VCS Rhetoric School: Portrait of a Graduate
In the Classical tradition, the final stage of education after Grammar and Logic is called the Rhetoric Stage. If you are unfamiliar with classical education, Rhetoric school is the high school equivalent. At VCS, we are so excited to be adding the Rhetoric school, initiating the first grade of high school in the fall. This is a very exciting stage of growth, as Classical education truly culminates in these final years - everything the students have been learning and have been shaped by begins to bear fruit.
As a part of introducing our Rhetoric school, we would like to present the following as a “Portrait of a Graduate.” It will be a few more years before we have our first Valley Classical School graduates. But a critical piece of building this final stage of our classical school was starting at the end and working backwards. A team met together over a series of weeks to flesh out, name, and to dream and pray about what we hope our future graduates would look like. We want to present these prayers and hopes for our future graduates, acknowledging that this vision is the telos - the ultimate goal for our future students, and how we believe the Rhetoric school will operate towards this end. This portrait is not a model of a perfect student, but a vision for everything we hope God might shape them to be. We also want to acknowledge that these hopes for our graduates will be arduous, as VCS exists to cultivate the hearts, souls, and minds of our students for the glory of God, and that is not without struggle and difficulty. We do not want to graduate students who think they are perfect, but students who have a deep and accurate knowledge of God and themselves. We are building a new stage of our school, with broken people in a broken world, but we are hopeful that God’s grace will cause us to raise up agents of reconciliation who will leave VCS, going out into the world cultivating beauty, bringing life and peace to the people, times, and places God sends them.
That being said, here is our portrait of a VCS graduate - the telos, highest goal, culmination of what a student who graduates from Valley Classical School will by God’s grace, be shaped by and be prepared for the rest of their lives.
Students Oriented Towards God - Knowledge of God and Self
We want our students to develop an ongoing ability for healthy self-awareness and a deep hunger for understanding more of God. We believe that when we understand who God is, that He is our Creator, our Savior, and the source and end of all truth, goodness, and beauty, then we can see all of our work as worship unto Him. Alongside that, a right understanding of who we are as humans results in us being able to appreciate the givenness of all of our abilities (mind, soul and body), a comprehension of the inherent dignity we and our neighbors have as image-bearers of God, and a better consciousness of our responsibility to steward what we have been given.
We pray that an accurate knowledge of self, and a lifelong desire to know more of God together moves students towards a life of wisdom and virtue. Our prayer is that our graduates would humbly orientate themselves towards the people, ideas, and stories from the past; engage faithfully, generously, and empathetically with the present in their communities, work, and worship; and to begin to prudently move towards the future with wisdom, curiosity, courage, and hope.
Students With a Hunger to Learn - Curriculum in the Rhetoric Stage
At VCS, we view curriculum as the pathway on the journey of education. We believe in cultivating a good path from K to 12th grade, that students will complete at the end of the Rhetoric stage by crafting and defending a Senior Thesis. Curriculum in the Rhetoric stage goes deeper and broader than in the Grammar or Logic stage. It is designed to allow students to taste and see the wonder of science, the elegance of math, the complex beauty of languages, the intrigue of ideas in the great conversation of literature, and the perspective of ancient to modern history. We have been training students all the way through the grades to get to this level, and now we give them opportunities to enjoy their studies since the base from Grammar and Logic has been set for them. Their thesis will be the conclusion of their K-12th education, as an apologetic, classical, relevant defense that the student will develop throughout their junior and senior year. We see this thesis as more than a capstone project, but a culmination of their Trivium journey and a powerful and beautiful way to use every stage of education to present what they are passionate about.
Students who are Holistic and Healthy - Habit Formation in the Rhetoric Stage
Though we hope that students retain the content of our carefully considered curriculum, we know that the habits, patterns, and liturgies that are formed during their years at VCS will remain far into the future. We desire holistic, healthy habits for our students: for their bodies, minds, and souls. Our aim is that VCS students graduate with a clear understanding of the patterns of work and rest that God gifted and designed for His creatures. Some of those patterns are practiced on campus with beginning the day in worship; a pattern of prayer woven throughout the day; and the continuous training of students to deeply engage with classmates, content, and discussions. Across grades, it is one of VCS’s highest priorities to work with teachers who are worth imitating as they lead class and disciple students in these liturgies. In the Rhetoric school, additional patterns will be developed through an intentional combination of structured class time and unstructured play or rest time during the campus days.
Because VCS is a collaborative model, in working with families, other habits are cultivated at home. We hope to equip families with the same culture of training students to engage and wrestle with an idea from beginning to end through deep and hard work in order to be able to taste the good fruit on the other side of that struggle. Families are encouraged to practice this habit of working from rest through the VCS weekly liturgies. Though a VCS Rhetoric week is full, if it is run well, it also allows for family evenings spent together without homework, an ability to rest on the Sabbath, and time to explore other interests and serve the community. We earnestly pray that as families and the school partners together, the Holy Spirit will bring fruit from these liturgies, for the good of the student.
Looking forward - Our prayer for the future
As we embark on the final stage of building VCS into a PreK-12th grade school, we pray that God will continue the good work that He started and shape VCS into a school community that blesses the lives of these Rhetoric students, their families, and the teachers during the last four years of their education with us. We are praying that this gift of education our students receive will be able to help them see God's goodness and faithfulness, to have the courage to help bring God’s restoration to our broken world, and to know God's voice saying "You are My child, whom I love". Please join us in praying that this might be so.