Mission
Since our foundation in 2012, we have partnered with parents to educate children not simply to one day gain admittance to the best college, but to equip them for life, helping them discover who God made them to be. We work continually to restore the humanity of each child entrusted to us, as God works to restore his creation. Thus, our mission is partnering with God as His servants in seeking the restoration of His image in our students through education.
Vision
Habersham’s vision is based on the time-honored tradition of classical education, where students are taught to question, to investigate, and to dialogue, combined with an unapologetic commitment to the truth of Christ. Habersham emphasizes the great works of literature, the great discoveries of math and science, and the great ideas and figures of Western civilization, combined with a disciplined study of classical languages, thereby training students how to learn, so they retain their love of learning.
We recognize the years of school life of children are a humbling opportunity to make a profound impact. Not only are students developing cognitively and physically, but they are forming lifelong spiritual and character habits as well. Their view of the world, their answers to life’s questions, and their view of the good life all take shape during these formative years at school. We seek to mold and shape both academic and spiritual formation in an integrated way: cultivating a love of learning, equipping students to learn well, and grounding instruction in Christian orthodoxy and devotion.
Purpose
The Habersham School is committed to honoring Christ in establishing an education grounded in the orthodox Christian faith and the classical tradition that equips students to skillfully engage society with wisdom and charity and thoughtfully pursue moral beauty and eternal purpose in the modern world.
Vision
To graduate students who become more fully human and thereby thoughtfully engaged, culturally aware, and community minded.
Mission
Partnering with God as His servants in seeking the restoration of His image in our students through education.
Explore
Exploring represents active engagement – an act of initiative. Our goal is for every student to actively engage with people and ideas, keeping aflame the seeds of intellectual curiosity and a passion for knowledge that ignites in every student a natural propensity to question, to investigate, to dialogue, and to create. Students who explore become thinkers who can solve problems and take meaningful action. By exploring, students ultimately learn how to learn, thereby forever retaining their love of learning.
Small Classes, Strong Relationships
Relationships are central to who we are. A remarkable student-teacher ratio of 8:1 enables individual attention and abundant opportunities for each student to explore, speak, discover, and lead. Further, students will learn to take the risks needed to truly explore when they know they are in a safe place – a place where failure is seen as an opportunity to learn something new.
A Culture of Thinking & Independence
Habersham seeks to develop students who take responsibility and work hard while developing skills of active thinking, effective communicating, disciplined self-governing, and integrated understanding.
Thinking Means Learning – Charlotte Mason
Brain studies about neuroplasticity now prove Charlotte Mason’s 100-year-old methods of how the mind is formed and how we learn. We support her notion, “The one who does the thinking does the learning.” This often counters the modern notion, “the one who memorizes the answer or completes the most worksheets does the learning.”
Inspiration & Imagination
Charlotte Mason’s methodology defines and informs Habersham’s emphasis on “the one who does the thinking does the learning.” Applying Ms. Mason’s influence, Habersham aims to instill personal virtues such as excellent manners and habits along with an interest in nature and picture studies.
Classical Pedagogy
Habersham seeks to develop students who take responsibility and work hard while developing skills of active thinking, effective communicating, disciplined self-governing, and integrated understanding.
Restore
God is actively at work to restore in us His image. Foundational to our understanding of teaching, is first understanding that children are born persons. They are not an empty vessel to be filled or clay to be molded, but rather persons who bear the image of God. Their value and potential are immeasurable. It is the duty of the teacher and parent to give proper respect due these young people, to allow them to grow and learn in a life-affirming way. When dealing with persons, we aren’t interested in short-term, data-based outcomes. We are asking: How is this person growing? Who is this child becoming?
Christ-Centered
All learning is taught through the prism of Christ. Christian teaching is not preserved for one period tacked on to the end of a day. Habersham focuses on the integration of faith and life and acknowledges Jesus Christ as Lord over all of life and the Bible as the final authority in matters of life and thought.
Atmosphere of Joy
Habersham seeks to develop students who take responsibility and work hard while developing skills of active thinking, effective communicating, disciplined self-governing, and integrated understanding.
Statement of Faith
Habersham teachers and families share a common commitment to the orthodox Christian faith. This contributes to the strong teacher-parent partnership necessary to draw the best from each child. A prerequisite to all hiring is an abounding and mature faith in Christ, a characteristic that binds together our team in singular focus.
Dedicated Teachers
Brain studies about neuroplasticity now prove Charlotte Mason’s 100-year-old methods of how the mind is formed and how we learn. We support her notion, “The one who does the thinking does the learning.” This often counters the modern notion, “the one memorizes the answer or completes the most worksheets does the learning.”
Independence & Innocence
Though we desire children to grow strong and independent, we also value them remaining age-appropriately so. Most children in today’s American culture simply grow up too fast. We desire to protect their innocence while preparing them well to address culturally relevant issues so they can engage the culture and defend their faith.
Live
Rooted in the immovable truth of Christ, we strive for all here to live as those who know and love – to know and to love God, others, self, birds, numbers, stars, music, art, literature, all that is Good, True, and Beautiful. A marker of a life well lived is the quantity and quality of the relationships within it. We seek to put children in the way of as many good, life-giving relationships as possible – not just with teachers and peers, but with God, self, creation, and the world of ideas, making education a joyful discovery.
Manners, Respect, Community
Grounded in gratitude and an awareness of God’s grace, children are taught to respect and honor adults and peers alike. All students begin each morning by shaking the hand of a teacher or leader at the door. They are taught how to properly shake a hand and look in the eye, but we equally important, we also are communicating to them, “You are important to us. You matter and what you do here today matters.” Through the House System and small classes, students are taught to live in community. In the middle school, we offer Cotillion. In the high school, our spring formal includes a sit-down meal together. Students live out the manners and respect we teach them in community.
The House System
An intentional vehicle for creating meaningful student life combined with a structured student leadership program. The House System must be experienced to be truly appreciated. Four houses, each named after a patriot – Lafayette, Madison, Pulaski, Washington. Led by the student house prefect and his/her team of house leaders, each with their own colors, mottos, and logos, competing for points in service, leadership, arts, and athletics to win the coveted House Cup each year. This unique system breaks down barriers between ages and classes, offers younger students unique relational opportunities with older student mentors, and teaches all students the value of working together and winning and losing with grace.
Education as a Discipline
Habits are like rails on a train. It is easier for a train to simply stay the course and pursue its path along the rails than to take a disastrous run off of them. So it is with children. Habits are difficult to change but once in place can offer a solid path for a lifetime. What are the moral and intellectual habits your children are learning? Habits stick around. Affections are caught, not taught. So when you step into a classroom where everyone is paying attention, the easiest thing to do is pay attention. At Habersham, we go to great lengths to cultivate strong moral and intellectual habits.
Active Thinking
Learning presupposes that students are thinking. Students are consistently encouraged to question, investigate, dialogue, and create. Classrooms emphasize analysis, synthesis, and creative problem solving – every day, all the time.
Effective Communicating
For centuries, training in civil discourse formed the spine of Western education. The rhetorical forms provide a reliable approach to ensuring students can do more with information than recite it back to their teachers. Therefore, students consistently practice winsome and precise speaking and writing, in all subjects.
Integrated Understanding
Learning is more than individual subjects taught in parallel lines that never intersect. Students are taught to make mental connections, regularly drawing upon various experiences (their own and others’) and subject matter (curricular and co-curricular) to develop a more sophisticated understanding of the “big picture” of knowledge.
Disciplined Self-Governing
The ultimate goal of a Habersham education is to become more fully human, that as self-possessed learners students are growing into our Portrait of Graduate. They are capable of taking initiative in becoming a positive cultural influence— in school and beyond.