A 10th Grade for Providence Classical

By Matt Poms Thursday, May 27, 2010

Nine years after its founding, James City County’s Providence Classical School is expanding once again, in what is becoming a yearly ritual.

After adding a new ninth grade this past school year, Providence Classical is preparing for the addition of a tenth grade in the fall, with grades 11 and 12 slated to follow in 2011 and 2012.

The moves will provide the school a complete kindergarten through 12th grade curriculum, allowing students and parents wishing for a complete classical education a local option.

“The vision of the school since its inception in 2001 has been that it will add all the way up through 12th grade,” Susan Oweis, the school’s principal, said. “What we’re trying to do is to set up a program that will not have to react to need or want later. The classes that we currently have at the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade levels are filled, so we want to have a program that, when those students get there, we have it in place and they can continue on.”

Providence Classical currently enrolls 150 students in kindergarten through ninth grade. Six students are expected to constitute the inaugural tenth grade class, while the school anticipates an overall expansion to 170 students in the fall.

Eventually, the school envisions class sizes of about 20 students in its tenth through twelfth grades, with the entire student body comprised of approximately 240 children.

Oweis said that the school’s community was firmly behind the expansion.

“Our motivation is the parents and the students,” she said. “Having been in the classical program in kindergarten through ninth [grades], they didn’t want to go anywhere else; they wanted to continue in the classical model. We had our own town hall meeting to solicit input from the parents, and it was 100 percent go for it.”

To facilitate the added grades, Providence Classical had to design a new curriculum that built on foundations established at the lower grade levels. Oweis sent out a study team who visited classical schools in Idaho, North Carolina and Virginia to observe other interpretations of the classical style of education.

The school then developed a “rhetoric plan” to chart its goals and aims for its high school levels, before constructing the curriculum itself.

“We basically established a vision for what will be offered at the high school level,” Oweis said. “Now we’re in the middle of writing and deciding exactly what that will be.”

The classical model follows three stages, with Christian teachings integrated into instruction. The grammar stage roughly comprises elementary school, emphasizing memorization and the natural absorption of information. The dialectic stage takes place in middle school, utilizing debate and discussion to teach history, as well as logic and reasoning.

High school uses the rhetoric stage, relying heavily on the Socratic method and primary source readings in what Providence Classical dubs the “humane letters” course.

“It lends itself to open discussion,” Oweis said. “In that humane letters class they will study the history, the philosophy, the theology and the composition of what they’re doing. Which is great, because too many times people try to force integrate that. They connect it all.”

According to Oweis, the school has not been particularly affected by the economic slowdown, and funding concerns have not hampered its plans for expansion.

“Our school has continued to grow,” she said. “Somebody made a comment at our town meeting that where other places are laying folks off, we’ve just hired six new people, which is pretty big for a small school. So [the economy] has not affected us; I’m not sure why.”

Oweis said that tuition is expected to remain constant at $7,600 per student, even with the addition of the new grades.