Our Four Pillars
Four Pillars
The ACCA Community is Built Upon Four Distinct Pillars
01 | ACCA is Christian
ACCA is a non-denominational Christian school that is rooted in the historic Christian faith. ACCA faculty approach the Lord with reverence. Holy Scripture is the inspired word of God and as such, ACCA is grounded in the word of God, grateful for both God’s laws and His gospel. ACCA’s culture aims to be rooted in reverent love and study of God’s word, and is strengthened by following the church calendar and enjoying liturgy. These order the habits of the community and are formative to the student body. As a Christian institution, the word of God forms our beliefs about all individuals ensconced in the school: children are made in the image and likeness of God (imago Dei), and are both sinners and saints. Families are sacred institutions whereby God’s people can live out their vocations, and parents in particular are set as the authority in their children’s lives, not the school. Teachers work with delegated authority from parents (in loco parentis) to help serve the family in the formation of their children.
Students are expected to work on exhibiting the school standards of gratitude, love, truth, fortitude, and courage. No one individual is able to perfectly fulfill these standards. The goal of the faculty at large is to model redemptive discipline by helping each child understand their sinful behaviors in light of God’s laws, and then sharing the good news of God’s mercy and forgiveness. The spiritual and character development of each child is a long and slow process with few linear trajectories – faculty and parents rest in the knowledge that it is their responsibility to be faithful and consistent in their work, but that the actual saving of every child rests in the hands of the Lord.
An education at ACCA views Christian instruction and formation as both overt and covert in many ways. Explicit instruction in God’s words and worship will come primarily through chapel services, Scripture memory, and daily theology classes to help students build knowledge of God’s laws and gospel. Beyond that, much of the instruction children experience will not appear quite so formalized, but is nevertheless incredibly intentional: the mentoring, coaching, classroom cultures, and general discipline practices are all meant to help students practice and hunger for the Fruits of the Spirit.
02 | ACCA is Classical
ACCA aims to reclaim and renew Classical education. A classical school’s most significant methodology is to use the seven liberal arts to ultimately bring students toward alignment with Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. A classical education aims to pull children up and out of the cave to focus upon the light. It is not focused upon primarily helping students self-actualize, discover themselves, or even pursue health, wealth, and happiness. Rather, it identifies what is best and most worthwhile in our world and aims to help children learn to contemplate, imitate, and know it. As a classical Christian school, ACCA believes that the “it” in question is the person of Jesus Christ our Lord. With such high aims, the following ideas further guard and define the pedagogy of ACCA:
The seven liberal arts are the most important arts to study and form the bedrock of the ACCA education. This includes both the trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and the quadrivium (geometry, arithmetic, music, astronomy). ACCA also aims to utilize knowledge of child development to educate in line with the common stage approach to classical education, which is that the grammar of each subject is taught in the elementary school years, the logic of each subject is taught in the middle school years, and the rhetoric of each subject is taught in the high school years.
“Children are born persons” (Charlotte Mason). Children are real people living real lives even now while they are young. They can serve their Maker through their vocations as daughters and sons, siblings, friends, and students. Their life does not begin in earnest after they stop schooling – their life has started already. Because of this and because of the aims of classical education, students even in their childhood years should study real things and do real work and interact in and with the real world or nature. Additionally, because children are made in the image and likeness of God, ACCA aims to honor the growth and development of children by working with the grain of natural development. Children have high levels of energy and low levels of self-control, and so a school must be careful not to overly tax children by forcing them to work too much or too long. Children are social beings who are eager to learn and interact and play with friends and teachers, and so a school must be wise to allow time for play and social interaction.
A classical education works to form and order the loves of a student. As children are turning toward the light, a classical education and educator aims to pull students toward loving and appreciating that which is most lovely. This does not mean that everything must be sweet and gentle – far from it – or that the aim is to create students who are soft and docile- far from it. Rather, the formation and ordering of their loves is a constant call to courage and call to action. A classical education teaches children what they ought to do and be and value.
Students should be engrossed in cheerful hard work and play. Developmentally for many children, play and work can be nearly interchangeable in experience. Children work hard at playing, building forts or crafting or winning games, and much fruit comes from this: social skills, creativity, problem-solving, perseverance and so on. Children can also play hard when working in school, singing and chanting to memorize facts, stomping about and re-enacting stories from history or literature, and so on. This too produces much fruit. Because education is about the formation of the whole person, the ACCA education prioritizes both play and work in the efforts of students.
03 | ACCA is Relational
Teaching and learning is fundamentally relational work between parents and teachers, the school and the family, teachers and students, students and students, families and families, and faculty. In Christian education, the home and the school must work together closely. ACCA aims to work in loco parentis. This phrase which translates as “in place of the parents," means that while training up children is the God given work of the parent, the school is a helping institution that aims to support families in their ministry to their children.
This orients the collaboration between parents and teachers differently, and sets limits on the expectations of a school. Parents are the first and best teachers of their children, and teachers should aim to consult with parents regularly to best understand the child they serve. As such, it is ideal for the education of students at ACCA if parents take care to create a home environment and family culture that uplifts the same ideals of classical and Christian education.
Collaboration with parents is an important hallmark of ACCA. Teachers are expected to take time and care to connect with families, keep them informed, consult with them, and pray with and for them. Parents are welcomed in the school for volunteering, observations, collaboration, and more. Teachers also need to be expected to take the time to build relationships with their families and students. Small class sizes are imperative in this regard.
04 | ACCA is Full of Craftsmen
Teaching at ACCA is a noble pursuit, both a skill and an art. In many ways teachers are craftsmen of pedagogy. In his Colloquies, Erasmus noted: “To be a schoolmaster is next to being a king. Do you count it a mean employment to imbue the minds of your fellow citizens in their earnest years with the best literature and with the love of Christ, and to return them to their country honest and virtuous men? In the opinion of fools, it is a humble task, but in fact it is the noblest of occupations.” If one considers teaching to be a noble occupation, the expectations of the faculty must be to pursue mastery in their craft.
Consider the guilds of old. Medieval guilds were meant to uphold standards of excellence, providing important protection and accountability as craftsmen worked in their trades. Guilds often regulated apprentices as well. A craftsman could exist at three primary levels: apprentice, a journeyman, or a master. In order to be a master craftsman, one was required to submit a masterpiece of their work for approval by the guild.
The consideration of teaching as a noble craft has two notable implications: first, that teachers must pursue excellence in their craft – learning, refining, and improving. Second, that schools must take reasonable measures to ensure the faculty are growing and improving in their schools. ACCA prioritizes the development of each teacher in their professional knowledge and skills.
An important related concept is that of stewardship: when craftsmen create something, it is uniquely theirs (for they made it) and yet it is meant for others. A craftsman’s product fulfilled its truest purpose when it was being used and shared by others. Because what teachers create in curriculum, coaching, or other professional work fulfills its truest purpose when shared, ACCA does not forbid teachers from publishing their curriculum, writing, or other forms of teaching product, and instead encourages faculty and staff to bless the wider community of classical Christian education with their knowledge, seeing the work of Classical Christian education most enabled when the tools and knowledge of the craftsmen are widely shared.