Trinitas Blog

One of my favorite summer songs, “Summertime,” was composed by Gershwin in 1934 for the opera Porgy and Bess but it wasn’t until the first lady of song, Ella Fitzgerald, recorded the lullaby in Berlin in 1968 that the song came to be identified with the relaxingly smooth vibe that marks the three months between May and September.

Kurt Vonnegut gave a commencement speech towards the later end of his career, and he advised that all such speeches should begin with a joke. I toyed around with possibilities for this venue, including the much beloved green ping pong ball joke, the always-appreciated purple kingdom joke, and the new-to-many-of-you story about lil’ Johnny and the Noodle Man. However, none of them seemed quite right for the occasion, so I thought I’d do something completely different: let’s start tonight by defining our terms. I promise if you’ll bear with me, that this will be over quickly.

This week we celebrated the retirement of one of Trinitas’s most beloved teachers of all time. After twenty years of teaching in the Grammar School, Mrs. Wendy Phillips is retiring from that role. Many alumni, parents of alumni, students, and faculty members gathered for a time of remembering, gift-giving, and neck-hugging to send Mrs. Phillips out in style.

Any organization that is serious about building and then guarding a particular culture is going to have a certain rubric for what kind of folks it invites to join the organization. Trinitas is that kind of organization. If Trinitas were a university, the admissions process would be labeled “highly selective” by the agencies that report on such things. Trinitas’s selectivity, though, is not based on GPA, test scores, or even IQ tests. Nor is it based on tax bracket, neighborhood, or make and model of the family’s transportation. Now, to be fair, students must be able to succeed academically, and families must be able to pay tuition in order to be enrolled at Trinitas, but those aren’t the first determiners for who is admitted and who isn’t. The first determiner is like-mindedness with the school, and this is assessed in the Trinitas Family Conference.

The following is adapted from a faculty address delivered by Miss Cate Price at the induction of new members into the National Honors Society on December 13, 2024, at Trinitas Christian School.

Singling yourself out for honor is a risky business. Admission into the National Honor Society is a process that revolves around paradox. We ask that you be servant-minded individuals, who model a humility that does not sound your own praise to the heavens. And yet, on the same application page, I ask you to tell me why you deserve this honor. You had to ask someone to write you a letter of recommendation, in which they detail all the things about you that make you so great. Perhaps, some of you wondered if the application was a trick. Would it be better to turn it in blank? Obviously, you all chose to answer the questions (which was an appropriate thing to do by the way), but, in deciding to turn in the application and ask for admission into this society, you have essentially put a target on your back. You have come forward and asked for distinction.

Now, I am not saying that you should not have come forward for this distinction, but I do want to be forthcoming to you and to tell you what exactly happens next.

Last week we started a series about classical parents. The word we used to describe parents who choose classical Christian education for their children is dedicated. In the first installment, we said classical parents are dedicated in at least three distinct ways, and we explored the first way: classical parents are dedicated in the way they buck the system, or go against the grain of modern, progressive education. This week we begin to get to the heart of classical parents as we discuss how they are dedicated to participating in their children’s education.

The following is adapted from a faculty address delivered at Convocation by Mr. Varela on August 16, 2024, at Trinitas Christian School.

Our theme for this year at Trinitas is love. Of course, love is a central theme in many of the stories you have read, and it will be a continual theme in your studies because it is a constant in the world God designed. Jane Austen writes of a love that grows over time between Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice. In Little Women, Louis May Alcott gives the reader the heartbreak of unrequited love between Laurie Laurence and Jo March. Romeo and Juliet tells of a tragic love, courtesy of Mr. Shakespeare. These are all examples of romantic love. Since dating isn’t a part of our school culture, let’s lay that kind of love aside for now and think about love as it pertains to you, dear senior, and even you, seventh graders.

The following is adapted from an address delivered at Parent Orientation by Mr. Cowart on August 14, 2024, at Trinitas Christian School.

We gather together this evening for orientation. To be oriented. But what does that mean? Perhaps you came here this evening, expecting to hear from your child’s teachers about school supplies, textbooks, class schedules, homework procedures and the like. And, yes, we will get to all of that. But before we do, I want to take a few minutes to speak to you about a different sort of orientation. In the English language, the word “oriented” has four primary uses. It can connote interest in that someone is “oriented” toward a particular thing or activity. Or it can mean designed for, like, for instance, if an industry is “oriented” toward a particular market. Frequently “oriented” is used in terms of adjusting to one’s circumstances or surroundings as we do when we visit a foreign city or country. But tonight, I want to use “orient” in the sense of positioning oneself in relation to a fixed point. As a sailor of old would orient himself by the north star, I want to challenge all of us tonight to orient our school in the coming academic year by the fixed position of the Christian virtues of hospitality and healing.