Your labor was not in vain: appreciation for my Christian school education

“I can tell you are a student of the Word!”

The words came after our care group from an older man at our church who I deeply respect. He’s a former pastor who is dear to my heart for many reasons, only one of which that he and his wife also have an affinity for the King James Version of the Bible. That evening, I had made a few comments within the group discussion which he appreciated.

I didn’t tell him that I hadn’t read the lesson in the book that our Care Group was studying that evening, or even the Scripture we were supposed to read that went along with that lesson. (I had assigned it to both of the boys to read as part of their schoolwork, but the day had been busier than I expected, and even they hadn’t gotten to it.) I didn’t tell him that my “Bible time” usually subsists on my listening to hymns and Scripture songs while doing household chores, occasionally listening to an audio Bible or Christian book while I’m taking a walk, opening the Word with my boys when their schoolwork requires it, and the two or three times a week we do “Scripture Box” Scripture memory at the start of our school day (where I’m still working on memorizing the same chapter of 1 John that I added to the box 2 1/2 years ago).

Here’s what I did tell him: “I grew up in an environment where my education was saturated with the Word of God.”

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A few months ago, I had a dream that I was back in the end stairwell of the Christian school I attended from third through ninth grade.

As I was waking up in the early dawn hours of that morning, my mind took a little journey back through the hallways and classrooms of the space I inhabited as a student for seven school years of my childhood and adolescence.

I was struck by just how much I remembered. I could remember each classroom and where it was within the building, who taught there, what subject they taught, and some of the things I learned there. The memories were vivid. (I even think that 35-27-2 might have been one of my locker combinations.)

(Then I jumped on their social pages to see how things have changed. The surprising thing is…not much!)

Some of the things I remember about my Christian school education:

Downstairs, right across from the cafeteria, was my 3rd grade classroom – taught by Miss Tung. Here’s what I remember about my 3rd grade education:

• Learning how to say “I love you” in Chinese
• Wednesdays when my mom worked in the cafeteria, which meant free hot lunch: spaghetti and a roll, which I always ate by splitting the roll open and putting spaghetti inside of it
• That one time I got a 54% (F) on an assignment because I misunderstood (or didn’t pay attention to) the instructions…and I was devastated
• Winning the “Achievement Award” at the end of the year, which was awarded to the student with the highest GPA. I thought sure it would be Stephanie Taylor or Jonathan Douglas, because they were the smart ones. I was shocked when my name was called. This was the first time I realized I was “smart” (in the conventional definition of the word).
• Multiplication tables
• The fact that we had 32 kids in our class
• Memorizing the entire chapter of John 14

Right next door was my fourth grade classroom – taught by Mrs. Frost. Here’s what I remember about my 4th grade education:

• Lice checks
• The boy I sat next to (who will not be named), but who was one of my first crushes. For Valentine’s Day, I gave him a special valentine I had painstakingly chosen out of the box of prefabricated valentines with a hot air balloon that said, “You make my heart soar!” 
• That one time the school day was excruciatingly long because I had a sleepover birthday party to go to right after school, and I was jumping-out-of-my-seat excited
• Playing “Around the World with math flashcards” and “Four Corners” and crumpled paper snowball fights on rainy days
• Writing a haikus, our Ohio Notebook, and a book report about Maria Von Trapp (because my mom wouldn’t let me do one about Julie Andrews)

• Memorizing Ephesians 6:1-7 and 10-17 (the armor of God) and Philippians 2:3-12

For 5th grade, I got to go upstairs! Our class was in a room that – 2 years later – would serve as my 7th grade classroom as well.

For that reason, my memories of 5th and 7th grade are a bit hazy, and it’s hard to discern what things happened which year. But here’s what I remember about 5th grade with Mrs. Hines:

• A lot of drama between the “dating” couples my class. *insert eye roll here*
• Attempting to learn the flute and playing in the elementary school band. Almost passing out because I’m pretty sure I have no diaphragm.
• Going through a series of Bible doctrines booklets which taught me the terms Christology, Pneumatology, Soteriology, and Ecclesiology. (I would LOVE to find these booklets again, but so far my Google searches are coming up empty!)
• Giving up some recesses and music classes to study for the regional spelling bee, winning against that boy from the other school who beat me in 3rd grade.
• Memorizing Psalm 139

6th grade was one of my favorite years (minus all the school I missed for 5 cases of strep throat and a broken collarbone!) thanks to one of my all-time favorite teachers, Mrs. Harness. Here’s what I remember about my 6th grade education:

• Reading aloud in our reading groups in the end stairwell from these books:

• Writing my autobiography

• Cursive penmanship making my hand sore
• Kickball at recess with that red rubber ball (except for all the times I spent recess reading) with our teacher acting as the pitcher for both teams
• Getting an “airhead award” for my wacky kickball kicks, because I somehow managed to trip over the ball more than I kicked it (which I why I preferred to spend recess reading)
• Speaking of reading during recess, when enough of our class was misbehaving, we would collectively lose recess. Instead, we would have to walk laps up and down the hall in our two straight lines. I would bring a book with me and walk like this:

• Discovering that most people do NOT put Italian dressing on tacos, thanks to the weird looks my teacher gave me at lunch time
• Mrs. Suplita and music class: singing “Little Bunny Foo Foo” and “Little Cabin in the Woods”
• Memorizing Romans 12

7th grade…8th grade…9th grade… My last few years at HCS are kind of a blur of classes all mixed together, and I’m not totally sure what classes happened which year. But here’s what I THINK I remember about my middle school education:

• 7th grade Bible with Mr Bell: he took us through some of the books of the New Testament in Bible class. We had these notebooking pages that we colored with colored pencils where we learned about things like the author and theme of each book. I don’t remember much beyond the gospels, but I remember learning that in Matthew, the focus is Christ being King; Mark – Christ being servant, etc. We also memorized 1 Timothy 4:1-8 in that Bible class. 
• Mr. Bell was also my 7th grade grammar teacher: the only thing I remember about 7th grade grammar was learning about “married adjectives” (aka “coordinate adjectives”).
• 7th grade computer class with Mr. Shuck: learning to type on archaic Mac computers. Big floppy disks. asdfjkl; #IYKYK

• 7th grade creative writing with Miss Heacox, who was there one year and gone (married) the next. I still have some of those writing projects:

• 7th grade health with Mrs. Wolvin: The Christian Charm Course
• 7th grade Science: My Leaf Collection notebook and a science report and tri-fold poster board about elephants (in which we cut the side panels to look like ears and had a trunk coming out of the middle into a bowl of peanuts – all my mom’s idea)

• 8th grade art history with Mrs. Colle: I actually still have a folder of some of my sorry art projects…like making my family crest, drawing by grid, learning about types of columns, drawing on papyrus, and that time I made a mosaic of Tweety Bird. (Tweety was sadly lost to history!) We also had an art field trip where we got to go around downtown Cleveland and draw things we saw.

• Science with Mr. Nelson: being taught geocentricity, making a chart out of the genealogies in Genesis 5 to see which people were alive at the same time, watching a documentary about the landing of the ark on Mt. Ararat.

• Home economics with Mrs. Cook: Cross stitch. Quilted pillowcases. A sewn locker caddy. Cooking with chicken and being one of the few girls who was NOT squeamish about touching raw meat.
• Bible with Mr. Brown: I remember always being hungry, waiting for that clock to tick to 11:34 so I could go eat lunch.
• One year we memorized John 1, and another year we memorized John 3. (Mr. Brown taught us one, and I believe Mrs. Wolvin taught us the other, but I can’t remember which was which.)
• History with Mr. Cook, where every day he called me “Aprille-May-June”: The boy I liked in 4th grade (but no longer liked in 8th grade) stared at me just to annoy me and I would hold up a sign that said “STOP STARING AT ME”!! and that just made him stare harder. Mr. Cook’s notes on the overhead projector. Realizing I really loved history.
• English class with Mrs. Jaggard. I don’t remember anything about it, but I love grammar, so she must have been a great teacher!
• Pre-algebra and algebra with Mr. Scarfi…last door on the right, across from the art room, next to the computer lab: The required 4-colored pens. Equations. Random lectures about why tattoos were wrong. That one time in March he turned on the final four at the end of class and I was very (internally) judgmental about it because this was school after all and my parents are paying for Algebra not basketball!
• Gym class with Mrs. Wolvin: I always hated gym class. (It wasn’t the teacher. It was me.) The President’s fitness challenge. Running the 18 laps around the gym that made a mile. Running in soccer. Running in basketball. How I hated running! I can still feel the stitch in my side. Badminton.

• 9th grade English: Having the GALL to do my 9th grade research paper on how homeschooling was superior to Christian schooling and public schooling. (I put the J in ISFJ.) Absolutely no one was surprised when I left the following year to be homeschooled.
• 9th grade geography with Mr. Frost: Learning about GUAM. Getting a lecture about how we were all “practicing atheists” because we weren’t behaving in class. Sneaking gum and passing notes in class and being terrified I would get caught.

• After school detention for being late for school too many times each quarter…I blame my brothers for those.

I could go on and on about all the things that have come back to my mind as I have poured over the HCS social media pages. But my nostalgic memories are not the point of this post.

HCS also wasn’t the sole influential entity in my life. I could write (and have written) similar posts about the four churches, two other Christian schools, three Bible colleges, and the Bible camp that influenced my life. I could talk about Patch Club and Christian Character Club and the WAR and VBS and all of those things too. But HCS was definitely the entity in which I spent the most time. It’s just hard to compete with 7 hours a day for 180 days a year for 7 years. (That’s 8,820 hours by the way.)

The education I received there was academically rigorous, spiritually disciplined, and Scripturally saturated. Most of my teachers, I knew without a doubt, loved me. From the times I heard “Teacher’s Pet” and “Goody Goody” whispered behind my back, I knew that most of them respected me. Maybe they respected me for the wrong things – my grades and my desire to please. And maybe that love, respect, and praise I received for my actions led to my problems with perfectionism, obsession, people pleasing, and legalism.

But I know for sure that these teachers poured their long days into not only my life, but also the lives of my fellow students, with my well being and eternal views in mind.

The thing that blows me away even more is that some of them are still there…20 plus years later. Still teaching. Still serving. Still sacrificing. Still pouring their hearts into the education of their students.

As a homeschooling mom, I take my role as an educator very seriously. The stellar education I received at HCS is something that I think about almost daily and something that fuels me to provide education I hope can rival what I received while still meeting the intense, varied, and unique needs of my children. But so many days, I really feel how far short I am falling, like when I realize how little Scripture my kids have memorized when compared with how much I had memorized by the time I was their ages. 

Ezra is 15, and that means he’s basically a high schooler now. I find myself panicking…counting down the years we have left…feeling like I’m running out of time.

I also look around at so many people I love and respect – including my own parents – who did all the “right things” but still have adult kids who walked away from God.

I’m constantly falling short of what I feel like I should be doing…all the things my parents DID for MY education. If some of their kids walked away from God, what hope do I have for mine when I have only managed to do half of what they did for me? I know I could pour my life and heart into my kids and saturate their lives and their education with Scripture – but they still have a choice to follow God or not…just like I did. It’s terrifying.

It was from Mrs. Cook I first heard the phrase, “But for the grace of God, there go I…”

I don’t consider myself to be some smashing HCS success story. (I didn’t even graduate…)

I struggled with faith for a long time…nearly deconstructing it completely…and had to learn the gospel anew as an adult.

But here’s what I do know about deconstruction: in spite of everything I tore down, the foundation remained.

That foundation was the Word of God – taught to me by my teachers, pastors, and parents. Each person added to the foundation in their own way. But that foundation was bedrock. 

“And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.” (Matthew 7:25)

To every HCS teacher that spent another long, tedious day devoting his or her life to my education and spiritual formation: THANK YOU. Your labor was not in vain.

(And, it goes without saying, but thanks to my parents for the funding, transportation, school supplies, facilitation, homework help, moving our family 40 miles, and everything else that made this education possible.)

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*All images and video stills taken from the Heritage Patriot Facebook page.