Small Things, Big Investments

Good things often come about by little actions taken over the long haul.  Consider the musician who practices 30 minutes a day. Are they a master after a year? No, but 10 years of faithful practice is the path to mastery.  Or what about that investment you make toward retirement? Does one month’s worth of investing make a difference? Not substantially. But steadfast investment over a few decades absolutely makes a difference.  

As we enter the Christmas season, I am once again mindful of these small investments.  Interestingly, Jesus didn’t rescue the world in an instant. He spent 33 years of righteous living and three years of heavy investment in 12  individuals, before laying down his life and entrusting his work into these fearful men. Then what did they do? Invest! They poured themselves out for Jesus Christ and his bride, the church, over multiple years.  And where did their investment lead? To the largest religion in the world. To the gospel being spread to almost every tribe and tongue. To churches and Christ-followers spreading his Good News all over the world. It started small.  One man, then 12, then 100 . . . 

This is how I think of life here at The River Academy.  It’s a small investment each day in the lives of 265 students.  It’s one teacher taking time to pray for her students. Another teacher taking time to have a conversation with a student who is struggling.  It’s 170 Bible lessons a year over a 14 year period. Each of those little actions creates a big result - Christian leaders graduated into our hurt and broken world.  And while one could argue that 12 students (the size of this year’s graduating class) are not nearly a large enough group to really change our valley and world, I might point out that it already happened once around 2,000 years ago.

In the same way, investing in our school’s future follows a similar pattern.  Will one small gift make that much of an impact? Yes, if many of us give small gifts and do so month after month.  That one small gift turns into 12, and then 100. And as we have seen, small things produce big results. For this reason, we are asking all of you to prayerfully consider giving a small amount to support Christian education in our valley during our “Small Things” campaign this December.  A small gift each month goes a long way to provide the top-notch Christian education we are providing to our students.

We know you have many options when it comes to which organizations you will support.  Thank you for considering The River Academy in your giving.

Kindness

by, Tracy DeJong

“Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” Ephesians 4:32

I’m sure by now you’ve seen this scripture painted on our wall in the elementary hallway. (Thank you Amy McMullen @thelocalscribe!) 

Kindness, which is The River Academy Key Club’s theme for the year, is hopefully something we all want to get better at. But what exactly is kindness anyway? One online definition (https://www.kindnessiseverything.com), says kindness is the sincere and voluntary use of one's time, talent, and resources to better the lives of others, one's own life, and the world through genuine acts of love, compassion, generosity, and service. The dictionary says: Kindness is benevolent behavior, desiring to help others, intended for benefit rather than profit. Those are pretty good definitions of kindness. Who doesn’t want more of that?! Perhaps we’ve all met both children and adults who seem to be naturally kind. I believe the Lord truly has gifted some with the desire and ability to bless the world with their extreme kindness. However, for most of us, kindness is a skill that we have to learn. And the good news is, we can learn and grow in both our ability and desire to show kindness to others. 

As followers of Christ, we have more reason than anybody to show kindness to others, for we have each been the recipients of such extravagant kindness. Consider Luke 6: 35-36: “But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind (emphasis added) to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” God’s love, patience, and kindness has changed and keeps changing our lives. It’s his kindness that leads us to repentance. (Romans 2) It’s his “genuine acts of love, compassion, generosity, and service” that makes a way for us to be reconciled to him and walk with him in relationship. It is our hope and prayer that our students will be able to grasp how kind God has been to them in Christ, and in turn, offer the Lord’s life-changing kindness to others. 

We’re looking for creative ways to teach and develop kindness in the elementary grades this year. We’d love to hear your suggestions! We’ve started with a Kindness Shout Out board in our elementary hallway where students are encouraged to give a “shout out” about acts of kindness they see their classmates performing! I invite you to stop by and read the board and even add your own Shout Out notes. May the Lord himself help us as we seek to make The River Academy a place where the kindness and mercy of God is extended to all. For additional information and help in teaching your child kindness, please check HERE. 

DOES THE RIVER ACADEMY TEACH CSE?

You’ve been asking…

We have had a number of our families ask whether or not TRA would be required to teach Comprehensive Sexual Education if the current bill going through the WA State House of Representatives passes.  The short answer is No. The longer answer is below and we hope these resources will help you in making an informed decision regarding your child's whole-person education.  

What is CSE?

Comprehensive Sexual Education (CSE) is a movement to incorporate sexual education across all grade levels (beginning in Kindergarten) for all state-funded schools. CSE laws have already been passed and implemented in California and Oregon.  Washington State has a bill in the House of Representatives (as of February 2020).  

Track the progress of Senate Bill 5395 (you can read the bill here)

You might be wondering - well why is this any different than before?  Hasn’t the public school always taught sex ed? Yes and no. There are a few notable additions included in this new proposal that have been generating questions from some of our parents.  Here are a few of the noteworthy ones:   

• It would now become mandatory for all public schools - previously the state superintendent left it to individual districts to determine what their schools would teach/not teach specific to sexual education.  The new bill makes the previously articulated standards and the timeline for when subjects are to be taught K-12 compulsory for all districts. The Washington State Health Education Standards includes the K-12 timeline.

• The new proposal specifies the curriculums that are approved by the state for schools to teach.  Previously, districts had the freedom to choose their own curriculum as long as it met the minimum Washington State Department of Health Guidelines for Sexual Health Information and Disease Prevention.  Here is one example of approved curriculums: 3Rs Lesson Plans . For a list of reviewed and approved curriculum, click here.

What Does The River Academy Do?

As a private school in Washington State, The River Academy is not required to comply with the Comprehensive Sexual Education guidelines.  They are only specific to public schools. One of the many benefits of being a private school is that we are free to choose our own curriculum and set our own educational guidelines as long as they conform to a very broad set of standards issued by the state to qualify us as an educational institution.   

In light of this freedom, we have chosen not to teach sex ed to our students and instead to allow parents the freedom to take on the subject of sex education with their children. We believe that God has best equipped a child’s parent to decide what is or isn’t appropriate for a particular child to learn and at what age. While we cover the body systems in Biology (10th grade) we do not delve into the reproductive system. We do offer a Sports Medicine elective that includes a section on Sexually Transmitted Diseases as part of the Red Cross certification. This section is only taught with the signed consent of parents. The River Academy desires to partner with parents in this subject area, as in all other subjects. If you have questions or need additional support in teaching your students, we invite you to contact us.

Resources for Parents

We understand that this may be a daunting task for our parents (we feel it too).  Here are a few resources some of our families have found helpful over the years.

• God’s Design for Sex Series (Encouraging Words can also order them for you if they don’t have them in stock)

• The Care and Keeping of You (there is a whole series of books on self concept, hygiene, organizing, etc. in the American Girl collection)

Senior Thesis: A Culmination of 12 years at The River Academy

Looming at end of The River Academy education, fearfully whispered about with solemn voices, is the Senior Thesis Project. For more than half the school, the Thesis Project is far in the distance, nothing more than the clouded peak of a high, lonely mountain, far in the distance. It’s something that we don’t need to deal with yet, for it’s five, ten, or even twelve years away. That’s for our future selves to worry about. Out of sight, out of mind.

Not exactly.

While to an extent this is true, and even though the process actually gets under way in the Upper School (10th-12th), it’s also something for which our teachers at TRA begin sowing many seeds in the good, fertile soil that are the minds of our students, regardless of age. The Thesis Project is, ultimately, the culmination of our students years at The River Academy, bringing together everything that they have worked so hard to learn, to understand, to achieve. It represents a synthesis of worldview (all years, in all subjects), grammar (1st-6th grade, all subjects), rhetoric (10th-11th grade), logic (8th-12th grade), the humanities (all years), and yes, the sciences (all years).

Yet, despite the prevalent, pervasive nature of the Senior Thesis Project, for which we have lovingly and purposefully prepared our students for years, there is a fear of that project. That fear, comes from the unknown. Many people, longtime school families, do not understand what the Thesis Project is. We have only “fear itself” to fear, however. Let me attempt to clarify this fearful unknown.

A thesis is a claim that can be proven, an argument. This is something that we try to instill in our students. Our essays must be written with thesis statements driving them. This is to be a thesis paper, in which you propose a thesis—an argument for or against something, looking at the significance of it, and stating a resolution—and then you must support it using research-based evidence.

The Senior Thesis Project is a twenty page thesis-driven (meaning, argument-driven), research-supported essay. In the last week of the Junior year, students will pick a historical, social, economical, governmental, scientific, biblical, rhetorical, or literary topic to research. This will cover the modern era and must be relevant to the current day: any topic that they have the desire and interest to explore further and argue more in-depth. For example, they can choose a person who significantly impacted the world (but not a biography), a religion or worldview that has developed, a battle or war, a technological advancement, a theory of philosophy or government and its effects, or myriad other topics–but know that these are not reports.

This must be a topic about which they could argue from a biblical worldview. That means it cannot contain research alone. They must use that research to argue a point–their topics must inherently contain a debate. They must apply a biblical worldview, taking it further than simply agreeing or disagreeing with a subject. As with any thesis-driven essay, they must point toward something significant. We ask the students what they want to say to the school before they leave.

While all this sounds daunting, the process of this thesis makes it utterly accomplishable. While it is certainly a mountain for our senior to climb, they do not make the ascent alone, nor do they attempt the climb in one go. By the end of this project, they’ll have written two previous theses (Sophomore and Junior), so the process is wholly doable. Each aspect of the Thesis Process is broken down into its parts (note-taking, outlining, bibliography, drafting, revising) over a six-month period. Following the final, perfected revision, these seniors on the verge of graduation will stand before a panel of their teachers and an audience of their peers to deliver a speech based upon their papers. At this point, our seniors will have accomplished something truly remarkable, something that few young men and women in their position have–or can–accomplish.

If our goal at The River Academy is to train the next generation of Christian leaders, this is one of the means by which we hope to assess this. Can they think well? Can they argue well? Can they empathize well? Can they communicate effectively? By the end of their years at The River Academy, they can, with the grace of God and their own hard work.