A Word from the Head of School

In 2016, my family and I took a leap of faith and after over twenty years in education, mostly as a public school elementary principal in Nebraska, we decided on a different education for our boys and subsequently, a different job for me. Of all places, we ended up in south Texas and it has been one of the best decisions we have ever made.

After months of searching for the kind of education that we wanted our boys to have, my wife and I stumbled on the book Excused Absence by Douglas Wilson and we were introduced to classical Christian education. It was exactly what we had been looking for. When we stepped on campus at Annapolis, we immediately knew this was where God wanted us and where we wanted to be.

Think about how many hours a student spends at school. It is seven hours a day, five days a week, almost two-thirds of the year, for twelve to thirteen years of their life. It is an enormous amount of time. Spending all the time in a school will make an impression. That is not the question. The question is, what kind of impression is the school making on your children? Not just the school but the staff, the students, and the families. This passage adapted from Horace Bushnell makes a stirring point. More is caught than taught at a school.

“A student’s character is forming under a principle, not of choice, but of nurture…The spirit of the school is in the members of the children by nurture, not by teaching, not by any attempt to communicate the same, but because it is the air the children breathe…Understand that it is the social spirit, the organic life of the academy, the silent power of a domestic godliness, working as it does, unconsciously and with sovereign effect – this it is which forms your students to God.”

The spiritual formation of children is happening every day at school, whether homeschool, public or private school. Either the education is being done with the subtle lie that school subjects somehow exist outside of the Lordship of Christ or it is being done as Colossians 2:3 says, “Jesus Christ is the one in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”

At Annapolis, we not only proclaim the Lordship of Christ in everything, but we also use the classical methodology to teach students to love learning but to form their hearts and minds to love truth, beauty, and goodness. As John Milton Gregory wrote, “It is the teacher’s mission to stand at the impassable gateways of young souls, a wiser and stronger soul than they…to excite the mind, stir the curiosity, stimulate the thoughts, and send them forth as warriors, armed and eager for the conflict.” Annapolis is training up the next generation of Warriors. Come and see if we are a great fit for your child and your family.

In His Service,

Travis Lockyer
Head of School