Our aim at Cedar Classical Academy is to cultivate intellectual and moral virtue in our students, teaching them to discover goodness, truth, and beauty in every discipline as a reflection of God. To this end, our curriculum is carefully selected and our teachers are models of virtue and genuine faith. So, what does it matter […]
Mission Statement
Why Do We Follow A Strategic Plan?
Each summer, Cedar Classical Academy crafts a strategic plan for the year. What is a strategic plan and how does it benefit you and your students? A strategic plan is a list of specific and measurable goals that direct incremental improvements and initiatives at each level of the Academy’s governance: Board of Directors, Head of […]
Cultivation of Virtue
Key to our mission statement is the word “cultivate.” Our mission states that we assist you as parents by cultivating in students the intellectual and moral virtue necessary for a well-ordered understanding of God, human nature, and the world. What does it mean to cultivate virtue? This fall, I have been meeting weekly with parents to discuss C.S. Lewis’s Abolition of Man. In […]
In Defense of Mastery: Our Approach to Assessment
One of the primary goals outlined in our mission statement is to “offer a rigorous course of study in the Western liberal arts tradition, teaching students to discover goodness, truth, and beauty in every discipline as a reflection of God.” A great deal of preparation goes into the fulfillment of this statement. The governing board supports the school by upholding the […]
Harvesting Where We Did Not Plant: The Story of a Brick-and-Mortar School
In the summer of 2017 on a sweltering weekday morning, I parked just south of the Capitol and walked to the Michigan Department of Education, holding the hands of my two toddlers, in order to get a letter of approval declaring us a school. I had tried and failed to register our school with the […]
The Mission Series, Pt. VI | Learning to love: God as the source and goal of all knowledge
“What is your favorite subject?” I, for one, default to that question far too often in my conversations with grade school students. It generally results in a profound dialogue something like this: “Math.” “Why?” “It’s fun.” “What are you learning in math?” “Times.” “So, do you like multiplying?” “Um. I don’t know.” Or imagine another […]
The Mission Series, Pt. V | “A springboard to understanding the created world”: The Western liberal arts tradition
Those who become involved with classical Christian education quickly discover that, as with any specific discipline, there is a vocabulary that usually seems foreign and intimidating to newcomers. Classical educators liberally spice their conversation with words like “headmaster,” “dialectic,” “rhetoric,” “the Great Conversation,” and “trivium.” From context, most pick up some vague idea of what […]
The Mission Series, Pt. IV | “The joy of finding hidden treasure”: The Classical Curriculum
Thinking is hard work. Being disciplined in your thinking is even harder. This is not always obvious because thinking requires little or no physical exertion, it has not been made into a sport, and you cannot post pictures of it on Instagram. It is often taken for granted that kids will learn to think clearly […]
The Mission Series, Pt. III | “Give me a place to stand and I shall move the world”: A Well-Ordered Understanding of Reality
This post is the third in a series aimed to unpack the kind of education Cedar Classical Academy will offer, through the exposition of our mission statement piece by piece. In our previous posts, we have covered parental responsibility and school partnership in bringing up children (Pt. 1), and the key concepts of moral and […]
The Mission Series, Pt. II | “Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue”: On Moral and Intellectual Virtue
This post is the second in a series aimed to continue educating you about the kind of education Cedar Classical Academy will offer to students and their families. We have begun expositing our mission statement, one line at a time. In the previous post in this series, Caroline Hummel explained the God-given role of parents […]
The Mission Series Pt. I | The Finish Line, The Starting Line, and What We Mean By “Serving Parents”
Twenty Nineteen is right around the corner. Back in April 2017, when we first began using the phrase “starting a school in 2019,” it felt satisfyingly inspiring yet vague—like saying, “Someday I’ll run a marathon” or “I’m thinking about climbing Mt. Everest in a few years.” We didn’t realize how quickly 2019 would become a […]