Letter from the Head of School
As parents, we must make many decisions for our children. One of the most important of those decisions is their education. GCCA was formed out of the desires of a group of parents to create a classical Christian school in Clearwater, for there are no schools like it in Pinellas County.
Classical Christian Education aims to recapture the tools, values, ideas, and bodies of knowledge that have been lost or discarded by modern Progressive education. We are a traditional school that treasures Western civilization and strives to pass on that culture to the next generation.
This is the culture of the ancient Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans. The culture that then became radically transformed by the Christian gospel and led to a flourishing of the arts and humanities, as well as political and religious revival, throughout Europe for centuries. It was this culture that gave the modern world its values of liberty, equality, and human dignity. It was this culture that also gave the world some of its most beautiful art, music, architecture, literature, and scientific advancements. It is the culture that produced Plato and Homer, Virgil and Dante, Aquinas and Shakespeare. The Western Heritage is the result of a Great Conversation of ideas that stretches from Socrates to Jesus to today. By choosing to focus on the classics, we are inviting our students every day into that conversation.
Speaking of our students, they grow up fast. Though your days with your children may seem long, the years of childhood pass all too quickly. There is only so much time to teach our children to value what is true, good, and beautiful, to fill up their souls with the kind of things that we eventually hope to see pour out of their lives once they reach the teenage and young adult years. Now is the time to cultivate in them the proper attitudes and loves.
This is why we choose to spend our hours and days at GCCA in wholesome and timeless activities such as reading and memorizing famous poetry and Bible verses, making history timelines and maps of ancient and modern places, reading aloud great classics like Little House on Prairie, The Tales of King Arthur, and The Hobbit, and challenging our students to master the languages and forms of mathematics and Logic, of Greek and Latin. Our students do learn many things no longer taught in schools, and their study of classical languages enhances their critical thinking and reading skills better than any other method or means. (Students educated classically perform academically at the highest levels.) However, what matters most is that time is spent on the true, good, and beautiful as this is what is most nurturing to the soul.
Classical education is the education of a lifetime, and for centuries it was the gold standard. We are bringing back that education to our students in hopes they will be among the next generation of Christian leaders. C.S. Lewis himself was the product of a classical education, and he dedicated what he was given to serving God. He changed the world. Our goal is to partner with Christian families who share this mission and desire their children to be prepared not only for this life, but also, and even more so, for eternity.
-Dr. Jennifer Johnson, Co-Founder of GCCA
