Academics

Our Philosophy of Education

We believe in a Christ-centered view of the human being, and we derive our educational practices from this anthropology. Human beings are made in the image of God but are also sinful. Therefore, we know that human beings are made to know and love God, but we also know that because of our sinfulness this task will be a struggle. For that reason, education involves both academic rigor and grace-infused discipleship as it orients its students toward their highest end of knowing and loving God.

Our educational goals and profile of a graduate are rooted in the person of Christ and not mere skills and tasks one can perform. We aim to form students who love God, neighbor, and learning. Because Jesus is the full expression of what it is to be a human being (Col 1:15), Christlikeness is the ultimate aim of a Covenant education.

We derive our educational goals, content, and methods from the Great Tradition of classical and Christian culture. With gratitude, we learn from the great thinkers who came before us, and we enjoy the benefits of a rich inheritance of “Great Books,” languages, ideas, and aesthetic masterpieces. Whereas contemporary and progressive educational models aim for the goals of “college preparation” and being “career-ready,” classical educators seek the goal of flourishing human beings who seek truth, beauty, and goodness over temporal success. In other words, we seek the goals of wisdom and virtue, and not merely career preparation. To this end, a classical education emphasizes the liberal arts along with the classical texts (The Great Books) of the Western tradition so that our graduates are prepared to face a fluid and challenging world.

Our Curriculum Map

Covenant’s curriculum begins with the end in mind, namely with the kind of person that our curriculum seeks to cultivate. We summarize this goal in our portrait of the graduate, which gives our curriculum a single organizing principle and unity in its purpose. Every class and every subject at Covenant School is oriented toward the outcomes of our profile of the graduate.

Bible and Theology

Our Biblical Studies and Theology curriculum addresses the accounts of scriptures, principles of interpretation, surveys biblical doctrine, and challenges students to apply what they have learned, culminating in a Christian worldview.

Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric

Our students work in the Trivium—the verbal arts—through reading texts (Grammar) in all disciplines and in designated Logic and Rhetoric courses. Wielding true words with skill and eloquence is the goal of the work in the verbal arts.

Humanities

We invite our students to take part in the Great Conversation through a deep study of literature and history. Teachers lead students to think about ideas with which people in all places and times wrestle as we seek what is means to live a good life.

Mathematics and Science

Mathematics and Science classes awaken wonder and impart skills to see and study the orderly world of creation as beautiful evidence of God’s design, not divorcing scientific knowledge from its place in a unified cosmos. Students are encouraged to see the subjects of their studies as an integrated whole before they analytically dissect them into parts. Check out our curriculum!

Art

Art and musical education trains the heart to engage reality joyfully and with wonder. This mode of education seeks to expand students’ moral imagination as they delight in the beauty and possibilities of God’s creation.

Latin

Our students begin the study of Latin in the third grade. Latin courses instruct students through active and communicative methods that aim at making students intuitive readers of Latin texts. Latin courses culminate in reading and discussing selections from a broad range of Latin literature, such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Virgil’s Aeneid, St. Augustine’s Confessions, the Vulgate, and works from Cicero, Caesar, Horace, and Catullus.