Remember that feeling you experienced when you ran toward the swings, or the excitement you felt after winning a big game? That’s why we are investing $2.5 million in playgrounds and stadium seating. We have done some great work renovating our theatre, restrooms, the portico, the competition field, and establishing an endowment. This project will bring it all together.
A school is a transformational place. That work begins in the classroom, but it gains its culminating impact in the art room, the theatre, the playground, and the arena.
When children go past The Oak Tree, they look for the playground. When graduates returns to campus, they want to step out on the field one more time.
As we focus on this year’s adventure, remember two principles:
- We are mastering the art of living: It matters that your child leaps out of the car and races off to school, even if he or she is headed to the playground or to soccer practice. At Cary Christian, we see “little distinction between work and play, labor and leisure, mind and body, education and recreation, love and religion.” We want your child to become a “master in the art of living,” or a man or woman who “simply pursues his/her vision of excellence whatever he or she does.” (L. P. Jacks)
- We are learning to do life together: When our graduates go to war in a faraway country or prepare to close a deal in a conference room, they will remember the battles they fought on the competition field. In the moments of triumph and defeat, they will hear us cheering from the stands.
In our classrooms, students develop skills and learn new ideas. Robust intellectual conversations drive students to want to know more about the world and to gain deeper mastery of the ideas that guide the way they live with others. But, when the teacher says, “Line up for recess,” something stirs. Those words grant little boys and little girls permission to recognize what Aristotle called an “appetite,” a deep-seated desire or a craving, for space to run and for ladders to climb and for balls to kick. They need to go play; to be children.
In the end, this project is as much about us, the adults, as it is about our children. It gives us permission to remember the power of play.
Because Cary Christian is a classical and Christian school, a concept drives the structure of our classrooms: When reason drives your appetites, virtue emerges.
- We teach logic because we want our graduates to reason correctly.
- In science and math, we learn to align reason with truth.
- In literature and history, truth begins to shape our imagination.
But, in the end, it’s on the playground, in the arena, in the art room, and in the theatre where children master the skill of reasoning with their appetites so that virtue emerges.
You were nauseated before the game because a part of your soul sensed a threat. You had a deep-seated need or an appetite not to lose and not to be embarrassed in front of friends and family. The power of the moment forced you to put into practice the lesson of the classroom: When reason drives the appetites, virtue emerges.
- You begin to think correctly: The threat of losing is also an opportunity for victory.
- You do the math: We are as strong, as fast, and as well-trained as they are.
- You remember past stories of hard work in the summer: You re-imagine what’s about to happen.
This work allows the reasonable part of your soul to refocus the sensation of fear as an opportunity; the queasy feeling in your gut goes away, and adrenaline begins to rush through your veins. The same appetite or craving that creates a gut-wrenching fear, when directed by reason, creates courage.
That’s a classical and Christian education. That’s why this phase will pull our past work together and give it deeper meaning.
- As our campus increasingly embodies our missional vision, it becomes easier to connect the concept and to master the skill. The place embodies the virtues.
- As we, as a community, work together to shape our campus, we become part of the campus. We cannot separate the place from who we are.
Simply passing the Oak Tree begins the transformational process. It’s the majesty of the tree and the memories it evokes. Every inch of campus is calling a child to become something more.
