What a joy it was to see so many of you at our 2024 convocation service last week. We are hopeful that more and more of our families will join us each year as we seek to begin our school year by asking for the Lord’s blessing. It was an evening of beautiful singing and prayer. We were also blessed by a message from Rev. Tim Goodwin who is the Director of Operations at The Geneva School, a classical Christian school in Manhattan. Tim spoke from Mark chapter 8 where Christ fed the 4000 using the seemingly insufficient number of loaves and fish that the disciples had. He challenged us to “bring our nothing to Christ” and watch as He uses it for His glory and for fruitful, abundant service to His kingdom.

Following Rev. Goodwin’s message, our Head of Schools gave a charge to the families. He exhorted them to be intentional in the partnership that they have with the school. He reminded us that Chapel Field is not aiming at the things that many local schools are aiming at. As much as we care about transcripts and academic advancement, our aim is the overall formation of our students into godly men and women. As such, when thinking of our students, we use the metaphor of the tree from Psalm 1. We seek to root our students firmly in Good, True, and Beautiful soil where they may drink deeply from Christ, the living water and bear fruit in due season

Mr. Spanjer charged families to adopt four specific habits in order to help cultivate the partnership between Chapel Field and parents.

1. Pray: He charged us to be in prayer throughout the year for each other. We dare not attempt to cultivate fruit in the lives of our children, our students, without humbling ourselves before God and acknowledging that any such fruit will ultimately be His doing.

2. Let grades take a second place: As much as we care about our kids’ grades, Mr. Spanjer challenged us not to let them have the primary place in our conversations with our children when speaking of their schooling. Rather than asking our children, “what did you get?” after they take a test or get an assignment back, let us ask questions like, “what did you struggle with?” or “what did you learn?” Questions such as these will provoke opportunities for conversation and will communicate that the most important thing is the learning rather than the grades. As He said to the families, grades are only ever able to reveal a sliver of a student’s true educational state of being.

3. Let your children struggle: He charged us not to be quick to intervene when our kids are struggling. He urged us to realize that their struggles are not a flaw but a feature of a classical education. It is to be expected. As parents, it is our instinct to react quickly when our kids are experiencing pain and difficulty. However, just as muscle does not grow unless it is first torn, so our kids will not grow unless they go through social, academic, and spiritual challenges. For the upper school students, he exhorted families to push their children to make the first engagement in terms of dealing with school troubles. That is, they should be the first to speak with their teachers or the administration if something is wrong rather than having their parents initiating the conversation. As school staff, we love the students and we are here to work through these things with them.

4. Read with us: Finally, parents were challenged to read along with the students. Mr. Spanjerasked each parent to choose one book that their kids are reading in their curriculum and to read it themselves. The school is providing the book list per grade for parents to choose from. (see below) Teachers of the particular classes will alert parents when they are beginning the book for that grade so that they can jump in and read with us. This will provide for great dinner table conversation and will prove to be a great way to partner with the school for your children’s education.