Faculty

Sabrina Moody, 3rd Grade Teacher

A poem a day keeps the doctor away! All triteness aside, it may well be true that this variation on the old adage instructs well concerning our need for daily literary consumption of poetic language.

Our 3rd grade class currently engages in this practice, immersed in a unit featuring Knock at a Star, an anthology of poems for children. The eager squeak of opening desks gives proof of their delight for the daily readings!

As our Petra mission states,

“Recognizing our need for God’s grace, Petra Academy strives to awaken love and wonder in our students by teaching them to observe with humility, think with reason, and articulate with charity for the flourishing of humanity and the renown of Jesus the Christ.

We realize that this articulation includes not just the more-often valued prose writings, but poetic expression as well.

How does this happen? Since children learn so well through imitation, from the earliest years at Petra, we read poetry. Beginning with nursery rhymes, fingerplays, chants, and songs in the pres-school and kindergarten years, progressing to classic poems for reading or memorizing in the 1st through 6th grades, then delving into the epic classics in the upper grades, we seek to provide children with a rich diet of poetic language that they may delight their ears and strengthen their hearts for meanings given symbolically, metaphorically, and rhythmically through words.

Ultimately, by training children to enjoy and write poetry – thus developing the capacity for poetic language – we go far to awaken love and wonder for God’s creation, our fellow man, and yes, for God’s word, the Bible. One of my favorites, Psalm 19, states:

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech/ night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.”

This psalm proclaims God’s creation, the “work of his hands” as being rooted in speech and words, and it is written, not surprisingly, as a poem.

So, there is a place for adding to this great symphony of poetic expression. Why not share a poem a day? You can start and return often to Psalms, and go on to many lovely anthologies and classics available at our public library or school library. Read with expression, read with delight, and read for the sake of truth and beauty. It just may be the start of a wonderful new state of spirit and health for you and your family.

Here are some poems to delight the poetic palate written by members of our third grade class. Bon appetit!

“Seasons” by Maggie Koenen
When it is winter foxes dive for food in the snow,
When it is winter bears go into caves and sleep,
When it is winter snowmen appear and snow blows.
When it is spring apple blossoms glow in the morning light,
When it is spring green grass grows,
When it is spring baby animals are born.
When it is summer animals like to take a dive,
When it is summer you don’t need to wear shoes on soft green grass,
When it is summer birds gather at the feeder.
When it is summer it is the perfect season for climbing trees.
When it is fall leaves drift to the ground,
When it is fall everything turns red, brown, orange, pink, and yellow,
When it is fall the earth is beautiful.

“A Playdate” by Isabella Evans
I’m excited when it’s the day
And nervous at the same time,
But when he or she comes we
Do what we do.

“Poem to Make you Smile” by Elijah Glover
I like teddy bears
Ones from the gift shop
There are fuzzy black or brown
Big or small
Simple ones and complex ones
Happy dappy teddy bears.

“First Day” by Kendall Cote
Sometimes on the first day of school
I am really shy
Maybe too much–
I don’t even want to say “Hi”
I feel so lost
I don’t know what to say
But then I say at least “Hey”.

“My Mom” by Ezra Penland
My mom is one who work and helps
At night she cleans dishes and gets laundry
At morning she get the clothes for school
She drives, she cooks,
She’s how our family hooks.

“Keeva and Deer” by Aiden O’Dwyer
Deer come to our yard every night.
They eat grass, until Keeva comes.
“Bark!” she says,
And the deer run away, saying,
“Panic and run! Panic and run!”

Jim Stumbo

When I was a young Captain stationed at RAF Lakenheath in England in 2003, I remember having a conversation with my squadron commander about our lack of work-life balance. “Why do we have to go out and waste so much time and fuel practicing Basic Fighter Maneuvers (close-in dogfighting) when everyone is already working 60-80 hour weeks? If I ever end up in a close-in dogfight with the enemy, something has gone horribly wrong for the Air Force!”

What should have been obvious that I didn’t understand at the time was that BFM is a fundamental building block of all combat aviation. It was there not just so we would win a dogfight; it was an exercise that developed certain cognitive pathways in our brains. We were being taught how to observe rapidly changing sensory inputs, categorize them appropriately, and respond correctly at both a conscious and subconscious level – all while experiencing the most physiological stress the airplane could dish out.

As I think about the futures of my kids, they’re getting old enough that I’m starting to worry about their work-life balance. Do I have enough time with them at home? Are we giving them all the athletic opportunities we should? Are they doing too much homework? Will they get into the colleges we want them to?

To help answer these questions, I decided to observe Mr. Koenen’s 11th grade Humanities class last week. I was quite frankly dumbfounded by the transcendent level of all-around excellence I witnessed from start to finish. First, it was the light-hearted teenage banter, not about who did what to who or what so-and-so was wearing but about…Dante…and Beatrice…and bacon and the meaning of Mr. Koenen’s bumper sticker (and all this before Mr. Koenen even entered the room).

Next, I was personally edified by the diagram Mr. Koenen put up on the white board illustrating why I do the things I do and how it relates to the reading the students had been assigned in Dante’s Purgatorio:

Our senses perceive an object, our imagination projects what it might be like to relate to that object, desire is born and grows into love. But love in this world is broken and so I must use reason and will to shepherd my desires and loves and…”

“Mr. Koenen, stop,” I thought. “My mind can’t keep up with all of the different areas of my life this touches and informs. I’ve got to sit a minute and reflect and let my brain catch up!”

But it didn’t stop. At this point, a student in the class put his hand up and said, “Mr. Koenen, how is it possible to be a celibate gay Christian?” Without missing a beat, he somehow tied the writings of someone 700 years removed from our culture of shameless TV and Disney boycotts to his diagram of our loves on the board. He then proceeded to walk methodically, humbly, and charitably through the traditional Christian view of same-sex attraction.

For the entire hour that I sat in the corner listening (on a chair that was carried in from another room by a student who noticed I needed a place to sit), the students were engaged and articulate. They were thoughtful and amazed at the symbolism of Dante’s story. They asked difficult questions about relationships, human nature, and community. It was absolutely breath-taking.

As my mind drifted back to my tuition bill and all of my questions about my fears for my own kids, two things struck me: first, is a Petra education difficult? Undoubtedly, but if someone is to be a culture-making Christian leader in postmodern America – whether it be as an inventor, an artist, a homemaker, a programmer, a CEO, an entrepreneur or an electrician – they will have to wrestle with difficult ideologies and resource constraints every year of their lives.

Second, are the repetitive, mundane building blocks of classical education executed perfectly all the time? Probably not, but the Petra community is one in which we can ask each other the questions like the ones I’m asking above. We can share these fears with each other and constructively help each other find answers to those fears so both we and our kids can all grow in grace and cultural impact.

Like BFM produces quick-thinking combat aviators, Petra Academy’s cultivation alongside loving families is producing bold thinkers in an era and in a culture that needs them like never before. Observing the class of 2019, I witnessed spiritual warriors who will walk into the world, see what needs to be done, and do it with a spirit of humility and winsomeness unlike few others. Petra might not be doing everything right all of the time, but if whatever they’re doing produces what I saw in the classroom last week, I want my kids here.

Jim Stumbo is a 1995 graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, a retired Lieutenant Colonel, and a financial planner with Edward Jones. He and his wife, Jen, have three students (8th, 6th, and 1st grades) at Petra, with a fourth beginning in Kindergarten next year. This is the family’s third year at Petra Academy.

Interested in observing a class at Petra? Contact our office at 582-8165 for options.

Sam Koenen, Academic Dean

As we prepare for the start of our re-enrollment period on February 15, we invite you and your family to consider anew your Petra expedition as a journey of pilgrimage.

In certain ways, this excursion will call you and yours to abandon the safety of the familiar, to leave the comfort of what you know in order to seek God’s presence in places you didn’t know existed. But as with any pilgrimage, this is a communal journey. We will travel this road together, fellow pilgrims on the same path.

In our 20+ years as a school, we have walked this land many times before, and using our experience and judgment, we’ve chosen our course through a time-tested curriculum that will be our companion along the way. Our route will follow some of the well-traveled paths, as well as some lesser known trails. At a few points we will settle down for a while to talk with the locals and get to know them and the way they see the world.

It is crucial that you remember the point of this pilgrimage is not an efficient rushing to the end, but to cultivate an attentive awareness that will transform us as we journey. Both ways of traveling will reach the journey’s end, but those who travel the second way will arrive with deeper knowledge, greater wisdom, and truer virtue.

In addition to a good map, we need to have a clear goal. Since we are a school, your students will certainly need to learn the facts and information of the books we read to complete various assignments, projects, papers, final exams, etc. But this is not the main goal. The best journeys are not the ones where we collect stamps in our passports, buy some souvenirs, and fill our Instagram feed with travel photos. Merely accumulating facts and passing tests is not the same as actually learning humanities, math, science, language, art, music; remaining unchanged by one’s study is not education, and change takes work.

The central goal of our course – of our pilgrimage – is to become obedient, faithful humans, who know Christ and imitate and enjoy him forever. It is entirely possible to graduate and fail to accomplish this ultimate goal, for the end of this journey is not a place but a person. What we seek is to know Christ and all his ways, to gain more intimate fellowship with our Lord, who walks with us through every part of the journey.

But we aren’t trailblazers or explorers. Rather, we are walking a well-worn path of pilgrimage and discipleship, a path traveled and worn smooth by many men and women who lived, prospered, and died long before we were born. They wrote most of the books we’ll read. They are not only our teachers, but our grandfathers and grandmothers, our uncles, our aunts, our siblings. They are our people, and as we travel, we will read of their own journeys along this same path. Their words will give us courage and hope in difficult times, and our voice will rise with theirs to give thanks at the journey’s end.

We invite you to join us not just for another year, but for classical Christian education’s long haul. Indeed, the journey is challenging, but the destination is second to none in terms of preparing students to live purposeful, godly lives.

Mr. Eli Denison, Drama Director

This year’s fall show – Le Noir d’Arthur – is a film noir adaptation of the Arthurian legends – Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory and Idylls of the King by Alfred Lord Tennyson – our 11th grade students read. Humanities teacher Sam Koenen, having taught the story multiple times, observed that Arthurian legend would make great film noir, as all the thematic ingredients are there: an obsessive quest/case, femme fatales on both sides of the law, and a group of men who come together for a common cause but end up turning on each other. Someone just had to write it.

Miss Elsa Bentz, Petra senior and playwright of Le Noir d’Arthur

Enter Elsa Bentz, a current senior and a student in the class in which Mr. Koenen made his observation (not to mention an aficionado of all things 1940s). Over the summer, Elsa and I wrote the script for Le Noir d’Arthur, going through several drafts and revisions before submitting a finished copy to Mr. Dunham and Mr. Koenen for approval. Because the source material and thematic mood is very different from any other show that we have produced before, let me give you some background as you consider joining us for Le Noir d’Arthur.

Historically, film noir is considered an aesthetic type of film originally made in the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s. The term was coined by French film critics to describe a film that was bleak, dark, or cynical both in style and thematic mood. Many of the American-made films after World War II fit this description, capitalizing on the tension and distrust that followed the war. Source material included hard-boiled detective novels of the 1930s and ‘40s, with Raymond Chandler’s stories about Philip Marlowe becoming archetypes of the genre.

Cinematically, many of the films were influenced by German expressionism from the 1910s and ‘20s, including the use of gloomy gray colors, bleak city scapes, and dimly lit interiors. Stories typically revolved around a disillusioned male protagonist who is characterized by a pessimistic, gloomy, or melancholy disposition due to a past mistake, regret, or grudge. He would come into contact with a femme fatale, who would then lead him into a deepening web of deceit or trickery that would ultimately lead to their downfall. Thus, film noir was a counter-balance to the popular (but unrealistic) musical genre of films that solved every “problem like Maria” with a song.

The real question for us in writing the show was, how do we take a bleak, pessimistic film style from the ‘40s and a medieval legend about common human failures and turn it into a quality production? At Petra, our staff and students read books that point us toward truth – the truth of Christ and the truth of living in a fallen world – and our goal is to tell stories onstage that do the same thing for the audience and the actors. This play is no different, but the hard truth of Arthurian legend and film noir is that the unredeemed world is bleak and full of sin, no matter how hard we fight it. But that doesn’t make the fighting any easier or any less important; on the contrary, it makes it even more so!

In our plays, we don’t glorify sinful attitudes, behaviors, or actions onstage, so we do our best to balance the tension of maintaining integrity to the source material and play style with putting on a production Petra families will want to attend. Some aspects – like the presence of tobacco and alcohol (both of which are just props) or the death of several characters – may be off-putting to some, but to keep from glorifying these elements of the story, we’ve made specific directorial choices so the audience knows what is happening without exploiting it, much the way film noir masters Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles did. While these aspects of the show are hardly the primary focus of the play, we felt it important to make sure families are aware of them in order to make decisions about younger students attending.

Our drama program continues to grow with each passing year, and this show represents two big firsts:

1) It’s our first-ever fall play. By adding a second show to the school year, more students get to be a part of what we’re doing during a different time (and sports season) of the year than our spring show.

2) It’s our first (but hopefully not last!) show created in-house by/for Petra, as it was written and co-directed by one of our very own students. This has been one of my goals as a drama director/teacher from the beginning.

Buy your tickets now and come out in November for the world premiere of Le Noir d’Arthur!

Craig Dunham, Headmaster

My oldest daughter, a freshman studying elementary education at Montana State University, was assigned to read The Teacher Wars: A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession for her EDU101 Teaching and Learning class. Making application from my previous post, I picked it up and read it over the weekend.

Plodding through 175 years of American education felt excruciating at times, not because of the research and writing (which were excellent), but because of the history and heartache chronicled (and experienced particularly by teachers).

As author Dana Goldstein summarized on page 261,

When American policy makers require every public school to use the same strategies – typically without confirming if their favored approaches are actually effective for kids – they reduce the discretion of the most motivated teachers, whose contributions to the profession should be scaled up, not shut down or ignored.

This is an age-old problem in American education reform. Our system is highly decentralized in terms of curriculum, organization, funding, and student demographics and needs, yet we have expected local schools to implement one-size-fits-all reform agendas imposed from above.

Since political reality suggests we aren’t likely to drastically centralize our education system anytime soon, perhaps it is time to look not just to nationally prominent politicians or philanthropists or social scientists to improve schools, but also to teachers themselves.”

Goldstein’s epilogue, “Lessons from History for Improving Teaching Today,” surprisingly then read as if from the playbook of an independent school. Let me share just five (there are plenty more) of her key observations/recommendations for public school improvement, with a sentence or two from me (as a headmaster of an independent school) as to why I agree:

1) Teacher pay matters. Most parents I talk with find it hard to believe that teacher salaries – public or private – are as low as they are (the median annual public school teacher salary in Bozeman is approximately $45,000; Petra’s is around $31,000). Even if one believed the lie that “teachers only work nine months out of the year,” it’s amazing how little schools – public and especially independent – are able to financially compensate those who invest so much in shaping our children.

2) Teaching communities should be able to choose their own curricula, assessments, and teacher evaluation practices. As we like to say at Petra, teachers don’t just handle our curriculum; they are our curriculum. Few care as much about what kids are learning as teachers and administrators accountable to local parents rather than state and/or federal politicians and mandates.

3) Long-serving “star” teachers often come from low-income backgrounds, graduate from non-elite colleges, and are people of faith. Mission – not pedigree – is what makes the best teachers. While training and education are important (and we believe in both), the degree that most qualifies a teacher to be in the classroom is the degree to which he or she is committed to the mission of our school. Interestingly (especially for a secular book), Goldstein remarks that people of faith make better teachers, which we would say is a result of being created in the “imago dei,” or “image of God,” who is the ultimate Teacher.

4) Tests should be returned to their role as educational diagnostic tools, not educational funding metrics. Thankfully, this one is (finally) getting some notice as leading education researchers (not to mention any teacher worth his salt) will tell you that, as Goldstein writes, “…the most authentic use of achievement tests is to diagnose what students know and can do so teachers can better target instruction toward them.” I’ve written on this before, so for Petra’s particular take on testing, click here.

5) Be real about the limitations of the public system. And, I would add, any systems (including independent ones) that try too hard or are depended on too much to somehow replace the family or the Church. “We consistently expect teachers and schools to close achievement gaps and panic when they fail to do so,” wrote Goldstein, “but we do not provide families with the full range of social supports children need to thrive.” This can be just as true of independent schools as public ones, yet we must ideally function only “in loco parentis” – “in the place of” (not “in place of”) parents.

Some issues are no respecter of schools, public or independent. Kudos to Dana Goldstein for writing a book The New York Times called “meticulously fair and disarmingly balanced,” as well as to Montana State University for including it in their freshman education curriculum.

The following four-minute video debuted at Parent Orientation, with the text taken from Mr. Dunham’s “One-of-a-Kind and of One Mind” address to parents.

There isn’t one parent here who doesn’t want the fruits of classical Christian education listed in the video for your child:

– Respect

– Curiosity

– Concern

– Joy

– Passion

– Love

We are of one mind here, which is why we are here. As Petra parents:

– we’re finished with academic education that doesn’t contribute to a student’s physical, emotional, and spiritual experience;

– we’re done with curriculum that does not teach the biblical story of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation, tying all subjects together and giving them meaning;

-we’re through fighting trial-and-error educational progressivism, test-driven curricula, and no particular moral end in mind.

Instead, we’re of one mind in pursuing this one-of-a-kind classical Christian education as our desired means to the best of ends for our kids. We intend for them to engage with the best books, impassioned teachers, and most beautiful school culture possible.

Prior to the school year’s start, our staff invested good and profitable time learning and preparing to cultivate in our students four key faculties of flourishing, as presented by Academic Dean Sam Koenen:

1) Attentiveness. We become what we behold because we are worshiping beings. 2 Corinthians 3:18 describes this reality: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” We want to call our kids to study with rigor, defined as “being able to pay close and extended attention to that which is studied.”

2) Memory. The ability of students to access what they have learned in the past so they know how to live in the present is crucial to their success. Memory has always been an essential attribute of God’s people (consider the theme of Deuteronomy: “remember, remember, remember”), and is therefore an important element of our curriculum and pedagogy.

3) Imitation. We are made in the image of God and are called to act as he does – in imitation of the truth, goodness, and beauty of his word and his work in the world. How do students learn this at school? Through our teachers, who do not just handle our curriculum; they are our curriculum.

4) Harmony. Helping students recognize and resolve discord in their character is important for helping them do the same in resolving discord in the world. To learn to love and live at peace with God, man, and themselves is how human flourishing happens.

Ours is a one-of-a-kind education, and we want to be of one mind concerning it. We invite you to get informed, to stay involved, and to pray for our little school as we seek to instill these four characteristics in your students – not only for themselves, but for the flourishing of humanity and the renown of Jesus the Christ.

Craig Dunham, Petra Academy Headmaster

One of the joys of summer (apart from the school year ending, of course) is the opportunity to walk back through the past nine months and thank God for His blessings, for they are many.

Academically, we saw students at every level work hard, embracing the curricular challenges presented within each new grade and seeking to understand what our teachers so passionately attempted to present and inculcate. Our new Upper School Lyceum presentations from faculty contributed to the weekly intellectual stimulation, as did the many Grammar School field trips and educational festivals highlighting different aspects of our world. We witnessed the manifestation of fruit from our academic endeavors at each Recitation (Grammar and Upper School), by the expression of creative projects hanging on the walls, in the conversations and discussions engaged in in the classrooms (and, I’m told, at dinner tables everywhere), and through our Upper School Thesis presentations – all culminating in our Senior Commencement at the end of the year, in which we graduated 10 students we loved very much.

Artistically, we witnessed the deeper establishment of our music program with our new 4th-6th grade Orchestra joining our dynamic 4th-8th grade Choir for two wonderful Schola Cantorum concerts. We studied many and varied forms of visual art, and learned some of the history of each along the way. We dedicated a full two days to our Upper School Shakespeare Festival, extending our love for the Bard down into our Grammar school in partnership with Montana Shakespeare in the Parks and their Montana Shakes! week-long program in which over 40 of our 3rd-6th graders participated. Our Upper School students participated in our first-ever Film Festival and studied three stunning films from Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Decalogue project. And, we took a big step in our Drama program, producing a custom version of the theatrical favorite, Meet Me in St. Louis, complete with rousing song and dance numbers performed in front of record attendance numbers – our first foray into the wonderful world of the onstage musical.

Athletically, it was a banner year of spirit and accomplishment: we saw continued improvement at all four levels of our volleyball program, turned in our best JV basketball record to date of 10-3, and won our third state championship in five years in Ultimate Frisbee. Most importantly, we saw the beginnings of an actual fan base – of students K-12 (and their families) attending and cheering on our Griffin teams because they were our own. Our new line of Griffin Gear helped unify our look, and Spirit Days and our new Contio Spiritus pep rallies each month gave expression to our newly-cultivated school spirit.

Of course, if we’re talking spirit, there were our traditional feasts for Reformation/All Saints’ Day, Advent, and Easter, as well as yet another beautiful morning for Field Day, all of which added to the fun. We installed the first elements of our new Grammar playground (with more still to come), our 3rd-6th graders took history on parade, our 7th-12th graders learned about etiquette (and looked great doing so) at Protocol, and we loved hosting our elders for Grandparents’ Day. Finally, our Upper School house system competed – athletically, dramatically, academically, and musically – throughout the year, and we were all reminded of – maybe even surprised by! – the unity fostered by the houses when we retired them for summer at our year-end closing awards ceremony, where we celebrated each other’s accomplishments and cried a tear or two at a powerful slide show summarizing 2016-17.

Administratively, we celebrated our freedom to educate students the way we do during School Choice Week, welcomed dozens of school leaders from other parts of Montana interested in what we were doing, and secured another five-year accreditation from our accrediting body of the Association of Classical and Christian Schools. We improved systems (most significantly being online registration), welcomed new Board members, and attempted to lead humbly and with care for each and every student and family. We sought to own our shortcomings and failures, asked forgiveness and took responsibility for what we could or needed to, and worked to view issues as opportunities to get better. Most importantly, we sought God’s Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, and remain ever-grateful for what we discern to be His gracious response to us.

Thanks be to God…for 2016-17, and for everything.

Craig Dunham, Headmaster

During last week’s Board meeting for the month of May, our Education Team proposed the following class offerings/changes for consideration for adoption in the 2017-18 school year. The stated purpose of these changes was to address a number of issues in our current academic schedule, many of which have come to our attention through multiple conversations with students, parents, and teachers in ongoing discussions on how to improve what we do at Petra.

All of these proposals were researched among other Association of Classical and Christian Schools and carefully considered over many months by our administrative and teaching staff. Both our administration faculty and our teachers agreed that these proposals were the best solutions to these academic issues, and on the heels of much good and honest discussion at the Board meeting last Tuesday, I’m pleased to report that each of the proposals passed. They are:

Bible Knowledge

Problem: For the past several years, our Humanities teachers have noticed a lack of Biblical knowledge in the secondary, especially among (but not limited to) transfer students.

Solution: Add a 2x/week Old Testament class in 7th grade and an 2x/week New Testament class in the 8th grade. These classes will survey the canon of Scripture, study the thematic and doctrinal unity of Scripture, and develop students’ abilities to read, understand, and apply Scripture to their own lives and their studies.

Secondary Writing

Problem: Due to the amount of material to be covered in our Humanities classes, writing instruction in the Secondary has not been systematic or comprehensive. As a result, several students continue to struggle with issues of crafting arguments, arrangement, style, and writing process.

Solution: Change 9th grade Material Logic class to a Classical Composition class.

Note: Currently, Material Logic consists of a review of 8th grade Formal Logic, followed by a series of essay assignments on apologetics issues. These essays focused primarily on argumentation, but not the other aspects of writing. The curriculum for Classical Composition will shore up students’ logic skills by training them not only in crafting logically sound arguments, but also expressing them in the most persuasive way.

11th Grade Course Load

Problem: For several years, students have remarked about how much more difficult the junior year workload is compared to the sophomore workload. This is due primarily to the relative ease of the 10th grade classes compared with the 11th grade classes, especially Rhetoric, Trigonometry, and Chemistry.

Solution: Implementing the previously-approved math tracking program (see Board packet from April 2017) in the 11th grade year will alleviate the homework load for juniors in the standard math track, who will take Algebra II instead of Trigonometry. Another needed solution is to switch when Biology and Chemistry are offering, moving Chemistry to 10th grade and Biology to 11h grade.

Note: Other ACCS schools (i.e. The Oaks and Ambrose specifically) offer Chemistry in 10th grade, and the prerequisite math for Chemistry is basic Algebra, which all students will have taken by 10th grade.

Dual Enrollment for Computer Science II

Problem: The students of our first Computer Science class missed the dual enrollment opportunity provided for this year’s Computer Science class. And the current dual enrollment students are very excited about computer programming and eager to continue growing in their knowledge of this subject.

Solution: Offer Computer Science II as a dual enrollment class for all students who have taken Computer Science I. All of next year’s juniors and seniors will be eligible for this class and its dual enrollment opportunity through Montana State University.

12th Grade Course Offering

Problem: Our current senior class offerings require students to choose between Physics/Calculus and Economics/Government classes. The math/science track is demanding, but so is the econ/govt track, which requires students to do Humanities-style reading and discussion in addition to their normal Humanities and Aesthetics reading. The following changes to our senior class offerings address several issues.

Solutions:

Streamline Rhetoric II as a 2x/week class – At the recommendation of Ginny Owens, our Rhetoric teacher, the senior thesis project could be taught in a 2x/week class. This focuses all the instruction and student work on the researching, planning, writing, preparation, and delivery of the senior thesis, the capstone project of a Petra Academy education.

Offer Civics as a 3x/week class – Civics is an important class for all students to take, especially as it helps shore up their knowledge of 19th and 20th century American history. Civics will be offered the same period as Rhetoric II, on the days Rhetoric II does not meet.

Move Aesthetics material into Humanities 12 – Due to several overlaps in content between Humanities 12 and Aesthetics, it makes good sense to combine these into the same class. Making Civics a required class also allows us to move some of the Humanities 12 political philosophy materials into Civics. This eliminates any unnecessary redundancy among these three classes.

Add Survey of Mathematics class to help seniors shore up math skills – This was addressed (and approved) in the math tracking proposal, but it is extremely important for seniors to take a math class. First, math is a subject worth studying for its own beauty, but also for the way it trains our minds to think and reason. Second, most colleges and universities require students to take math classes, so seniors need at least to shore up their math skills their 12th grade year. This Survey of Mathematics course reviews important concepts from Algebra, Geometry, and Trigonometry.

Offer Spanish III in 12th grade – The above changes result in an empty period. Spanish III is the best class offering for this slot, as it enables students to take one more language class with the emphasis on grammar review, cultural study, and conversation.

These proposed adjustments and additions are organized together in our tentative Secondary schedules and Electiva listings.

As Headmaster, I’m grateful to be leading a school committed to the ancient pursuit of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty with a willingness to work for improvement in doing so. Thank you to our Petra Board, faculty and staff, and parents and students for helping to propel us forward in our mission, striving to awaken love and wonder in our students for the flourishing of humanity and the renown of Jesus the Christ.

Craig Dunham, Headmaster

When our girls were younger and we were invited to another family’s house for dinner, Megan and I made it a point not to give them the “be on your best behavior” talk before getting out of the minivan. The reason? We didn’t want to suggest that there should be a difference between how they acted with us and how they acted when they were with others.

Last week, I shared this story with our secondary students while telling them about our upcoming Association of Classical and Christian Schools accreditation visit this Wednesday and Thursday. To be sure, I said, the visit is an important one, as our next 5-year accreditation is on the line. But (as I also said), I wasn’t asking the students to “be on their best behavior” or pretend to be something they – we – aren’t, because who they – we – are will be enough.

It will be enough because of what God has done and is doing in our midst as a community. As Headmaster, I’m aware of plenty of faults and flaws (including our/my own) at Petra, not to mention a variety of broken hearts and hard situations (many of them having little to do with the school) within our little community. As a school with 211 students from 140 families, it can sometimes seem that we have more issues than National Geographic, which isn’t true (National Geographic has been around for a long time), but the challenges weigh heavily nonetheless.

That’s when I find myself most grateful for the first phrase of our mission statement (“Recognizing our need for God’s grace…”), as well as the fact that an increasing number in our community are choosing to embrace and function by our relational covenant (“believe the best in one another, stand shoulder to shoulder, talk to and not about one another”). It’s never easy to admit falling short, but it’s easier to talk about when it’s for the purpose of improving.

The Scriptures remind us that God blesses such attempts: “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” (James 5:16) Perhaps like you, I’m grateful for this promise of progress.

As I’ve said plenty of times before, we’re not a perfect school, but we are a progressing one that seeks and acts to improve and get better. I believe this week’s upcoming accreditation visit will prove this out, and I’m glad for the committee to get to know us (warts and all), so they might see God’s grace at work in the midst of our great need for it.

ACCS accrediting committee: Kenneth Trotter, David Diener, Carl Warmouth.

I’m also glad for the chance to learn from other headmasters carrying on good classical Christian education work around the country (after all, there aren’t a lot of ACCS schools here in Montana). I trust parents will take the initiative to greet our guests on Wednesday and Thursday, rolling out the Montana welcome wagon and letting them know we’re glad they’re here.

Thanks for being at Petra, and thanks for including and enabling our family to be so as well. I’m grateful to lead our imperfect but improving school and look forward to what we all will learn from this week.

Craig Dunham, Headmaster

Perhaps you read the news last month of the demise of the Pioneer Cabin Tree, the great Sequoia “tunnel tree” in Calaveras Big Trees State Park, 90 miles east of Sacramento. When I read the story, I found myself wondering why the tree’s collapse seemed so surprising to so many: take a tree and cut out two-thirds of its trunk, and what does one expect will happen when high rains and floodwaters come?

Pioneer Cabin Tree before its demise.

We shouldn’t miss the metaphor as it relates to education. Up until the end of the 19th century, the “trunk” of an American student’s tutelage was the teaching of humility and character, logic and reason, writing and rhetoric – all with a particular moral end in mind. This was the education of our first Presidents and many of those who laid and built upon the early foundations of our nation.

The fallen “tunnel tree.”

Today, however, our school systems have reduced learning to a pragmatic pursuit of a job. Progressives like John Dewey and others essentially cut out the heart of true education – of “paideia,” the raising and enculturation of a moral and ethical civilization – opting instead for a gutted tourist stop along the way to employment.

Granted, one can argue that a good education is always useful, but it is also true that a useful education is not always good. Henry T. Edmondson III, writing in his book John Dewey and the Decline of American Education, clarifies:

Aristotle criticizes the education of the Spartans precisely because their education was directed only toward ‘necessary and useful things,’ with little regard for what is ‘noble.’ In this light, it is notable that although historians grant the Spartans the respect they are due for their martial discipline, the same historians also note that the Spartans left no philosophical, literary, or political legacy, unlike their Athenian rivals.

Here we have a paradox: In making utility the chief goal of education, we sacrifice much of its usefulness. A merely utilitarian education is largely ineffectual precisely because it does not seek to make a student good, or at least to teach him what is good, or even to provide him with those principles that guide good behavior – all of which qualities are essential aspects of true utility. (p. 80)

What’s a solution? Edmondson references Plato:

Plato explains that the central thrust of education must be to cultivate intellectual and moral virtue because ‘virtue…would be a certain health, beauty, and good condition of the soul’; without an education directed to the soul, the student will be left with ‘vice’ which is a ‘sickness, ugliness and weakness’ of the soul. (p. 82)

When was the last time “the central thrust of education to cultivate intellectual and moral virtue” was the discussion at the local, state, or national levels concerning our country’s education departments? When was the last time truth, goodness, and beauty (instead of just how our student(s) did on the latest test) was the topic at our own kitchen tables?

Later this week, re-enrollment opens exclusively for current Petra families. Obviously, we would love for 100% of our student body to re-enroll for next year. What will be your family’s parameters for deciding whether to return in 2017-18? Here are four I sometimes hear from parents, along with a few thoughts for rumination:

1) Grades. One consideration may be whether a student is making A’s (straight or otherwise), but let’s avoid setting up that idol – in our kids’ hearts or in our own – as a goal for their education. So many student issues (now and later) stem from a preoccupation with grades, and I find that nine times out of ten, when a student is so preoccupied, it is because her parents are as well. Grades can be a motivator, sure, as well as a means to evaluate some degree of mastery, yes, but (to paraphrase Mark 8:36), “…what does it profit a student to gain straight A’s and forfeit his soul?” After all, in the words of author Walker Percy, “You can get all A’s and still flunk life.”

2) Workload. Another consideration is workload. As a parent, none of us enjoys seeing our kids struggle, but nothing teaches students perseverance and work ethic more than having to get over a high bar (and Petra’s is one of the highest at every grade). If there is an epidemic in 21st-century parenting, it is giving into the temptation and tendency to intervene rather than coach, to teach to avoid struggle rather than lean into and work through it. And yet, those who trust the process and persevere (even and at times with tears) eventually join the ranks of those who take great satisfaction in having worked hard to accomplish something great. To graduate from Petra is not easy, but I have yet to meet an alumnus who regrets having done the work to do so.

3) Impact on family life. A third re-enrollment consideration is the impact on family life, for as I tell interested parents on our Tours on Thursdays, if we’re not being impacted at home, something’s wrong. Classical Christian education is not something to be compartmentalized and left at school over the weekend. It comes home with our students on a daily basis in the form of questions and answers about what is true, good, and beautiful; it makes observations about our lifestyles and calls into question our liturgies. Because so few of us were raised with classical Christian education as children ourselves, it pushes us as parents to humbly learn alongside our students all the things we were never taught, reinforcing or retarding a love of learning in our students, depending on our attitudes.

4) Cost. A final consideration is financial: can we afford to send our student(s) to Petra? Petra is not cheap (though I’m also told by parents with private education experience elsewhere that Petra is a “steal,” particularly in a place like Bozeman), and while we in Montana have a choice of where to send our kids to school, we certainly do not have financial incentive to choose apart from the “free” government school system we all support with our tax dollars (I wrote about this at some length here). Sometimes it’s hard not to just give in and give up our kids to a school that we’re already paying for, telling ourselves we’ll deal with whatever comes up morally, emotionally, or spiritually with our student(s), all the while hoping for the best academically.

But perhaps a better question is this: can we afford not to send our student(s) to Petra? Where else in Bozeman are elementary, middle school, and high school students intentionally and unapologetically taught virtue and character by learning the basics of language (ancient and modern), reading the greatest books of literature, searching the lessons and ideas of history and philosophy, engaging in the mysteries of the sciences and mathematics, training in logical thinking and rhetorical expression, and participating in athletics and the making of art (dramatic, visual, or musical) – and all with and from a classical Christian worldview modeled and delivered by a caring faculty and staff?

When re-enrollment opens later this week, I hope you’ll give thought to these four considerations. Make no mistake: we want your family excited about the benefits of classical Christian education and back at Petra next year. We also want you to rest assured that, after 21 years, we know who we are and want to be as a school, and this identity – this trunk of our tree – is one we have no intention of hollowing out. Our mission:

We invite you to join us as part of it again next year.

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