Looking at my current physique and my current level of activity, most would not guess that I played a lot of sports as a kid. I was full grown by the end of 6th grade. I was pegged as a basketball player at that time. I liked basketball. Being over a foot taller than your classmates is helpful. I played on the jr. high team in 6th grade and come 7th grade, I wanted more experience. I was doing fine in school, so I started to practice with the high school team before my jr. high team’s practice. I had practice with the high school from 5-7pm, then jr. high practice from 7-9pm. I was playing a lot of ball. I loved it. I learned something doing this: as you get older, the game gets faster. It takes time to adapt to this. Once you adapt, the game slows down. By the time I was a freshman, I was used to the game speed of high school ball and stepped right into the varsity team.
I bring this up because it is the natural way that people level up. If all you ever do is play at your current level, progression is really slow. You move up by steps instead of leaps and bounds. In athletics, the best way to grow is to be thrown into the deep end. You want to be on varsity one day, go and play against the varsity. You might not be ready but go try. A good coach will be there to help you make the appropriate steps. This is the same with learning.
At ECS, we try to lead the student through their schooling. We are not waiting for them to tell us they are ready to move to the next step. We throw them into the water and watch as they learn how to paddle. Omnibus is probably the best example of this. Giving a 7th grader a book like The Odyssey and having them dissect that is not easy. It is over their head. But it is the deep end. They get way more out of it than they realize. It also trains them on how to handle a hard book. They learn to swim because they have to.
We like to think of ECS as bootcamp for the world. It is not meant to be easy. It is meant to prepare. Part of the preparation is learning how to do things that are beyond your current capability. Reading hard books, writing long papers, and delivery speeches that are then picked a part in front of the class is all par for the course. It is all done to prepare the student for the road and not the road for the student. It is all done out of love.
ECS has a rigor to it that most school shy away from. We are not here to make students feel warm and fuzzy. We are here to make them strong. We are here to make men and women who glorify God because work is glorious. We don’t coddle boys or pamper girls. We empower them by helping them to do things that they never thought they could do. Things that even scare their parents. The crazy thing is that it is working. Every one of my students is farther along than I was when I was their age. I don’t think I’m a rockstar, but I am a doctor. This is saying something.
Lots of young people in our culture today shy away from hard work, and their parents don’t want to fight them over it. If this is your case, we are not for you. We expect hard work. Sweat (and some tears) are common for our students, specially around finals week. Yet time and again, I see students who thought they couldn’t suddenly prove to the class and themselves that they can. As a father, there is nothing better for my son to be struggling over a math sheet, thinking that he can’t do it, for him to calm down, work hard, and focus only to surprise himself with acing it.
If this is the kind of education that you want for your kids, consider our school.
Come to our info night.