Recently, someone asked me to answer this question: What is the goal of Veritas academy? What does the school hope to accomplish?
That got me thinking: What is the "Secret Sauce"? What are we are after and how do we make it work. Here is my response:
Our mission is to cultivate loving, serving, thinking students through classical Christian education. Our goal is to produce students like this. We want them to love God, love each other, to learn to love others outside the school, and to love good things. We try to do this in really simple but challenging ways. First, we try to get teacher that are really great people--teachers that Christ (and do so with their hearts AND minds), that love our students, that love learning, and that love the subject matter that they are teaching (think about Mr. Siegenthaler with Math or Mr.
Dennis with Literature, or Mr. Dawson with Wall Street). I have joked that concerning teachers I am basically trolling for overqualified fanatics who love our philosophy. If you left Mr. Dennis in a room and paid him nothing, he would do what he is doing now (you would have to slide him food periodically). Second, we trying to attract and keep students that enjoy being with those teachers and in that environment. We want to make a place where learning appears to be what it really is: enjoyable and engaging. Third, we try to encourage and discipline students toward a place where they can profit from and enjoy that environment. Fourth, we remain human in size and scope. We need our teachers to relate to our students as people--not numbers or problems. Thus, human sized classes must be maintained. Finally, I try to stay out of the way. Good teacher, good books, good students, a modicum of warmth for the rooms.
We want to accomplish work that is both inside our students and outside in our culture. We want to see the impact inside our students. We want them to come out as a certain sort of person. Loving learning. Loving good things. Doing good things. Being engaged. Veritas students typically read things they do not have to when given time. They argue about ideas (sometimes interminably) and they get involved in good things. The theory is that eventually, if I release enough of this sort of people on the culture, that it will have an impact. Too soon to tell on this, but our school does have an interesting impact on our families. I am encouraged.
That is the secret sauce!
