JoANNE YOUNG / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Sunday, December 11, 2005 6:00 pm
It's not a one-room schoolhouse. It’s the education wing at the rear of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. But the rooms look and feel like a Class 1 school — a Class 1 school from the old days — when students focused on phonics and diagramming sentences. When they learned Latin instead of Spanish and Chinese.
The leaders of the church planned the grades K-8 school that way. Teachers emphasize classical education because it “goes with the grain” to teach in ways that complement a child’s natural behavior, they say.
They drill and practice, memorize as they learn.
“A sentence, sentence, sentence
Is complete, complete, complete
When five simple rules
It meets, meets, meets.
“It has a subject, subject, subject
And a verb, verb, verb.
It makes sense, sense, sense
With every word, word, word.
“Add a capital letter, letter
And an end mark, mark
Now, we’re finished,
And aren’t we smart!
Now our sentence has all its parts!”
They also memorize Bible verses and songs. The young ones have memorized the “Stille Nacht” German version of “Silent Night.”
The older elementary students recently memorized Lincoln’s Proclamation of Thanksgiving.
“The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. …”
As they get older, they pass on to the logic stage, in which they organize the facts they learn, then to the rhetoric stage, in which they can intellectually discuss the subjects they’ve learned.
Through it all, the children practice “mannerly interaction.”
“As far as we know,” said Cindy Dull, Good Shepherd school board chairwoman, “we are the only Lutheran school in Nebraska that does classical education.”
The program has been somewhat of a hard sell, she said. But compared to the type of education used in public schools, classical education is not new.
“It takes the student, teachers and parents to really make this work,” she said.
Fourteen families send 24 students to the K-8 school this year. One goal is to start a high school.
“In the next five years,” Dull said, “we would like to triple the enrollment. We have the space to do it.”
Dull’s triplets, Claire, Hannah and Zach, are fifth-graders at the school.
Toward the end of their school day, three times a week, they learn Latin from Pastor Clint Poppe. The Dull children are in their third year of the language, and each has a Latin name.
Claire is Lucia. Zach is Ambrosius and Hannah is Helena.
n n n
On a recent afternoon, the pastor quizzes his students.
“The nominative case is what? JoJo?”
“The subject.”
“What is the genitive case?
“The dative case?
“The accusative?
“The ablative?”
The students, hands flying, are eager to answer.
“Maddie,” he says to a sixth-grader, “I guess we ought to have you do the next one before you break your arm.”
Sure, he says after the class, no one speaks Latin today. But 60 percent to 70 percent of English words are derived from it. It’s the mother tongue of all Romaine languages.
For the season, the students have learned “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” in Latin.
“Their minds are like little sponges,” Poppe says. “It’s easier for them to learn than the teacher.”
When school officials were deciding what language the kids at Good Shepherd would learn, they considered Spanish because it was the most practical. But they chose Latin because it helped the students’ knowledge of the English language and other languages they might learn in the future.
It also forced the students to think beyond just the language they were reciting.
n n n
The folks at Good Shepherd had been talking for 10 years about starting a school in south Lincoln, Dull said. When they built their new church, they planned it with the school in mind.
In fact, she said, they built the education wing before the sanctuary.
The school started three years ago with 11 students. Tuition, donations and fund-raisers — garage sales, silent auctions, performances — are the school’s only support.
The church also has a preschool, with 100 kids this year divided into seven sessions.
Dull likes the school because it puts her kids at a level of education they are ready for, not just what the grade dictates. Classical education also gives them a love of learning and the tools they need to become critical thinkers.
And she likes the theology they learn.
“They have a strong knowledge of the Lutheran faith.”
The only downside she sees is that the school doesn’t have a strong science program. But her son, now in seventh-grade at Lincoln Lutheran, is catching up quickly.
“Once they have a good math and language arts background, they can pick up anything else easily,” she said.
For testing purposes, the school uses the standardized McGraw Hill Terra Nova series, a form of the California Achievement Tests.
It teaches math with the Saxon method, which emphasizes fundamentals.
In history, students memorize facts and dates. They learn how secular and Biblical histories fit together.
Teacher Linda Ahrens, who teaches kindergarten through third grade, said she has to be very organized and very active to keep things going in her room.
“The younger ones end up learning from the older ones,” she said.
They progress at their own pace.
By late November, her kindergartners were starting first-grade math and first-graders were doing second-grade math. One second-grader was doing third-grade math.
They have a mission period, too, so they can learn to look beyond themselves. They may write to, sing to or make gifts for shut-ins. They may gather donations for people affected by disasters.
The Rev. Thomas Obersat came in August from Indiana to be a teacher and administrator at the school.
When people hear the words “classical education” they tend to shy away from it, he said. But the result of classical education is fantastic, because children get a foundation of basics for the future.
With classical learning, the teacher is heavily involved, teaching kids to think.
“I am excited for what the future holds,” he said.
Reach JoAnne Young at 473-7228 or jyoung@journalstar.com.