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Saturday, September 04, 2010
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Saint Michael’s Episcopal School is a day school providing a classical, college preparatory program for children of all faiths and nations. The school is committed to the ideals expressed in its motto: Scientia, Pietas, Fides, “Learning, Character, and Faith.”
 Saint Michael’s Episcopal School is a coeducational college preparatory day school serving early childhood through the twelfth grade. A rigorous, classical curriculum prepares students for college and infuses them with lifelong intellectual curiosity. In this definition, a classical education emphasizes the interrelationship of all disciplines in all aspects, ancient and modern, cultural and spiritual. A classical education must include a process of searching and questioning.
Saint Michael’s operates in an atmosphere of trust, cooperation, and commitment among parents, faculty, and students. The school promotes a vision of the individual’s responsibility in a world community. Methods of teaching have the objectives of instilling knowledge, developing mental discipline, and stimulating curiosity and creativity. Saint Michael’s promotes fair competition and provides a setting where students can develop clear values and moral vision.
Students who attend Saint Michael’s come from a wide geographic area representing all of Brazos County and beyond. The school is small by design and caps its single section of each grade at sixteen students. A member of the National Association of Episcopal Schools, Saint Michael’s is fully accredited by the Southwestern Association of Episcopal Schools, the only faith-based accrediting association recognized by the National Association of Independent Schools.
Saint Michael’s Episcopal School is a day school providing a classical, college preparatory program for children of all faiths and nations. The school is committed to the ideals expressed in its motto: Scientia, Pietas, Fides, “Learning, Character, and Faith.”
Saint Michael’s Episcopal School is a coeducational college preparatory day school serving early childhood through the twelfth grade. A rigorous, classical curriculum prepares students for college and infuses them with lifelong intellectual curiosity. In this definition, a classical education emphasizes the interrelationship of all disciplines in all aspects, ancient and modern, cultural and spiritual. A classical education must include a process of searching and questioning.
Saint Michael’s operates in an atmosphere of trust, cooperation, and commitment among parents, faculty, and students. The school promotes a vision of the individual’s responsibility in a world community. Methods of teaching have the objectives of instilling knowledge, developing mental discipline, and stimulating curiosity and creativity. Saint Michael’s promotes fair competition and provides a setting where students can develop clear values and moral vision.
Students who attend Saint Michael’s come from a wide geographic area representing all of Brazos County and beyond. The school is small by design and caps its single section of each grade at sixteen students. A member of the National Association of Episcopal Schools, Saint Michael’s is fully accredited by the Southwestern Association of Episcopal Schools, the only faith-based accrediting association recognized by the National Association of Independent Schools.
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A Word at the Beginning -- for August 27, 2010
by Kathryn M. Lucchese
A banner day, a red-letter day: the first day of school! When our children George and Tia still went here, I used to stand on the front step of our house with them in their full-dress uniform for a First Day Photo. School pictures of our kids in their full-dress best, pasted carefully onto glittery bells and into construction paper wreaths, hanging on curling ribbon, are the favorite ornaments on our Christmas tree. George still likes wearing ties and shorts, and Tia still sings in operettas.
Today in opening Chapel, the matches I discovered in the pulpit were ancient and nonfunctional, so we had imaginary flames burning on our beautiful new candles, but my! they shone brightly! Next week those candles will begin to glow “for real” as the children say. We will compile that list of eager acolytes who have already come up to me to volunteer, we will begin to get our mouths around the new prayers and begin to be used to standing ALL that time for Wednesday prayers. If we had kneelers, we could at least kneel, but it were ever so. We are good at standing here!
Also today in opening Chapel, I read from the Gospel of John, the first chapter, the first five verses, first in Greek, as I memorized them in my first week of classes at U.C. Berkeley, and then in the memorable English: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
I didn’t do a homily today; I don’t intend to do homilies; the words mostly speak for themselves and the children are wiser than we think. Besides, I am an academic, not a member of the clergy, though an academic with a deep faith. But I would have liked to talk on and on about words, as I did to a lesser extent in my first Latin classes of the year, which I had the pleasure of teaching today: how we, too, can create with a word, as God did, but in our own little universe. We can create trust, and affection, and knowledge; we can strengthen, and warn, and advise. We can create the cosmos, the beautiful order which the logos at the arche brought into being, the reasonable order which our current mad era longs for. Let us build each other up with words, then, of kindly correction, of brilliant ideas, and of praise for work well done. Then we will be making a beginning, indeed.
Those old matches had slept, tucked away in a corner of the pulpit, since Dr. James P. Spencer last left them there, thirteen years ago. Jim was a man for whom each word of Daily Chapel was carefully chosen and properly delivered, who could body forth a school from a wild idea made up of a few words, shared in a vestry 39 years ago. Today, he would have been 73 years old. The spirit in which those imaginary flames burned in Chapel today is still his spirit, and it burns very brightly indeed.
Until next week!
A Word at the Beginning -- for August 27, 2010
by Kathryn M. Lucchese
A banner day, a red-letter day: the first day of school! When our children George and Tia still went here, I used to stand on the front step of our house with them in their full-dress uniform for a First Day Photo. School pictures of our kids in their full-dress best, pasted carefully onto glittery bells and into construction paper wreaths, hanging on curling ribbon, are the favorite ornaments on our Christmas tree. George still likes wearing ties and shorts, and Tia still sings in operettas.
Today in opening Chapel, the matches I discovered in the pulpit were ancient and nonfunctional, so we had imaginary flames burning on our beautiful new candles, but my! they shone brightly! Next week those candles will begin to glow “for real” as the children say. We will compile that list of eager acolytes who have already come up to me to volunteer, we will begin to get our mouths around the new prayers and begin to be used to standing ALL that time for Wednesday prayers. If we had kneelers, we could at least kneel, but it were ever so. We are good at standing here!
Also today in opening Chapel, I read from the Gospel of John, the first chapter, the first five verses, first in Greek, as I memorized them in my first week of classes at U.C. Berkeley, and then in the memorable English: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
I didn’t do a homily today; I don’t intend to do homilies; the words mostly speak for themselves and the children are wiser than we think. Besides, I am an academic, not a member of the clergy, though an academic with a deep faith. But I would have liked to talk on and on about words, as I did to a lesser extent in my first Latin classes of the year, which I had the pleasure of teaching today: how we, too, can create with a word, as God did, but in our own little universe. We can create trust, and affection, and knowledge; we can strengthen, and warn, and advise. We can create the cosmos, the beautiful order which the logos at the arche brought into being, the reasonable order which our current mad era longs for. Let us build each other up with words, then, of kindly correction, of brilliant ideas, and of praise for work well done. Then we will be making a beginning, indeed.
Those old matches had slept, tucked away in a corner of the pulpit, since Dr. James P. Spencer last left them there, thirteen years ago. Jim was a man for whom each word of Daily Chapel was carefully chosen and properly delivered, who could body forth a school from a wild idea made up of a few words, shared in a vestry 39 years ago. Today, he would have been 73 years old. The spirit in which those imaginary flames burned in Chapel today is still his spirit, and it burns very brightly indeed.
Until next week!
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Founded in 1972 by Dr. James and Mrs. Helen Spencer and chartered as an Episcopal day school and non-profit corporation governed by a self-sustaining Board of Trustees, Saint Michael’s is an independent school that maintains close relations with local parishes through the Episcopal Community Network. The school relocated to its present seven acres on South College Avenue in 1990.
From the very beginning, Saint Michael’s undertook the mission of providing a superior education in an atmosphere of kindness and moral courage. The school grew over time to include a high school, from which the first senior graduated in 1983. Since then graduates have gone on to matriculate at excellent universities and have pursued careers of honor and accomplishment.
Recent years have witnessed campus expansions and improvements to its infrastructure. Mrs. Spencer retired following the 2006-2007 school year, leaving behind an enduring legacy of an education that strikes the proper balance between head and heart, mind and character - - the balance that cultivates and sustains enlightened leadership for the future good of all.
Founded in 1972 by Dr. James and Mrs. Helen Spencer and chartered as an Episcopal day school and non-profit corporation governed by a self-sustaining Board of Trustees, Saint Michael’s is an independent school that maintains close relations with local parishes through the Episcopal Community Network. The school relocated to its present seven acres on South College Avenue in 1990.
From the very beginning, Saint Michael’s undertook the mission of providing a superior education in an atmosphere of kindness and moral courage. The school grew over time to include a high school, from which the first senior graduated in 1983. Since then graduates have gone on to matriculate at excellent universities and have pursued careers of honor and accomplishment.
Recent years have witnessed campus expansions and improvements to its infrastructure. Mrs. Spencer retired following the 2006-2007 school year, leaving behind an enduring legacy of an education that strikes the proper balance between head and heart, mind and character - - the balance that cultivates and sustains enlightened leadership for the future good of all.
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