At its heart, paideia is the formation of the whole person. Plato, in The Republic, likens education to turning the soul toward the light, orienting it to what is true and just. Aristotle complements this in Nicomachean Ethics, where he emphasizes the role of education in habituating virtue—shaping not only what a student knows, but how they live. These classical insights reach their pinnacle in the biblical vision of paideia, and Paul exhorts Christians to raise children “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (ESV, Ephesians 6.4). It is this vision that guides our school’s curriculum and culture, grounded in the conviction that all education is ultimately formation.
One unique aspect of our curriculum is the emphasis we place on public speaking, starting as early as 1st grade. Public speaking in our curriculum is not merely about eloquence; it is about equipping our students to proclaim the Gospel and speak truth in love. As Saint Augustine once said, "The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself." By teaching our students to communicate effectively, we are empowering them to be courageous witnesses of their faith, standing firm in their convictions and defending their ideas with grace and humility. By starting in 1st grade, our lion cubs can begin to find their roars.
The halls are alive with the sound of music! No, not the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical story of the Von Trapp family, but the beautiful sound of children learning to sing, read notes, and enjoy the gift of music, classically.
Music has been ringing through the lobby these first few days of school, as our childrens’ voices match the piano notes, warming up their voices and going up and down the scales. Ah, ah, ah, ah, AH, ah, ah, ah. It’s enough to melt the heart of this long-time TRA staffer.
One benefit of a small school is the ability to load up all our students on the second week of school and travel to the mountains for a few days to reflect and set culture for the year to come. This week we get to return to our fall retreat. We have been unable to have a full overnight retreat since 2019, so the excitement is high! Why a fall retreat you ask, when we are only one week into school? Isn’t our goal in an educational institution primarily learning? Yes, of course, but we teach the whole person, and we humans perform at our best when we feel safe and loved in a community. The House system at TRA began eight years ago to create friendships across grade levels, build community, hone leadership skills, and forge character. Depositing over one hundred teens into the mountains—removed from technology and the busyness of life—will do just that.
As the 2023-2024 school year begins, it is awesome to be reminded of the mission of TRA to “partner with parents in educating their children to become the next generation of Christian leaders equipped to shape culture through faithful, wise and joyful Christian living.” What does it mean to partner with parents? In what tangible ways does TRA fulfill this aspect of our mission? The following explains a new program we will be using to help us partner with you.
We would like to introduce to you The River Academy's Class of 2023! These senior students have worked diligently to arrive at this moment here at the end of their high school educational journey. This particular class has consistently displayed the kind of servant leadership and academic work ethic which makes us so proud to send them out into the world as graduates of TRA. They have blessed the entire school this year with their enthusiastic presence and with their commitment to doing whatever is asked of them and or whatever needs to be done.
The Lord continues to bless our school with wonderful, mission-fit growth! While many grades are full for the 2023-24 school year, we have paused our plan to double third grade for another year. This means that next year only Kinder Prep, K, and Grades 1 and 2 will have two classes for each grade level. This raises the question of how TRA will place students into the two classes each year for grades K-2. As a parent of children who previously attended a school with three classes per grade, I know that this annual class shuffle can create a temptation to worry, as we all want what we think is best for our own kids. My hope is that this information will help to give your heart peace as you trust in God’s plan and wait for class lists to be announced on Monday, August 28.
In just a few short weeks, on June 3 at 2 pm, we will graduate our latest class of seniors, the class of 2023. We invite everyone in the TRA family to join us in celebration of this great feat! But why attend if your own children aren’t the ones walking across that stage? To see what you and your kids are working toward. We want you to consider taking a long view of your child’s education; what end are you–and they–working toward?
Our community of families and staff members at The River Academy enjoy an especially sweet camaraderie. There is a sweetness to the greetings in the hallways at morning drop off and the communication between families and staff is grounded in the understanding that we all want the same thing: a rich education steeped in God’s word and a Christian worldview for every student. Misunderstandings do happen, of course, and conflict arises, but in almost every case, we will enjoy more clarity and less upset feelings when each party remembers the fundamental attribution error and filters their responses for it.
We are happy to welcome all of our grandparents for our annual Grandparents Day celebration! As usual, we are preparing some wonderful treats for you, both the baked type and some lovely grandkid time. We’ll also have a photo area (or 2) for your traditional TRA souvenir pictures taken with your grandkids (process will be expedited if grandparents bring phone cameras or an I-pad). We wrap up at noon leaving time for a special lunch out or an afternoon family adventure. We really want this to be a memorable day for grandparents and their kiddos.
Dear TRA Community,
Praise God for the opportunity for me and my family to become part of The River Academy Community! My wife Katie and I, along with our three children (Gabe, Jenny, and Eben), are beyond excited. Below is a brief history of what brought me to TRA. My entire family will be visiting TRA toward the end of April so that Katie and I can attend the yearly Gala. Then, Lord willing, we will begin driving out to Wenatchee (a 40+ hour drive!) around June 16th.
Easter is here! And as the lively pink blossoms herald the dawn of sunny springtime, we Christians celebrate a sweeter sort of Son-rise. Jesus Christ the righteous - friend of sinners, God in flesh, crucified for my transgressions, the sin-bearing Savior - has risen (HE HAS RISEN INDEED!) - “just like he said he would” (Matt. 28:6). This is the shining season of resurrection hope. But for weary strugglers like me, that means also resurrecting my hopes in Jesus. It is a season for refreshing my comfort and confidence that this Savior not only died for me, but yet He LIVES and makes me free.
Considering we haven’t gathered with our parents and our entire TRA community since November of 2019, many of our families have never experienced the joy and community-building that takes place at one of our fundraising Galas (or for the old timers, a TRA Benefit Dinner). Since that time, the Lord has faithfully and steadily grown our enrollment from 240 students to 308. That’s a lot of new families!
If our students in the grammar stage focus on the building blocks of “what?”, and the dialectic/logic stage students ask “why?” then the rhetoric stage focuses on “how?” This stage digs deep, asking the big essential questions about the world, picking them apart with less hands-on guidance from their teachers, discussing with one another, and learning to stand on their own as they prepare for life beyond these halls of learning. The big project at the end of it all is the senior thesis (which we’ve written extensively about before–check out the blog!), but how do we prepare them for this massive capstone project?
We’ve all had–or have been–that preteen who, sitting around the dinner table or riding home from school, just has opinions. They have identified each and every problem with the world and decided on the solution. Or, they’ve determined that they will not do their chores and nothing will deter them, and they have reasons to back up their staunch position. Or, they repeatedly ask “why?” and our answers of “because I said so” doesn’t cut it anymore. These kids are in the Dialectic–the use of logical dialogue and opinions–stage of learning. We hope to harness this passion for the dialectic that begins to burgeon from upper elementary through junior high to its fullest potential, and writing is an essential tool in our toolbelt.
One of the end goals of a classical Christian education is to communicate persuasively and effectively defend beliefs and opinions with supporting evidence from a biblical worldview. To achieve this goal we start in KinderPrep with teaching letter recognition and primary sounds. These are mastered in Kindergarten as consonant blends and other phonograms are introduced, along with providing students with a lot of practice writing letters, words, and eventually sentences.
One of the primary focuses of our recent Bridge event was our determination to read—widely and broadly—the classics. In a recent article, the President of the Society for Classical Learning Eric Cook wrote about this ethos. He gives us four reasons why we should read the classics in a classical school setting:
True love is an action, and specifically an act of sacrifice. “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). God demonstrated His unconditional love for us when He sent His Son to die as an atonement for our sin. In response to this greatest gift and act of love, God commands us to love Him with all our heart, soul, and mind, and to love others as yourself (Matthew 22: 37-39). Not just on February 14.
It is commonplace in the world at large, for women to choose to use their words as weapons against one another. However, we want our girls to grow into young women who honor each other, recognize gossip and avoid it. Many people justify speaking ill of others because, “well, it's the truth, so it’s not gossip.” This is patently untrue. Gossip is defined as any conversation, held in a person’s absence, that makes them appear in a lesser light to the listeners. It is also talking about a person or a situation with someone who is neither part of the problem, nor part of the solution. We always have the choice to have grace to overlook small offenses but we often choose to make them bigger by talking about them. The Bible is pretty clear in Proverbs 17:9: “[a]nyone who overlooks an offense promotes love, but someone who gossips separates close friends.” Gossip kills relationships.
In the past seven years of teaching at The River, I have enjoyed many heart-to-heart talks with our junior & senior young men. As you might guess, these conversations are often created by moments of personal crisis, and therefore end up cutting deeper than curriculum questions to broader life and character struggles…and aims. These are the conversations that start with something like “Mr. Hettick, why do I have a failing grade in class?” (Did you finish the assignment? “Yes.” On time? “Almost.” Did you turn it in? “I think soooooo…Wait! Shoot!”) But before long our talk turns to: “Mr. Hettick, I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to do with my life.”
A growing number of families value TRA’s whole person education, which focuses on helping students know God, value truth, beauty, and goodness, grow in virtue, think critically, and communicate effectively, and are willing, and able, to pay the actual, admittedly high, cost of a TRA education. But what happens when people need a lower tuition amount in order to send their child(ren) to this school that they love, as tuition increases to cover rising costs? It benefits our whole community that we make this education available to them as well.
