February 25, 2011 - The Geneva School

THE COURIER
THE GENEVA
SCHOOL
NEWSLETTER
FEBRUARY 25, 2011
The Secret to Geneva’s Auction Success:
Volunteer Leadership
By Michelle Wilson (Director of Development)
The success of The Geneva School’s annual auction gala is
dependent upon the many volunteers who lend their valuable
time and energy to the auction effort. This year’s team is
gearing up for what is expected to be a great evening and,
hopefully, a huge success. A Starry Knight,
which has already attracted sponsors, will
host approximately 300 guests.
This year’s co-chairs, Tracee Gmitro
and Susan Belcher, have been working
since last spring to provide guests
another fun and elegant evening they
will not forget. Parent volunteers
Jennifer Pruitt and Jennifer Knight
along with a host of others have been
procuring, collecting, and packaging
exciting items for both the silent and live
auctions. Elisabeth Sutton has been working with
Arthur’s, one of Orlando’s premier caterers, to provide a
wonderful dining experience for this year’s guests. Shea
Susan Meyer and Shea
Figler work on the
Starry Knight backdrop
Figler and her team of volunteers have been creating and
implementing the team’s vision for the evening’s décor.
Numerous other parent volunteers have been overseeing
the creation of classroom art projects you
definitely will not want to miss.
The annual auction raises support for the
school, giving us the ability to expand
and enrich our educational programs
and providing us with the resources
we need to do more for our
students and faculty. Beyond fundraising, this event also provides an
evening of community-building—
bringing friends, parents, faculty, and
administration together to celebrate The
Geneva School!
Even the smallest job is of great importance in making
the auction a success. Thank you to all those working
behind the scenes toward this year’s auction.
Jennifer Pruitt inputs data to the
auction database
March 5: Starry Knight—an auction to benefit The Geneva School at Holy
Trinity Reception Center, Maitland.
The auction committee has been busy working all year. Many exciting and starry filled surprises await you on this
Starry Knight.…
Live Auction Items
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2001 Harley Davidson Dyna Low Rider
Abacos private island getaway
Many beach condos
Omni Mt. Washington, NH vacation
Gilchrist Boar and Quail Hunting
A Day in Tallahassee with Dean Cannon
Bed and breakfast vacation
Dinner packages
Arthur’s catered dinner
4Rivers Smokehouse barbecue feast
Mickey Poole organizing
Original music composition
Crested Butte, Colorado ski vacation
Hot Lunch for the 11–12 school year
and MANY more wonderful vacations, dinners, and school sponsored events await your bidding
Wine Wall
This year the auction will feature an exclusive “Wine Wall” section.
We have gathered over fifty fabulous bottles of wine and, for the price
of a “pull,” you may select a wrapped bottle of wine to take home and
enjoy.
With your donation to the Wine Wall, you will not only pick a bottle
from the wall, but you will also have the chance of winning a lovely
wine-related gift basket valued at over $250.
Be sure to stop by the Wine Wall at the Silent Auction!!
Page 2
Grammar School Class Projects
PreK: Sunflowers
K: Starry Night
2nd Grade: Poppy Field
3rd Grade: Irises
4th Grade: Starry Night over the Rhone
5th Grade: Mulberry Tree in Autumn
1st Grade: Sunflowers
6th Grade: Sunflowers
Page 3
Staff Donations
This year the auction committee is allowing pre-bidding on certain items. If you would like to make a bid on any of
the staff donations or the class art projects, please refer to the form sent home in Knight Binders with grammar school
students and emailed to all. Additionally, you can stop by the front office at ECC and the main campus February
28–March 4 to pick up a form and submit your bid. All pre-bidding starts at $100. The highest bid received for each
item by March 4 will determine the starting bid at the silent auction on March 5. All bidding will be final at the close
of the silent auction. This is a great opportunity to acknowledge what wonderful faculty and staff we have at TGS, and
we look forward to your generous bidding in support of the children and the teachers who educate them. Please note:
you do need to attend the auction to submit a pre-bid.
• Pottery painting with Mrs. Stewart and Mrs. Bingham
(for 2 students)
• Go carts and Slurpees with Mrs. Stewart and Mrs. Bingham (for 2 students)
• Workout with Mr. Andreason (1 students)
• Forshey’s fastidious freshman homeroom class working at
your house for 4 hours
• Tennis and Jeremiah’s with Mr. Forshey (for 3 students)
• Mrs. Bingham’s Brown Bear Class Book
• 3 hours of tutoring with Mr. Forshey
• Mrs. Stewart’s Brown Bear Class Book
• Learn Linux operating system with Mr. Forshey
• Babysitting by Miss Jenna Bagnoli (max 6 hours)
• Math tutoring/SAT prep with Mrs. Miller
• Dinner and ice cream with Mrs. Heinsch (for 2 students)
• Family mosaic table, handmade by Candy Houk
• 4-Ds with Mrs. Heinsch: dinner, dessert and Downtown
Disney
• Knit a scarf with Mrs. Marsh for mother/daughter or 2
young ladies
• Nate the Great or Fancy Nancy First Grade Adventure
(for 4 students)
• Blueberry cobbler by Mr. Marsh
• Dance party with the second grade team (for 10 students)
• A day at Disney with Miss McDougall (1 student)
• Overnight camping with Mrs. Hansen (for 3 students)
• A Day at Disney with Mrs. Lindsey (1 student)
• Rock climbing and lunch with the fourth grade team (for
4 students)
• Two pumpkin pies homemade by Mr. Marsh
• Braided bread by Maria Francis
• Dale Wayne original “Starry Night” necklace
• Hot lunches for one student for April and May
• Reserved seating at Lessons and Carols (for 6 guests)
• Reserved seating for 4 guests at a Knight of Comedy
• Pedicures and ice cream with the fourth grade team (for 4
students)
• Boosterthon Party—music and games by favorites like
Tater Todd and Brave Dave
• Fifth grade Farris and Foster’s chocolate party (for 4
students)
• Kellie Harding photography package
• Shopping with Mrs. Burguet and Mrs. Bruce (for 4 young
ladies)
• Sixth grade homework pass basket from Mrs. Gordiany
and Mrs. Natale
• Lunch, shopping and a pedicure with Mrs. Manuel (for 1
student)
• Games with the Crains (for 4 students grade 3 and up)
• Multi-sports camp with Coach Harger, June 20–23,
9 am–12 pm (1 student)
• SAK Comedy Lab with Mrs. Hines (for 4 D/R students)
• Dinner with Señora Hering at Habana Grill (for 2 students)
• Juggling with Mr. Raley (1 student)
• Dr. B is gonna be “Hanging with my Gnomies” (for 4
guests)
Page 4
• A Great Conversation with Mr. Clark and Mr. Jain (for 4
students/adults)
• Back Porch Kick Back Gourmet BBQ/Hot Tub with Dr.
and Mrs. Beates (for 6 adults or 10 students)
• Car care with Mr. DeGroot
• Bedtime stories with Mrs. O’Donoghue
• Bedtime stories with Ms. Geer
• Putt putt golf and lunch and games at Chuck E. Cheese’s
with Coach Ledbetter (for 5 students)
• Dale King’s voice on your answering machine
• 4 reserved seats for “As You Like It”
• 6 reserved seats at First Lessons and Carols (for 6 guests)
• Mrs. Hine’s award winning “Remember the Alamo”
brownies
• A family movie/games night and dinner with the Rader
Family and your Family
A Great Conversation with Vice Admiral John Scott Redd
On Tuesday, February 8, parents, staff, and friends of The Geneva School gathered in
the Black Box Theatre of the Orlando Rep to hear from Vice Admiral John Scott Redd,
(US Navy, retired). VADM Redd shared his thoughts on “U.S. National Security in
an Insecure World.” It was clear to the audience of more than 100 how VADM Redd
has, throughout his military and public service career, helped to make the world a
safer place. Redd has served his country with distinction: far-flung postings from
Uruguay to Iraq; serving as Commander of the Navy’s Fifth Fleet as a naval officer;
and working as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center. President Bush
called Redd “an innovator, a
strategic thinker, an inspirational
leader, and a dedicated servant
to the nation, respected for his
vision, courage, and integrity”
when he presented VADM Redd
with the National Security Medal
in a White House ceremony for “his more than 40 years of exceptional
service to the Nation, strengthening its intelligence capabilities and
improving national security.” For those who missed the evening of
Great Conversation, it is available for download from our website
(Audio Soundbites page on the About Us pulldown).
The Merely Players perform
As You Like It
March 24, 25, & 26 at 7:00pm
Winter Springs Performing Arts Center (The Stage)
Corner of Tuskawilla and Red Bug in the Albertson’s shopping center
Mistaken identity. Cross-dressing. Wrestling. Chase
scenes in the Woods. A Multi-couple wedding.
Shakespeare plagiarizing the best: himself. Don’t miss out
on a chance to be a part of this fantastic comedy! Order
your tickets today!
Tickets purchased by March 11 are $5. All tickets
purchased after March 11 are $8. Tickets will also be
sold at the door. Please return your order form (available
from the front desk or the website) along with payment
to the attention of Lisa Hines. Checks should be made
payable to TGS.
Page 5
Geneva Students Join Robotics Team
Each year The Marine Advanced Technology Education
(MATE) Center coordinates an international student underwater robotics competition. Student teams from upper elementary,
middle schools, high schools, home schools, community colleges, universities, and community organizations, such as the
Boys and Girls Club and 4-H, participate by building and operating submarine-type remotely operated vehicles (ROV). These
teams compete in regional contests with the hope of qualifying
for the final competition held during the summer at the Johnson Space Center’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab in Houston, TX. In
addition to technical skills, these events help students develop
the ability to problem-solve, think critically, and work as part
of a team.
Mr. Marsh: What have you found challenging about this project?
This year, three Geneva School students are participating in the
competition: juniors Michael Ikegami, Sam Knight, and Caleb Julin. Mr. Richard Marsh recently interviewed them about
their involvement.
Michael: I’ve faced many challenges as the head electrician for
the project, from designing difficult circuits, to working in conjunction with a programmer. These challenges have helped me
learn more about my field and have allowed me to explore the
connections between each field of engineering.
Mr. Marsh: Can you describe the project and what you hope
to accomplish?
Sam: The project goal is to produce a robot that
runs under water and that we can remotely control. On this robot we will have components that
make it move, measure depth, and manipulate its
surroundings. Our bot has to complete tasks that
require us to measure water pressure, manipulate
pipes, collect water samples, and do it all from
the view of an on-board camera.
Prototype
Michael: The competition is an annual event in
which high school and college students compete
to engineer, construct, and operate these robots
from a remote location. By April 9, we desire to have an operational robot in the water.
Sam: The main goal for the entire team is to get a rank in the
national championship, but the three of us from The Geneva
School have another goal. We want to get recognition for The
Geneva School and its values.
Mr. Marsh: Are you free to use any materials you want to, or do
you have to start with a kit that is given to you?
Michael: Building the robot is based entirely off of the team’s
ability to design and fabricate. No kits or plans are given to the
teams. We are forced to test our skills as both designers and engineers using materials donated to us or purchased, and with the
help of our mentor, Mr. Joe Wise (whom we met through the
competition). Because we are building this bot “from scratch,”
the hard work of finding material and financial sponsors is
added to the mounting tasks of building the bot—making this
competition one of the most challenging tasks each of us on the
team has ever encountered.
Page 6
Sam: We have had lots of issues to work through. We have had
trouble making circuits that could negotiate both the power
draw of the motors and the power limitations of the controller board. Additionally, we have had to try several methods to
waterproof the components, make our equipment cost effective,
and design the software capable of handling all the functions
that the missions will require us to have.
Caleb: Everything about the project is challenging—that’s the
nature of it. We must use our problem-solving skills in everything that we do; whether it is making circuits or figuring out
the most effective way to construct a frame.
Mr. Marsh: How has your experience
with The Geneva School helped with the
project?
Sam: The Geneva School has been very
helpful with the project. It was a nice experience to apply things I used in physics
to understand the thrust readings from
our motors. The Geneva School has also
been very generous with funding. We
spoke directly with Mr. Ingram, who
was full of advice pertaining to finding
funders.
Caleb: Geneva has taught me to think. Even if I don’t know the
answer to something, I can usually use the skills I have learned
to figure it out.
Michael: The Geneva School has taught me to learn. Whereas
some would seek the bare facts to their problems, The Geneva
School has led me to seek the principles in all that I do. This
has helped me learn more about engineering and to mirror our
creation off of the order of God’s natural designs.
Mr. Marsh: What motivated you to get involved?
Michael: I was originally asked to join the team my sophomore
year by some friends I knew from middle school. I quickly
found the project to be one of the most enriching experiences of
my high school career.
Sam: I have been interested in science and technology for as long
as I can remember. When Michael told me about the competition
he was involved in last year, I wanted to get in on it. I offered my
abilities as a programmer for the team and they accepted.
Caleb: During the course of last year’s meetings, Michael kept
me informed on the progress of the team. After the competition, he invited me to join.
ROV. I have had an uphill battle to get working and compatible
software that runs on our test computers.
Mr. Marsh: How has the project helped you in you personal
development?
Caleb: Believe it or not, organization is a big issue. I am a
trainee and have not quite caught the engineer bug, and thus
the task of organizing the garage where we work has fallen to
me. This was no easy task—when you have diodes, transistors,
resistors, and a plethora of other electrical parts lying scattered
on the floor, desk, and everywhere in-between, it is rather overwhelming to put them in order. In the end it came down to
placing the items, by group, in Zip-Loc bags and putting the
bags in a tool box. Because this was all new to me, I did not
always know what the different components were. This caused
the task to become more than just organizing; it became a learning process as well. For example, I had to learn what a PNP was
so that I could distinguish them from NPNs. With the bags all
in the toolbox, all we have to do is rifle through the tool box to
find the bag that we need.
Caleb: There are three other guys on the team that are not Geneva students, and not Christians. The many debates that we
have had have helped me to better defend my faith.
Sam: I have been focusing on programming for a year an a half
now, and before this project, I have only ever spent my time and
energy on personal applications. This is my first experience ever
writing a piece of software for a real application.
Michael: The project has given me a ground on which to test
my faith, and furthermore, a will to overcome all of the obstacles God places before me.
Mr. Marsh: Describe a difficulty that you encountered and how
you were able to overcome that difficulty.
Michael: One major difficulty was designing the electrical control system. I came into the year knowing nothing about transistor electronics, and found myself spending hours studying
books and lectures. In the end, Mr. Marsh, Mr. Jain, and Dr.
Brodrecht were able to point me in the right direction. (Interviewer’s note: all I did was sympathize with the stench of burnt
transistors.)
Sam: My troubles lie in my own field of operation, software
engineering. My job is to design a system that controls the robot. In a very basic sense, I devised a program that runs on a
laptop. It checks an Xbox 360 controller’s buttons, processes
the information, sends that to a micro-controller that runs the
Mr. Marsh: Thanks, gentlemen. All the best to you and your
team.
The regional competition will be held on April 9th at Brevard
Community College, Cocoa Campus Pool in Cocoa, Florida.
The competition starts at 8:30am and should last until early
afternoon.
There will be between 10–20 teams competing from all over
the state.
If this team succeeds at the regional competition, they will advance to the international competition in the neutral buoyancy
lab at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. To find out more,
please visit www.materover.org
Team: Sam Knight, Caleb Julin, Kieran Wilson, Michael Ikegami, and Evan Terry. Evan Boyar is not shown.
Page 7
Why do you love the program
Spell to Write and Read so much?
By Leslie Shriner (Fifth Grade)
This question was asked of me recently. I didn’t even have to
think twice about an answer! Spell to Write and Read, how I
love thee … let me count the ways! I found seventy!
Imagine that someone hands you a beautiful piece of wood
and they ask you to make a fine dining room table or an
armoire out of the wood. There is a big problem with this
request—you do not know how. You know it involves some
cutting of the wood, some shaving off of rough edges, some
hammering of nails, and the drilling of holes for screws and
hinges. However, if a fine craftsman has not shown you the
proper tools to use or guided you through the process, you
may very well end up with nothing particularly useful.
Teaching reading is very similar—without the proper tools
and a master teacher to guide you through the process for
a while, you may very well end up with something not so
useful.
So, why do I love Spell to Write and Read? I love it for the
same reason a craftsman has a favorite hammer or an artist
has a favorite brush. This curriculum is one of my favorite
tools. I learned how to use phonics when I was homeschooling my daughters. So, when I came to teach at Geneva and
a curriculum called Spell to Write and Read was brought in
for consideration, I was thrilled. I loved it from the very
first day! Here was a curriculum that could be used in a
classroom setting: it was user friendly; it could be used to
stretch the gifted spellers and give them a firm knowledge of
their own language; and it could equally be used to train the
weaker students to use their language effectively. I jumped
at the opportunity to receive further training with the author of the program and I was not disappointed.
I love using this program to teach children how to read.
That’s right—learning to spell well teaches a child how to
read. During the ’80s and ’90s the literacy philosophy of
“whole language” came to the fore. Whole language reading
instruction (also known as “look-say” or “sight” reading)
is the most widely used method of teaching reading in the
U.S. and many other countries. With this method children
Lorrie Stewart reads with students in her Pre-K class
Page 8
see a word and repeat it enough that they memorize it. Spelling is taught as an afterthought. Whole
language is generally effective for visual learners
and it enables students to read early. But it has its
limitations. Our memories can only hold so many
words by sight. There needs to be a way for readers
to quickly figure out unknown words. Phonics is
that way; and the better the phonics instruction the
more easily students will read.
Jill Lewis, a Geneva first grade teacher says this
about the program, “I enjoy using the SWR program because it is an engaging phonetic approach
to teaching spelling that appeals to all learning
styles. It is exciting to watch the students, as the
year progresses, apply these skills to decode unfamiliar words and begin to independently apply
their knowledge of spelling rules in writing assignments.”
Spell to Write and Read starts with phonics. “The 70 phonograms used in this program trace back to the research that
Anna Gillingham did for Dr. Samuel Orton, a neurologist
famous for his work with remedial reading.” Phonograms
are the key to success. They are the building blocks of our
language. Orton took the 45 sounds in English words and
systematized them into 70 phonograms. There are only 26
letters in our alphabet, which are combined in 70 different
ways to express these 45 sounds; and the 70 basic phonograms cover the 1,000 most used words in our language.
As children move into more complicated words, a few advanced phonograms are added for
A correct pencil grip
upper-level spelling.
is so important
Wanda Sanseri, author of the curriculum, says it best, “This profound breakdown of our language
is still little-known by teachers because it is not commonly taught in
schools of education. The majority of us have never learned a clear,
consistent, reliable basis of the
language, and it all starts with the
phonograms!”
Jennifer Hansen, a Geneva third
grade teacher, had this to say
about the program, “When I was
first introduced to the program I
was skeptical. I thought that some
of the rules and explanations did
not make sense. I also thought
that phonics were for students
First grade students clap out the syllables of a new
word they are learning
that were emergent readers. I did not think that established
readers would benefit from this type of instruction. Since
that time, I have seen that my thinking was wrong. “
By using the carefully crafted spelling lists in Wanda Sanseri’s Wise Guide for Spelling, Geneva teachers are equipped
to help students master the 2,000 most used words in the
English language and their derivatives. In his book Fundamentals of the English Language, Frank Irish states that,
“An accurate and elegant pronunciation and the ability to
write correctly and easily without mistakes in spelling, use
of capitals, or punctuation, are the basis of a liberal education as well as the almost certain index of cultivation and
refinement.”
The question then becomes, “How
do we build a student’s long term
spelling mastery?” The teachers
at The Geneva School build this
mastery over the course of six
years. Beginning in first grade, the
spelling words are dictated in a
way that allows students to hear,
say, write, see, and finally logically think through their words.
These words are then reinforced
throughout the week in many
different ways. Students will use
the words in sentences, stamp
the words for practice, watercolor
paint the words, alphabetize them,
and even make them out of clay. In
the upper grammar school grades,
the students may add derivatives,
pluralize words, study analogies,
write complex sentences, and even
Page 9
Fifth grade word list
do “spelling squats” using their lists of words. As the years
go by, each grade level repeats half of the words from the
previous year and introduces new words to stretch the students’ learning. In this way, our students master words and
do not just memorize them for a test on Friday.
In discussing the results of our program, Trish Detrick said,
“It was a delight to see all of our work with Spell to Write
and Read put into practice during The Geneva School’s
spelling bee a few weeks ago. The students were eager to
prepare for it. We practiced in class and the students diligently analyzed the words they were given. They asked to
hear the word in a sentence to have a clear understanding
of the word. They then asked for clarification of the word
origin to identify which phonograms to use, broke the word
into syllables, and applied the rules they have learned. Each
time a word was missed, another student would raise his/
her hand and explain how to spell the word correctly based
on what he/she had learned through SWR. It was exciting
as a teacher to watch students skillfully use tools that they
had been given for years and by various teachers under this
program. “
From the building blocks of phonograms, students are
taught to construct words. We then teach the grammar of
our language alongside the forming of words. Words are
then connected into sentences. These sentences build paragraphs and suddenly a student is writing stories, papers,
and anything else they can think of to write. It is a thrilling
thing to watch a first grader begin to explore creative sentences using adjectives and adverbs to paint pictures with
words. It is an equally exciting thing to witness a fifth grader
flawlessly sounding out college level words in fine literature.
The wonderful by-product of this spelling program is that
students read. Jean Chall, Reading Laboratory Director
Page 10
at Harvard University states, “Early stress
on code learning … not only produces better word recognition and spelling, but also
makes it easier for children to eventually read
with understanding.” Students begin to read
spontaneously. They read good literature, real
books, and everything else they can find. By
giving children the tools to use their language
first, they bypass the laborious look/say method of struggling through a text and stumbling
over words they have never seen or cannot remember how to say. When an unknown word
is encountered, Geneva students are encouraged to use their phonograms and their context clues to work out the problem.
Reading is meant to make sense and convey
meaning. Once the process of decoding is
mastered, the meaning of the text can be the focus. There is
pure joy in reading and this tool helps children of all levels
and abilities find that joy! So, those 70 little phonograms,
my very favorite tool for teaching reading, are without a
doubt why I love Spell to Write and Read.
A sixth grade student reads for pleasure
News from The Geneva School’s
Kinder Corners
By Patti Rader (Director of Admission)
Kindergarten at The Geneva School is a year filled
with many opportunities for students to learn through
imaginative play. Most recently, the kindergarten
students created their own community, “Kinder Corners,” and spent three weeks pretending to be a different part of the community every day: postmaster,
banker, ice cream vendor, veterinarian, pet shop owner, pizza parlor chef/owner, customer, or payroll clerk.
Within the context of their unit on the community,
the teachers integrated social science, math, language
arts, and writing.
As a grand finale to this unit of study,
our students became entrepreneurs
and opened their own store to sell
school supplies to the students at
the main campus. The children
learned about many aspects of
starting, operating, and managing a
business. Our kindergartners signed
a contract for a $200.00 business
loan and presented their plan to Mr.
Ingram, our headmaster-turnedbanker. They prepared for our school
store by creating advertisements;
collecting, pricing, and displaying
the merchandise; creating clerk’s
visors; learning to distinguish coins;
understanding a biblical work ethic,
and more. Our students counted
Banker Ingram hands over the business loan
to our young entrepreneurs
every coin and bill they took in, gave
a portion back to God, and repaid
the loan with interest. Finally, the
profit was used to purchase books
for our kindergarten library. Each
purchased book will contain a
special plate inside the front cover
recognizing the hard work of this
particular kindergarten class.
When your students come home
and say that they played at school
today, they’re telling the truth.
Meanwhile, we at The Geneva
School are very proud of how much
they learn through their “play.”
Checking out
the merchandise
at the school
store
Page 11
Basketball Season Round Up
Girls Varsity Team: The Geneva Knights girls varsity team concluded the 2010–2011 season with a record of 24–5. After the
regular season, the team finished as the number 1 seed in our district with a record of 7–0 and went on to win the first ever district
championship in girls basketball.
Christian School, Coach Jenkins was
proud of the girls and their efforts! “We accomplished many goals and set high expectations for
our next season. The team has really gelled
together and I look forward to what next
season will bring. With everyone returning, I have high expectations
for next year. Maybe one day we’ll
bring home a state championship to The Geneva
School!”
Congratulations, girls—we are all proud of you!
6th Grade Girls Metro League Team: The future
of the girls basketball program at Geneva looks to be
promising if you base it on the outstanding play of
this year’s girls 6th grade team! Under the leadership
of coaches Jonathan Armistead and Ted Sanford, the
ladies posted an undefeated season (10–0).They posted a 8–0 regular season record and were seeded first
in the Metro League tournament playoffs where they
defeated Kingsway 19–16 to win the Metro League
Championship.
After winning only 9 games in the 2009–2010 season, the Lady
Knight’s had a turnaround season this year. The girls worked very
hard and overcame many obstacles. This year the team was led by
the three captains Janzen Harding, Shannon Riley, and Michaela
O’Driscoll. Janzen Harding led the team in scoring and was named
District MVP (the first Geneva player to win this honor since Jordan Kong in 2006), Shannon Riley led in rebounds, Audrey Hooks
led in assists, and Kiki Hooks led the team in steals. It was a collective effort from each and every team member that allowed the girls
to have such a successful season.
Even though the season came to an unfortunate end in the first
round of regional competition when they lost at home to Agape
The team played tough throughout the season and
demonstrated what it takes to be a championship team. There was
strong point guard play by Julia Bryant and Nadine Hering and
outstanding all around play from Annie O’Driscoll, Grace Natale,
and Grace Gunter. “The Bigs” (Kathryn and Patricia Abely, Allison
“My Ball” Dooling, Cassidy Goble, and Nicole Sakr) as they were
known, consistently showed hustle and determination in the paint.
Anna Classe and Valerie Trapp sparked the team off the bench with
their instant scoring and defensive efforts. Go Knights!
JV Boys Team: The Geneva School boys basketball JV team had
a very successful season. With a new coach, no seniors, and a few
new players, this was a year of transition for the team. In addition to
competing against other JV teams, the boys also played several var-
6th Grade Girls Metro League Team
Page 12
sity teams and always competed very well,
winning some of those games! The team
played in two tournaments, bringing home
second place trophies on both occasions.
Forwards Wesley Reynolds (sophomore)
and Eli Brodrecht (freshman) also scored
and added to a well-rounded and winning
JV roster this year.
The Knights depended on the leadership of
team captain, junior forward Ian Seddon,
who averaged 14 points per game. Freshman point guard LJ Noel along with ball
handler AJ Selvaggio (junior) distributed
the ball to the centers Jared Rivers (sophomore) and Edward Chandler (sophomore)
Coach Jazz says, “This season, our hard
work and dedication paid off and with
more of the same next season we can be
just as successful or better! The parents’
outstanding support and dedication was
also greatly appreciated.”
Anthony takes the
ball down the court
all season long to enhance the team’s winning record of 15–5. The team included
three eight graders who also greatly contributed to the scoring this year: Elijah
Noel, Troy Jackson, and Anthony Hooks.
7th/8th Grade Boys Team: After a rocky
start, the team quickly turned it around
ending the season with a 6–6 record. The
team was led in scoring by Caleb Bonaventure and Logan Harvell. Each game the
team gave a valiant effort to compete at
the top of their game. As the season progressed their skill and knowledge of the
game picked up tremendously, making
them a stronger unit. At the end of the season the guys competed in the post-season
tournament, and although they lost in the
first round, a successful season is not determined by a winning record alone. Many
of the players walked away with improved
skills and greater confidence in their respective games.
Coached by Damian Winston, this team
was made up of 11 players: David Allen,
Caleb Bonaventure, Ethan Brodrecht,
Aaron Chau, David Craig, John Halloran,
Logan Harvell, Jason Houk, Chris Koch,
Luke Pederson, and Max Selvaggio
5th/6th Grade Boys Metro League
Team: This team finished their season with
Logan sets it up
for a free throw
6 wins and 4 losses, and capped their season by placing second in the 8-Team Central Florida Metro League Tournament. It
was a great season for the Knights, many
of whom were playing together for the first
time.
Leading the Knights in scoring were Cole
Thomas and Ian Smith. Top in assists was
point guard Karl Schaeffer. Nolan Arrington and Stephen Pederson were the
other starters, and both contributed significantly with scoring, defense, and rebounding. Rounding out the team were
tough defensive guards Hunter Miller and
Andrew Mathias, and rebounding post
players Drew Foreman and Eliot Chandler.
All four reserves made important contributions on both ends of the floor.
5th/6th Grade Boys Metro League Team
Page 13
“God on Our Side?
Thinking about the Civil War at 150”
A Review of George C. Rable’s God’s Almost Chosen
Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War
Grant R. Brodrecht, Ph.D.
History and Government Instructor
The year 2011 marks the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War, a
war that remains the deadliest conflict in American history and whose
aftermath still shapes our national
political culture. As I write in midFebruary, it was exactly 150 years ago
that war clouds were visibly forming—seven southern states had seceded and formed the Confederate
States of America, which had its own
constitution and president, and Abraham Lincoln was about to take office as President of the United States
of America. Surely most Americans,
both North and South, did not anticipate the ferocity or the results of the
storm that arrived on April 12, 1861
and remained until April 9, 1865. For
many Americans the Civil War, perhaps more than ever, is “a war that
never goes away.”1 Historians likely
will explore and debate the war’s
meaning with increased vigor over the
course of the next four years of Civil
War remembrance and reflection, and
along the way some might be tempted
to paraphrase and adapt Ecclesiastes
12:12: of the writing of Civil War
books there is no end.
George C. Rable, Professor and
Charles G. Summersell Chair in
Southern History at the University of
Alabama, has written one of the first
significant books to kick off the com-
Page 14
memorative period, a book that might
be of particular interest to The Geneva School community and one that
undoubtedly will influence historians’
understanding for some time. God’s
Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War is mostly a 400-page description “that shows
how all sorts of people used faith to
interpret the course of the Civil War
and its impact on their lives, families, churches, communities, and ‘nations.’”2 Whatever the war ultimately
means to Americans 150 years later, to
scores of Americans who participated
in the war or looked on from the home
front, it was, first and foremost, a war
packed with religious significance—
packed in ways that many late-modern Americans might find difficult to
comprehend, much less agree with.
In short, both North and South understood the cause of their respective
section in terms of a durable (if protean) belief in providence alongside a
pervasive sense that they were God’s
“new Israel,” each nation a chosen
people existing in an Old Testamentlike covenantal relationship with the
God of the universe. From the beginning to the end of what largely flows
as a chronological narrative, Rable
demonstrates the persistence of that
shared and, what turned out to be,
deadly mindset.
Over 600,000 American men died,
a number roughly equal to the combined American deaths of those killed
in America’s seven other wars from
the Revolutionary War through the
Korean War. To bring more meaning
to the Civil War’s carnage, historian
Drew Gilpin Faust helpfully remarks:
“The Civil War’s rate of death, its incidence in comparison with the size
of the American population, was six
times that of World War II. A similar rate, about [two] percent, in the
United States today would mean six
million fatalities.” The Civil War,
Faust concludes, slaughtered men in
numbers “thought reserved for the
combination of technological proficiency and inhumanity characteristic
of a later time,” namely the two world
wars of the twentieth century.3 Of
course, the Civil War was a civil conflict, and thus Americans account for
all of the deaths. When the death rates
of each section are considered separately or as a percentage of those who
were actually in the Confederate or
Union military, the numbers remain
staggering. Historians’ estimates vary
for both sections, but somewhere between eighteen and thirty percent of
the white southern men who went off
to war never returned home, and estimates range between six and sixteen
percent for northerners.4 If our current “War on Terror” produced death
rates even close to that of either section, we likely would find it unbearable. Nineteenth-century Americans
bore the killing for four years. It was
generally religious Americans—and
quite often evangelical Protestant
Americans in particular—who killed
each other at that seemingly ungodly
rate.
Although the centrality of religion
as an animating force in nineteenthcentury American culture in general
is now firmly established in the his-
torical scholarship of the era and in scholars’ understanding of the war’s coming more particularly,5 a central place
for the animating force of religion during the war itself
is much less noticeable in general treatments of the war.6
This is understandable—maybe—if only because there was
much else occurring that needs recounting and explaining
by historians in ways that ostensibly have little to do with
religion. Nevertheless, Rable is right to contend that the
relative absence of religion in standard accounts of the war
“is remarkable.” Such a lack, he says, “would have struck
those in the Civil War generation as very odd because many
of them believed that the origin, course, and outcome of
the war reflected God’s will” (396). And this was the case,
as Rable shows, for Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, northerners and southerners, abolitionists and secessionists.
“Religious faith,” Rable contends, “could be both wind and
weathervane—a driving force
and a sensitive gauge—but
what was perhaps most striking
was its flexibility and resilience
in the face of political and military storms such as Americans
had never before endured” (7).
Religious faith, in Rable’s telling of the war’s religious history, compelled and consoled,
energized and exonerated those
who made war on one another
in unprecedented fashion.
While there certainly have
been treatments of religion and
the Civil War that focus on
various themes and questions,
and to a large extent Rable
builds on much of that scholarship, Rable’s book is by far the
most comprehensive treatment
that exists.7 Therein might lie
the chief value of the work. His decade-long research that
covers both North and South is quite impressive, and that
alone will make this book a useful starting point for anyone
interested in religion and the Civil War. Rable synthesizes
extensive archival research in diaries, letters, and personal
papers with similarly extensive research in church records,
religious publications, and sermons from the war period.
American culture during the mid-nineteenth century was
as religious as ever before or since in American history; it
should actually come as no surprise, then, that Americans
perceived the bloodletting through the most pervasive set
of lenses available, a reflexive providential understanding of
life that often left one scrutinizing and interpreting every
twist and turn of the war—rejoicing at God’s apparent favor one moment, lamenting his chastisement the next.
In relation to that predominant understanding, Rable rides
a wave of scholarship that casts the unorthodox (by evangelical Protestant standards at least) Abraham Lincoln as
remarkably humble regarding the mysterious ways of God
and remarkably perceptive about others’ all-too-eager readiness to perceive God as favoring their own cause during
the war.8 Lincoln is the perfect foil for Rable’s providential Americans (note particularly chapters 10 and 20). As
many historians have emphasized of late, Lincoln seemed
to transcend the sectional dispute, even as, I might add,
he nevertheless prosecuted the war to save the Union and
only freed the slaves midway through the war as part of that
Union-saving effort. Nothing illustrates Lincoln’s apparent
uniqueness better than the now-famous words from his second inaugural address:
Both [sides] read the same Bible and
pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. . . .
The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His
own purposes. “Woe unto the world
because of offenses; for it must needs
be that offenses come, but woe to that
man by whom the offense cometh.” If
we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in
the providence of God, must needs
come, but which, having continued
through His appointed time, He now
wills to remove, and that He gives to
both North and South this terrible war
as the woe due to those by whom the
offense came, shall we discern therein
any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living
God always ascribe to Him? Fondly
do we hope, fervently do we pray, that
this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until
all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk,
and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash
shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as
was said three thousand years ago, so still it must
be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and
righteous altogether.”9
In Lincoln’s terms, the entire nation had been rendered
guilty and then chastised by the providential hand of God,
and neither side had expected things to turn out quite as
they did. Most northerners went to war to preserve the
Union, giving little thought to emancipation as an aim of
the war. Nor did they expect that Lincoln would be shot on
Page 15
Good Friday, just five days after Lee surrendered to Grant
at Appomattox on Palm Sunday. Northerners would struggle to comprehend God’s permission of an assassin’s bullet
that forbade their American Moses from leading them into
the promised land of a now slave-free and restored Union.
Southerners went to war attempting to secure an independent republic, little knowing that their attack on Fort Sumter would actually mark the beginning of the end of their
civilization that rested on the foundation of race-based
slavery. Southerners now had to struggle to comprehend
God’s chastisement that had come in the form of defeat
and an end to their “peculiar institution.” Rable writes near
the end of his book, “Never before and likely never again
would so many ministers, churches, and ordinary people
turn not only to their Bibles, but to their own faith to explain everything from the meaning of individual deaths,
to the results of battles, to the outcome of the war itself ”
(397). Perhaps. God only knows.
But surely Rable must know this: human beings—Christian or otherwise—have perennially identified their own
causes and interests with those of God or the gods, even
if such a habit does not now seem nearly as visibly widespread and axiomatic as it was in the mid-nineteenth century. I would suggest, following Augustine, that this danger
of confusing the city of man and the city of God is bound
up with being human. This tendency manifests itself differently in different times and places, of course, and not
always in ways as easily identifiable as they are in a civil war
that occurred in a country with a long heritage of viewing
itself as a peculiarly biblical and chosen people. Hopefully,
then, Christians—whether American or not, on the political left or the political right—who read Rable’s book come
away with their eyes opened to the ways this occurs in their
own lives, individually and collectively, and not just in the
ways that it occurs in the lives of others.
(1) James M. McPherson, “The War that Never Goes Away,”
in Drawn with the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil
War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 55-65.
(2) George C. Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), p. 6. All subsequent
references will be made parenthetically within the text.
(3) Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and
the American Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008),
pp. xi-xii. Readers also might be interested in the following
older works: Charles Royster, The Destructive War: William
Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991); Gary W. Gallagher,
The Confederate War: How Popular Will, Nationalism, and
Military Strategy Could not Stave off Defeat (Cambridge,
Page 16
MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil
War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Gerald
F. Linderman, Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War (New York: The Free Press,
1987); and Edmund Wilson, Patriotic Gore: Studies in the
Literature of the American Civil War (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1962).
(4) Ibid., note 2, pp. 273f.
(5) The scholarship on antebellum religion and culture is
too voluminous to note here. Regarding the war’s coming,
Richard J. Carwardine, Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993) remains an outstanding book.
(6) Note the following comprehensive narratives of the
war: James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil
War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); idem,
Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction, 3rd ed.
(Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2001); David Herbert Donald,
Jean Harvey Baker, and Michael F. Holt, The Civil War and
Reconstruction (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001); and Allen
C. Guelzo, The Crisis of the American Republic: A History
of the Civil War and Reconstruction (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1995). Of these, Guelzo is the best with religion.
There is also a fourth edition of Ordeal by Fire, but I have
not had the chance to examine it.
(7) Note the following in particular: James H. Moorhead,
American Apocalypse: Yankee Protestants and the Civil War,
1860-1869 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978);
Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan
Wilson, eds., Religion and the American Civil War (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Mark A. Noll, The
Civil War as a Theological Crisis (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 2006); and Harry S. Stout, Upon
the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Nation (New
York: Viking, 2006). The latter work has significant interpretive problems, in my view, but it is still worth reading.
(8) For those interested, note particularly Allen C. Guelzo,
Lincoln: Redeemer President (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B.
Eerdmans, 1999); Ronald C. White, Jr., Lincoln’s Greatest
Speech: The Second Inaugural (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002); and Mark A. Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan
Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2002), pp. 422-438.
(9) Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, 4 March
1865, in, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 9 vols,
ed. Roy P. Basler (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press, 1953-1955), 8:332.
Farewell Bill Wood
By Robert Ingram (Headmaster)
Bill Wood, Geneva’s Dean of Faculty,
recently caught the entire faculty by surprise when he told them that he was going to be retiring at the end of this academic year. Many at first thought it was
only one more example of his Mississippi
humor, but all soon realized that he was
seriously intending to do so. In his selfeffacing manner he read a simple statement prepared beforehand and sat down,
hoping not to draw attention to himself.
Fortunately, he was not successful.
As the faculty shook their heads in denial and breathed deeply to clear their
heads, I had the opportunity to commend Bill for what I believe to be his
signature achievements at Geneva. He
was and continues to be a staunch defender of his faculty, and he has squarely
repositioned our faculty onto a professional growth track.
hammad Ali and Dale King. And like
them, he’ll find a way to endear himself to another generation of admirers,
making himself as indispensable as he
did during these past four years at Geneva. Nancy permitting, if he can find
a way to get back into the classroom he
will—not with middle school students
this time, but with college students.
These are both singular distinctions. Bill
inherited an existing faculty, quickly
adopting them as “his.” Mutual loyalties ensued, creating an environment
of trust that then permitted him to introduce some necessary changes, none
more important than applying his 42
years of educational leadership on their
behalf.
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
Bets, anyone?
Bill Wood is the most energetic 67 yearold I know. His definition of “retire” is
to retool for the next phase of his educational career. He’s done it before and
my guess is he’ll do it again. His hidden
agenda is to retire as many times as Mu-
We’ll have an opportunity later this
spring for folks publicly to roast—er,
toast—Bill. But in the meantime I
know you will want to personally thank
him for what he has done to instill confidence and maturity into the Geneva
faculty and classrooms. If there was any
ever doubt about Bill being an impact
player, ask one of his middle school students. They tell it like it is, and to them,
they will be sorely missing a great friend
and ennobling teacher.
On Saturday, March 12 at 7:30 pm, The Geneva Rhetoric Choir will join forces with The Orlando Deanery
Choirs, The Cathedral Choristers, The Cathedral Choir, and the Metropolitan Area Youth Symphony. This concert will be held at the majestic Cathedral Church of St. Luke, located in downtown Orlando at 130 N. Magnolia
Avenue. Admission is free.
Program will include works by Joseph Haydn, W.A. Mozart, Johannes Brahms, Gustav Holst, Jean Sibelius, John
Rutter, Benjamin Lane, and Michael Miller.
Page 17
Virtuous Scholars
From the Desk of the Dean of Students, Dr. Edward Chandler
have no way of knowing whether he reached
the potential that my friend saw in him, but
he certainly raised the bar for treachery.
An acquaintance of mine, a college professor and a devout Christian, years ago was the
chair of his academic department at a major
public university. As the department head,
he was the primary recruiter of candidates to
fill available faculty positions. One particular
year he shepherded through the interview
process a borderline candidate in whom he
saw great potential. There were other candidates who were much more qualified and
who, on merit alone, should have gotten the
job. But because of the chair’s gracious advocacy, that candidate was against heavy odds
hired as an assistant professor.
Now, department chairmanship is not something that many academic types like to hold
for a very long time, and my acquaintance
was no different. After a couple more years,
he surrendered his chairmanship, which was
taken up by this relatively new colleague
whom he had shepherded through to a faculty appointment. It was not long, however,
before this newly minted department chair
began to throw his weight around—power
corrupts?—and, in a display of the utmost
spite, made professional life impossible for
my friend, ultimately putting him in a position where he felt he had no choice but
to leave. I should add that this “constructive termination” seemed at least partially
because of my friend’s devout beliefs. Happily, he was able to secure a position at an
even more prestigious institution in another
city, but at the cost of bringing on his family
the heavy stresses associated with moving,
which they perhaps would not have done if
they had had their druthers.
Spite always brings grief to someone. There
is little in the way of virtue to be found in the
actions of this candidate-turned-“scholar.” I
Page 18
Of course, this kind of behavior is not
confined to the academy; it happens regularly, everywhere there are people gathered
together, including churches and schools.
I suspect that most, if not all, adults who
are reading this have either experienced
something like this or have watched others go through it. My point in telling this
tale, though, is to describe the actions of a
treacherous scholar (in the conventional sense
of the word “scholar”; I’ll refine the proper
understanding of that word later on in this
article)—behavior far removed from the
kind of ethic that we hope to instill in our
students here at Geneva. On the contrary,
the kind of student that we want to produce
is clearly articulated in our vision statement:
The Geneva School seeks to become an educational institution of scholastic and cultural
gravitas, of extraordinary and exemplary virtuous scholars, a formidable force in the expansion and enrichment of Christ’s Kingdom, in
the life both of the individual and of the world.
There’s a great deal of content packed into all
the words of this vision statement. Relevant
to the focus of this article, note the phrase
“extraordinary and exemplary virtuous
scholars.” It’s as if there’s a hyphen between
virtuous and scholars—“extraordinary
and exemplary virtuous-scholars.” It seems
somewhat awkward syntactically, but the
alternatives are inadequate to the task of
communicating exactly what a scholar is. If
we say either “extraordinary, exemplary, and
virtuous scholars” or “extraordinary and exemplary scholars of virtue” we suggest that
there is a valid category called “wicked scholars,” or “scholars of vice.” The vision statement as written implies, in contrast, that
“wicked scholars” are not scholars at all. It
is only because of our cultural ambivalence
on issues of virtue and vice that the word
“virtuous” has to be attached to the word
“scholar.” In earlier ages, virtue was essential
to scholarship. To clarify what I mean, let
me explore briefly the word “scholar.”
The conventional sense of the word “scholar” is one who makes a career of academic
study, usually earning a doctorate, teaching
at the university level, engaging in original
research, and producing a bibliography of
peer-reviewed journal articles, monographs,
and/or books. That is, the scholar is understood to be the one who inhabits the
so-called “ivory tower.” As is often the case
with misconception, there is a seed of truth
here, but it is decidedly not the concept of
the scholar according to the classical liberal
arts tradition to which Geneva adheres. In
the classical liberal arts tradition, the word
scholar in English comes ultimately from
Greek (scholē) through Latin (schola) and
has given rise to a whole class of academic
words in English: school, scholastic, and
their several derivatives. It may be surprising
to the reader to find out that these words
have traditionally meant “leisure.”
Now I have to admit, as a child of the ’70’s,
that when I hear “leisure” I cannot help but
see an image of that regrettable male fashion
trend (yeah, I wore one, but I was in my early
teens, and you’ll never see the pictures anyway!). Perhaps it conjures up for someone
else images of a couch potato eating chips
and endlessly switching television channels.
The first image involves an unfortunate use
of a good word; the second image is not one
of leisure, but of idleness. Leisure, properly
conceived, was and is, to those who pursue
the classical liberal arts, a productive period
during which a person ceases from the grind
of the workaday world in order to engage in
what the medievals called “contemplation.”
That is, leisure is a time in which the mind
is actively engaged, and does not at all imply idleness. To quote the philosopher Josef
Pieper, it constitutes “the basis of culture.”
It is also quite possible that the line between
leisure and work will blur, depending on the
nature of one’s work. For example, when
I was writing my doctoral dissertation I
So what is virtue for the Christian? There are many ways of apworked for UPS in order to earn a little extra income. I worked the
proaching this question, all of which must ultimately find their anmorning shift, which required grunts like me to arrive in the wee
swer in the Scriptures and worked out in the tradition of the church.
hours of the morning in order to unload all the trailers in time for
I can think of no better passage of Scripture to introduce us to the
delivery that morning. It was often the case that I would find myconcept of virtue than Jesus’ “new commandment” that we love one
self alone in a 54-foot trailer moving literally thousands of parcels
another as Jesus loved his own (John 13:34). Now, while that may
onto the conveyor. For the most part, this work is mindless—it only
seem a bit non-specific, all we really have to do is recall Jesus’ life in
requires an able body. For me, then, being alone in a trailer was
order to see courage and moral excellence displayed in his giving of
“leisure,” and I got some of my best thinking—and exercise!—done
himself all the way to death. Jesus said “greater love has no one than
while moving boxes. So, if scholē/schola is leisure properly conceived,
this, that someone lays down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
then from a classical liberal arts point of view a scholar is not so much
The virtuous person is ultimately one who seeks not his own advanone who teaches or engages in original research and publication (as
tage, but whose self-giving is for the benefit his neighbor, whoever
most college professors do) but rather one whose leisure is given over
that neighbor may be.
largely to reflection or contemplation. Therefore, to the extent that
Geneva produces scholars, we will
History and experience teaches us,
produce reflective, contemplative
though, that the extraordinary callSo
what
is
virtue
for
the
Christian?
Th
ere
are
many
thinkers. And in the long (and noting to serve others unto death is only
ways
of
approaching
this
question,
all
of
which
must
so-long) run, it is the thinkers who
most influence their fellow human ultimately find their answer in the Scriptures and placed upon a relatively small fracbeings.
worked out in the tradition of the church ... Jesus tion of God’s people; and it’s obvisaid “greater love has no one than this, that someone ously a one-timer for those so called.
Virtue is not merely something that
But, if you remember, I suggested
lays down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). The applies at the extremes of life, it is to
that a scholar is not merely one who
possesses leisure in which he can virtuous person is ultimately one who seeks not his form the “warp and woof” of our
be academically productive, and I own advantage, but whose self-giving is for the ben- daily lives. So, what does this daily,
virtuous love-for-neighbor look like?
would say that the same is true of a efit his neighbor, whoever that neighbor may be.
Again, there are many places one
contemplative person. One does not
may go in the Scriptures in order to
become a “scholar” merely because
find this principle fleshed out. One of my favorite places is Galatians
one is contemplative. One can contemplate wickedness and vice.
5 and 6, an even superficial reading of which demonstrates Paul’s
Whether one is contemplative in an academic setting or in another
fundamental ethic:
professional setting, for one to be a true scholar, one must both exhibit and pursue virtue in that contemplation. Virtue is itself derived
“the whole law is fulfilled in one word: you shall love your neighbor
from the Latin virtus (itself a derivative of vir “man, husband”) and
as yourself” (5:14)
means “manliness, strength, courage” and, more generally, “moral
excellence.” These basic senses, minus an essential association with
which is synonymous with being “led by the Spirit” (5:18)
masculinity, have been brought forward into our own modern English speech and writing. The virtuous person—not just the virtuous
which leads one to reject the works of “the flesh” (5:19-21)
man—is the person who displays courage and moral excellence or, as
but rather to exhibit the fruit of the Spirit (5:22)
the Oxford English Dictionary put it, “conformity of life and conduct
with the principles of morality.”
cultivation of which lead us to “not grow weary of doing good...
do[ing] good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the
There is a problem, however. Conformity suggests an external auhousehold of faith” (6:9-10).
thority who establishes the principles of morality, and this is exactly
the point at issue in our post-modern world: the nature and locus of
It is not necessary to point out the obvious examples of those who
authority. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss post-modhave most distinctively pursued virtue—St. Francis, Mother Theresa,
ernism; rather, I bring it up to remind us that, in the absence of any
Elisabeth Elliott come immediately to mind. All we have to do is
generally accepted, objective external authority, any number of comopen our eyes; there are people all around us who are daily pursuing
peting replacements inevitably spring up (because “nature abhors a
this calling to virtue, that is, to Christ-like giving of self for the benvacuum”). Since one of the hallmarks of the postmodern world is
efit of one’s neighbor. Perhaps, in addition to our own dullness, one
the rejection of objective authority external to the person, the definiof the reasons that we miss these examples of virtue is the fact that
tion of virtue cannot, for the Christian, stop at “conformity of life
virtuous people cultivate another character trait essential to virtue—
and conduct with the principles of morality” because people differ
humility—and so do not particularly call attention to themselves.
on the principles of morality. For example, for a sizable plurality of
our population, abortionists are virtuous rescuers of women from
This, then, is what a virtuous-scholar looks like: he or she is a humthe chains of unwanted motherhood. From an orthodox Christian
ble, productive, contemplative, reflective, lover of neighbor. If at
perspective, an abortionist is a killer of the weak; and where abortion
TGS we participate in cultivating students who exhibit this kind of
exists unfettered, euthanasia and other evils such as sex selection cancharacter, then we have done our job. May God bless us and through
not be—and have proven not to be—far behind. Clearly “virtue” in
us our beloved children.
our day and age needs more definition.
Page 19
Dates for Your Calendar...
February 28–March 4:
Thursday, March 3:
Friday, March 4:
Saturday, March 5:
March 7–10:
Tuesday, March 8:
Thursday, March 10:
Friday, March 11:
Saturday, March 12:
March 14–18:
Tuesday, March 22:
Wednesday, March 23:
Thursday, March 24:
March 24–26:
Friday, March 25:
Wednesday, March 30:
Thursday, March 31:
Friday, April 1:
Saturday, April 2:
9th grade Florida Everglades trip
3rd grade Charlotte’s Web play rehearsal; 8:15–2:00 at Winter Springs Performing Arts Center
Pre-K trip to see Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type at the Orlando Repertory Theatre
3rd grade Charlotte’s Web performances at Winter Springs Performing Arts Center.
McDougall @ 9:00, Hansen @ 10:00, and Lindsey @ 12:15. Party at school in the afternoon.
ANNUAL GENEVA AUCTION GALA STARRY KNIGHT
Rhetoric Choir rehearsal; 9:30–12:30 at Cathedral Church of St. Luke
SPIRIT WEEK
2nd grade to Audubon Center for Birds of Prey; 10:30–1:30
9th & 10th grade theater trip to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream; 9:30–1:45
National French Contest (12th Grade); 10:10–11:10
All-Pro Dad event in the TGS gym; 7:00–8:00 am
Pre-K seafood tasting; 12:30–1:15 on campus
Kindergarten Birds of Prey; 1:30–2:30 on campus
5th grade George Washington’s Birthday Party; all day event on campus
STUDENT vs. FACULTY BASKETBALL GAME; 5:30–8:30
Faculty workday/no school for students
Rhetoric Choir rehearsal; 6:30–9:30 at Cathedral Church of St. Luke
Rhetoric Choir sing at the Young Musicans Concert; 7:30 at Cathedral Church of St. Luke
SPRING BREAK
6th grade to Holocaust Museum; 8:45–11:45
Final Williamsburg parent meeting; 7:00 in the music room
4th grade printing press; 1:00–3:00 on campus
5th grade Revolutionary War re-enactment; 9:00–2:00 on campus
The Merely Players present As You Like It at the Winter Springs Performing Arts Center; 7:00
2nd grade Pet Parade; 1:30–2:30 on campus
4th grade to Canaveral National Seashore; 7:30–5:00
Report cards go home
Kindergarten Butterfly Encounter; 9:30–1:30
1st grade Peter Rabbit play rehearsal; 10:00–2:00 at Winter Springs Performing Arts Center
1st grade Peter Rabbit performance; at Winter Springs Performing Arts Center. Lewis @
10:00 and Ralls @ 11:00. Pre-K and K to watch the first performance.
Kindergarten Butterfly Day; 1:45–2:30 at Lukas Nursery, Oviedo
3rd grade to Marine Discovery Center, Daytona Beach; 8:00–2:30
AP English Language practice exam; 9:00–1:00
Daddy/Daughter Dance (grades 1–5); 6:30–9:00
The Geneva School
2025 State Road 436
Winter Park, FL 32792