily life of our students at ACA and remind us how in this setting, the small wonders and the elements—the “grammar”—of knowledge add up to great big love for the Lord and for the story of the world, crabs and all.

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Hilary Oswald is an ACA mom, ACA board vice-chair, and editor for 5280 Home and 5280 Health.