DOCENDO DISCIMUS

To Whom Shall Educators Go?

Wednesday was a bad news day.

From the morning edition of The Oklahoman to that night's national and local newscasts, there was a lot I (Craig) found myself sighing over: a middle schooler in Enid gets beaten unconscious at school; a teacher aide (who actually worked with a friend of mine) at Southmoore high school is caught sexting photos of herself to sophomores.

To top it off, I got an email from a colleague at my former school telling me about a senior prank gone wrong. Apparently, the Head of School's email was hacked and the following message sent to the entire parent community:

"We would like to inform you of some small changes that will take place, this year, regarding Junior/Senior Banquet. As servants of God, we strive to protect our community. For this reason, we have arranged for condoms to be available at this event. Every male student attending will have the option of taking a complementary condom at the door. This is to encourage our students to practice safe sex. We hope that by doing this, we can set a positive example, so that other schools may recognize our efforts and take action against sexually transmitted diseases. Thank you, and have a blessed day."

Sometimes it's hard to see God at work, particularly in our schools and especially despite our human capability to really mess things up. And yet I read a quote on Wednesday from United Methodist Bishop Will Willimon that was particularly helpful in the midst of trying to do some good in the midst of that bad news day. Willimon wrote: "Scripture teaches that time and again, God refuses to be stumped by our inadequacies. Therein is our hope."

Indeed, therein is our hope. "Whom have I in heaven but you?," wrote the psalmist, "And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you" (Psalm 73:25). John records that, "Simon Peter answered him, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6:68-69).

With four weeks to go, I take comfort that any hope we have cannot be in ourselves - which of us this time of year has anything left to hope in? In the face of what's ahead, let's confess to God, each other, and ourselves where our true and only hope is: in Christ, his love, and his grace. Pray this for yourself, your students, and our families.

This is what I'm praying for all of us these next four weeks.

Good News on the Oklahoma Admissions Front

Back on Good Friday, The Oklahoman published this article on the University of Oklahoma's desire to revamp their admissions process and make it more holistic in its consideration of potential OU students.

This public announcement lines up with what OU Admissions Director Mark McMasters alluded to me (Craig) privately last fall - namely that OU was working on admission changes from which non-accredited schools like Veritas would benefit. Mark told me that OU measures success in terms of admitted students actually graduating, and colleges and universities can't deny the positive numbers when it comes to homeschool students who successfully start and finish their collegiate studies.

Seeing an opportunity to affirm what Mark and OU's Board of Regents are doing, I wrote a letter to The Oklahoman affirming OU's decision and urging the Oklahoma State Board of Regents to follow their lead. To my surprise, the paper published my Letter to the Editor in full earlier this week.

The Best Teachers are the Best Learners

These are just some of the people I get to work with each day at Veritas. So blessed.

Show Me the Money

Over the past several months, I (Craig) have had multiple meetings with my Administrative Team and our Veritas Board concerning income, expenses, and next year's tuition rates. I've also had a few parents ask me when we're going to post our rates for next year.

I've only got one answer: when we're sure they're right.

Back in October, as we began budgeting for next school year, I happened to mention via email our process to my former Head of School, Jim Marsh, at Westminster Christian Academy, a college prep Christian school of 900 students in St. Louis. A long-time administrator, Jim is both a hero and a mentor in my role as Head of School (because of our shared titles, he calls me his "peer," which is more than humorous - I'm no Jim Marsh). He wrote:

"The tuition/true cost of education issue is difficult to get one's head around. There are those (Bruce Lockerbie and Paideia and organizations like Independent School Management) who would say to determine what it costs to provide excellence in fulfilling your mission and set the tuition at that cost. Then, raise money to provide tuition relief for those who cannot afford the tuition.

However, the value proposition is of critical importance in an age when parents are asking the question: 'Is it worth it? Is it worth the financial sacrifice?' The brutal fact is that it costs money to provide an excellent Christian education, but establishing a tuition level at that per student cost might be more than the market will bear. So, we look around and assess the financial condition of our families and determine what the price point should be."

Jim's balanced perspective describes exactly where we are at Veritas Classical Academy. Over the past month-and-a-half, my Administrative Team (all of whom are Veritas parents) have tried to get a better handle on what it costs "to provide an exceptional classical Christian education to the Oklahoma City metro." It's been hard work, but I'm proud of the way our team has drilled down to depths of detail we've not operationally been at before.

At the same time (and with counsel from our Board, all of whom are also Veritas parents), we've wrestled with the realities of these costs and asked ourselves what seems reasonable to expect tuition to cover and what should we plan to cover through more intentional fundraising. In doing this, we're seeking God to lead us to the right numbers, and to provide for them as well.

We think we're almost there...but not yet. Rest assured, tuition rates are coming (and soon), but as Head of School, I want to make sure they're right (and not just out). We don't want to overcharge our families; at the same time, we don't want to be the best blended model school in Oklahoma to go out of business.

Survey Reminds Us That We're in This Together

Back in early September, our Parent Partnership Association conducted a short survey asking how our parents were feeling about the start of the year. Here are a few results from the 32 parents who answered the survey (a 20% response rate):

Please choose which description best encompasses your feelings about Home Days with your children these first two weeks?
Weeping and gnashing of teeth and about to give up	0%	0
Some tears, but I see glimmers of hope	15.6%	5
It's going okay, but not as well as I had hoped	12.5%	4
It's going well, although we have challenges	56.3%	18
Challenges? What challenges?	15.6%	5

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What topic would be most helpful for additional parent training?
Schedule management with school work	24.1%	7
Schedule management with extra commitments	6.9%	2
Food and household management	13.8%	4
Parenting tips for character/discipline challenges	31%	9
Grade specific homework assistance	24.1%	7

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One open-ended question we asked on the survey was, "How would you define Home Day success?" The answers varied:

• "If my student finishes homework by 1 or 2 p.m."
• "Every assignment completed."
• "Children connect with God in midst of their problems and enjoyable times."
• "Finishing our work with everyone happy and having good attitudes."
• "My student taking responsibility for knowing what needs to be accomplished and the best way to accomplish it with parental support."

In case you were wondering, we have good and bad days at the Dunham home. The blended model is work - for students, for parents, for the Head of School and his spouse.

Guest Post: Career vs. Vocation (Part 3)

(The following is the final in a three-part series on the question of career versus vocation - a key distinction parents need to help their students wrestle with as they consider future education and life goals. This series is authored by Todd J. Wedel, Veritas Classical Academy Grammar School principal and Rhetoric School teacher.)

Such an emphasis on the “weak things” may raise an objection, that to seek a position of prominence is what we should desire, the chance to influence civilization and culture. Indeed, those are noble and godly goals, but the means and mindset matter—a godly end if pursued for a selfish reason ceases to be a godly end.

If we are career-minded, we desire a position to institute change. Our thinking runs something such as, “If I were but to be in such a position, I would. . .” Inherent in this reasoning are two subtle dangers. The first is that I am inevitably judging the person who occupies the position I would attain. I desire his or her removal. And I believe that I can know what to do and what I would do without knowing all that that person endures, thinks of, processes, deals with, and is.

The second is that I believe that it is through position that God changes the world. But get the right people in the right positions, and the world becomes what we would want it to be. We devise a formula for redemption and reconciliation, and, we maintain, if this formula is fulfilled, there is no need for God, for it is a matter of the great “I” doing what I would do that the world will be changed not a matter of the great “I AM” doing through me or through another what only He can do.

We forget that Paul reminds us that not many were called who were strong or wise or of measure in the world, though not  many does mean a few, but that it is those apparently weak and foolish and negligible whom God desires and uses, that it is He who calls into being what has not been; He has no need of us, but is pleased to use His people to participate in His work. And He can use men and women of mean position to accomplish high purposes.

It is instructive to ponder here two examples of men of great position, Joseph and Daniel. Their stories are greatly parallel—both taken from their homeland, both cast into darkness and dungeon, both rescued because of gifts given and opportunities created by God, both raised to positions of power and authority, both used for the good of God’s people. Both are certainly gifted, but it is not their gifts that gain power and authority. Had not pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar both had dreams from God, both would have languished in prisons, Joseph at least possibly slain. 

Or the greatest example of power and authority, Christ who attains His throne by means of the cross. He cannot be raised if He is not slain. He ministers to the sick and the lame and raises the dead, all of whom will fall prey to the curses of the Fall again in time. He teaches and instructs multitudes, many of whom will soon cry out for his crucifixion. He includes within His closest disciples the son of perdition who will betray Him to His death. And what of those works returned to Him void? Not one, for God promises that His word never returns to Him void; it accomplishes that for which He sends it. God’s Word accomplished all, not just at the cross but in those three years, and in the years previous of which we have little knowledge, all that He was to do. 

If our vocation is to be the offering our life and service to God, then should we not see that the tendency of our vocations should always be the cross? As a teacher, how do I know that I have done enough? As Matt Whitling has said, when I have sacrificed myself for my students. As a teacher, what do I desire for my students? That they, too, sacrifice themselves for others. Learning is sacrifice if seen as vocation. If seen with career in mind, it is selfish and self-centered.

As a teacher, if I see teaching as a career, my students either aid my ends or inhibit them. I am pleased when they perform as I wish and grow angered when they do not. They are pleased with me when they perform as they believe they should or at least receive the recognition they believe they deserve and grow embittered when they do not. Both they and I cease to relate, cease to love, and instead bite and devour one another in the pursuit of what ends in death. And if so taught, will this not be the pattern of our lives?

What then of this distinction?  What of the choice between career and vocation? How can we know? The question is the motive; the significance is the heart. 

This must be our view for our students; to demand a path of success and attainment is to commit and demand commitment where God simply calls for submission. But this “simple” submission is the way of the cross, the way of Christ, the only way that leads to where all learning and all endeavors must have their end, in the joy of the presence of the pleasure of God.

Guest Post: Career vs. Vocation (Part 2)

(The following is the second in a three-part series on the question of career versus vocation - a key distinction parents need to help their students wrestle with as they consider future education and life goals. This series is authored by Todd J. Wedel, Veritas Classical Academy Grammar School principal and Rhetoric School teacher.)

The “good” career mind is more insidious than obvious. At OU, I taught many students in the HR department who desired, from what I could tell, to earnestly earn degrees and move into fields that would serve others and forward positive change in the world, changes I could assent to—aiding those in poverty, seeking racial reconciliation, working for peace. At surface, they appeared to be seeking a vocation, a calling, for were they not desiring an end to serve others?

Yet for so many, their education, if not something that suited their vision of the end, was an impediment. I was an obstacle. The material was a burden. The skills were irrelevant. You see, they had subtly brought a career mind—what suited their ends, even their view of service, was valuable; what did not suit those ends was not.

Now, lest I sound too judgmental, I am not saying that these may not have brought real change and service; what I am saying is that if this was their attitude towards education, would it not be their attitude in their profession? Those they served could so easily become objectified, becoming objects to be served instead of people to serve. Those they would seek to aid would be seen as worthy of aid if they fit the paradigm, fit the program, fit the model. Only what suits the end is valuable; what does not is negligible.

Once we find ourselves in this mindset, it is we, not those we serve, who become the determinants of value and need. Why learn about someone if they will not be served? Why seek to work with an individual or group if they will not change? We become, at heart, great pragmatists, of the worst sort, for our ends seem noble and generous, good and righteous, but in the name of helping humanity, we ignore people. You see, how they, as students, saw learning, so they would see people. 

In contrast, our submission to a vocation means that we do, in fact, seek excellence, but our desire for excellence is for faithfulness. We see our call to be excellent whether advancement or acclaim come or go; we may, indeed, apply for promotions, seek greater responsibility, greater positions of authority, but we seek these patiently and waiting. It is God who justifies and approves, and if it is His approval to give advancement, then that is His will; if not, His will again. 

Or perhaps it is better to say we do not, ever, seek advancement. What we seek are simply greater avenues for service. Unlike the career, in which greater position means greater responsibility to the job and perhaps over people, the vocation sees greater position as greater responsibility to God and always in service to people. A career mindset will always seem others as a means or an impediment; a vocation mindset will always see others first, self and position last.

So our doctor and our hairdresser may each seek career as described or they may seek vocation. They may seek service. It is easy to conceive of the doctor in this way, and I am sure we all know many of whom this could be said. But what of the hairdresser? In what way can she or he serve? I will but note that such a position, as radical as this may sound, may participate in the redemption of the world. If beauty is valuable, then the hairdresser can participate in that work. However, such an endeavor must take thought and care to not simply perpetuate our culture’s obsession with surface things and cheap obsessions. Or in a much more basic, and perhaps therefore more radical measure, he could simply love the people whom he serves.

Our culture is one of overwhelming interaction but little sense of investment or community. It is often people in such positions that can be the most basic of all elements of redemption—valuing the individual before them, listening, engaging, expressing interest and concern. These things, these apparently base and common actions, are the “weak things” of the world that God can use to confound the strong.

(To be continued)

Guest Post: Career vs. Vocation (Part 1)

(The following is the first in a three-part series on the question of career versus vocation - a key distinction parents need to help their students wrestle with as they consider future education and life goals. This series is authored by Todd J. Wedel, Veritas Classical Academy Grammar School principal and Rhetoric School teacher.)

I have a friend who is in a relationship. He is in love; she is not. In one conversation, she used the somewhat overused expression that she was “focused on her career.” I have always detested that phrase, seeing it as simply another expression of self-focus, but in conversing with my friend, a distinction crystalized that I had not apprehended before.

The problem is not, as I had before believed, that one was committed to the career instead of something else, but that a person always had a career. The example always in my mind was that a husband should always put his family first, his career latter. I came to see, though, that the distinction is not between a focus on career and the pursuit of a career in another manner, but a much more radical division, a distinction between a career and a vocation.

I am not quibbling over vocabulary; the distinction is real and matters foundationally to what we desire and live for. It affects our motivations and goals and our relationships, especially in such a money- and position-driven time and place as modern America.

The distinction is stark and speaks to the heartward direction of our lives: we commit to a career; we submit to a vocation. The career becomes that end towards which all our endeavors and all our desires for whatever it is we are doing tend. The vocation is not its own end; all our endeavors and all our desires are for God; the vocation a means.

Nor must we misname “career” as “profession” and “vocation” as “job.” The division is not between the doctor and the hairdresser. Each may pursue his or her chosen path for career or vocation. To see the heart, though, all one must do is look to the means. A career-minded doctor will talk or think of getting through college and med school, not going through. In the latter, learning is a part of the process, valuable not just as a means to the end but as a part of the end; in the former, learning is a necessary evil.

I saw this once very clearly defined in a conversation with a friend who had gone through med school. We were discussing current medical costs, the health care system, and all the related issues. It came out in the conversation that a part of the reason my friend saw justification for healthcare workers to charge whatever they wanted and whatever they could was that they had to “endure” residency. The pain and suffering they experienced (and it is a rigorous and grueling time) had to be paid back by someone, here, the patients. Such a mindset reveals that the doctor who would claim to be working in service of his patients sees them, at least partially, as a means to gain back what he has lost. He “deserves” whatever he can demand because he has endured what they have not.

The same could be said of the hairdresser. While perhaps the training is less grueling, the attitude could be the same. Let me seek my “vocation” so that I may somehow earn what “I deserve.” Or, as is so often said, “I have paid my dues.” Such an attitude is a mind fixed upon exchange.  I exchange an endurance of toil and stress so that I may be owed a certain type of life, of acclaim, of direction and purpose and end.

Thus, practically, our commitment to a career means that we do, in fact, seek excellence, but our desire for excellence is for advancement. We see advancement as dependent upon us, upon our performance, and we strive for it to advance that which we do and what we desire to be. Or, even if we desire to but remain where we are, in some respect, we desire acclaim and acknowledgement of our excellence. Our excellence is but another means to the end of our career.

(To be continued)

Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference

I (Craig) just finished Mark Edmundson's book, Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference, a rambling yet rousing tribute to his high school teacher, Franklin Lears. While Edmundson's memoir takes place in his Massachussetts public school, he writes as someone more than familiar with classical philosophy, literature, and even some pedagogy. Some quotes:

"There is something archetypal about the world of high school, something allegoric. The kids have formalized roles. The teachers have nicknames that fix their place in the meager cosmos. Even the building is full of highly charged locales - the place where this or that clique hangs out, the corridor where the fight took place, the detention room where Big Fran, the submaster, had to call the police. There is something eternally burning about this world; it lives in the mind ten, twenty, thirty years after the fact, as though it had been concocted and instilled by a small-time Dante, who had himself once been injured by it and wanted it preserved eternally as a reminder." (35)

"In every early encounter between a teacher and a student there are multiple beings present, multiple ghosts, many of them not beneficient. Great teachers react differently to this fact of pedagogical life. Some of them never show their hand. They always turn the question back on the student. They never declare themselves. This is the way of Socrates, as it is of the expert therapist (Socrates is, among many other things, the first deep analyst of the psyche, the spirit), who functions as a mirror, always showing the patient her own reflection back.

But there is another way of proceeding too, and it can be no less transforming. That is to expose oneself fully as a teacher, to be receptive to everything, every resentment, fantasy, affection, and hatred the student brings forward. And once those passions are alive, once they are in play, then let the student use them as energy for intellectual inquiry and thence for change. Such teachers are human incadescences - they have ideas, then the ideas have them; they promulgate theories, they burn brilliantly with them, and they are always, always right. They create disciples, smaller versions of themselve. They found schools. Freud was such a teacher. So was Plato. So, in his way, was Jesus." (78-79)

"In general, teachers do not want to be 'responsible' for students' screwing up their lives because they give themselves over uninhibitedly to Whitman and try to live as the old queer anarch would, or to Dickinson, who created her own God and her own cosmology and lived with them. Many teachers, I suspect, don't trust kids to sift these matters for themselves. Nor do they even really trust other adults to do it. The idea of a society full of people running amok, using the poets and artists to remake their own minds, individually and with only their own judgments and disasters and disappointments as inhibiting walls, can make teachers crazy." (239)

"It was words instead of body blows that [Lears] traded in. The powers that he had by virtue of knowing how to talk and write, commanding irony when he needed it, being able, when pushed, to impale an adversary on the point of a phrase - this power became manifest to me. And I thought back through some of the worst moments of my life, and I began to see how differently a few of them might have turned out if I could only have spoken half well rather than pitched a fit or thrown punches. Even in the face of violence, a sure mind, I began to believe, might bring you through." (250-251)

"Good teachers have many motivations, but I suspect that loneliness if often one of them. You need a small group, a circle, to talk to; unable to find it in a larger world, you try to create it in the smaller sphere of a classroom." (266)

An interesting read that got better as it went along (give it at least 50 pages to appreciate Edmundson's writing style), Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference makes for a nice wind-down at the end of the day.

And Now a Word from Ms. Sayers

Here at Docendo Discimus, it's time for Craig to begin a new topic on classical Christian education. However, as he's currently on an airplane headed to Virgina to partner with Michael Card on another Biblical Imagination conference, it seems fitting to leave you with this point to ponder from Dorothy Sayers. We'll see you on Tuesday.

For we let our young men and women go out unarmed in a day when armor was never so necessary. By teaching them to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects... We have lost the tools of learning, and in their absence can only make a botched and piecemeal job of it.

~Dorothy L. Sayers, "The Lost Tools of Learning"