True education begins with God. He is the beginning and the end of all things, as well as the environment in which all things live and move. Truly, God is the great context in which all things must be understood. Therefore, to make sense of our world and ourselves, it is first necessary to understand God. This makes Christian education necessary.
Spring Branch Academy offers high-school students an innovative and integrated Christian education in the liberal arts. The robust curriculum seeks to connect God’s word to God’s world in every subject. The cumulative effect is often blessed by God in a student’s senior year, when a comprehensive worldview becomes apparent through faith. To facilitate this blessing, the academy seeks for teachers who love God, their subject, and their students—teachers who also are trained in their field and experienced at teaching. In this way and more, the academy seeks, by God’s grace, to instill wisdom and inspire worship in every student to the glory of God. It is a great privilege and pleasure!
Spring Branch Academy offers a complete high school education in the core subjects of theology, humanities, science, language, and mathematics. Please read the following descriptions and click on the highlighted headings to review the curriculum in more detail. If you have any questions or would like to use the curriculum, please contact us.
All Christian education should have at its heart a quest for knowing God. Formally, this quest involves theology. Since theology pertains to all of life, as God Himself does, the theology courses often line up with the humanities and science. This allows for some “cross-pollination.” Each year discusses a philosophical attack on the foundation in the fall, a theological cornerstone of the faith in the winter, and a practical help for the family in the spring.
Because all things were made through Christ and for Christ, He truly is before all things. History revolves around the coming of Christ and the spread of His gospel. Therefore, the academy unashamedly makes church history the backbone of humanities. Freshmen explore how Christianity superseded classical and barbarian cultures to establish a Christian culture in the West. Sophomores wrestle with the spread of individual, intellectual, and institutional autonomy in modern Europe, despite the Reformation and its emphasis on God. Juniors examine the perplexing and changing relationship between Christianity and American culture. Finally, seniors take a capstone course in public policy—a course that covers politics, economics, and medicine, which are the main topics in today’s public square. In the end, Lord willing, students gain a cumulative familiarity with this large story—a gain seniors often appreciate.
Both Theology and Humanities are reading-and-writing courses. Students are trained both to read well and to write whenever they read. Through personal development in reading and thinking, students are encouraged to be leaders, who think for themselves in Christ. Moreover, in using primary sources over textbooks, students hear the original voices for themselves. Essays and book reviews help them to process the information for communication to others. Through repeated assignments—but only with God’s blessing—students gain the ability to read with discernment.
Science
Because God has not verbally explained to us His created order, we are left with models that approximate this order through analogies and mathematical analysis. At times, these models give way to new models in a paradigm shift, which may be large enough to qualify as a scientific revolution. Given the limited nature of human science, the academy teaches all its high-school science courses within the context of history. In addition to the traditional trio of biology, chemistry, and physics, the academy also offers freshmen a course in Creation Science, which studies geology, paleontology, and climatology. Each science has a lab and some exploration into its social ramifications.
Language
The language track offers a liberal-arts trivium in grammar, logic, and rhetoric. In logic and rhetoric, juniors and seniors learn to reason well and speak well. Both years culminate in a capstone experience—logic ends with students competing in debates and rhetoric ends with students delivering speeches.
For grammar, the academy focuses more on Greek than on Latin. This choice reverses the typical priority of classical education, but it brings advantages. First, by learning a new alphabet, students experience the genius of a phonetic alphabet—to see a symbol and say a sound! Second, Greek offers some “cross-pollination” in geometry, theology, and especially biology, where knowing a Greek root can almost trivialize a technical medical term (e.g. periosteum). Third, and most importantly, because we read what we learn, learning Greek gives the students a “back-stage pass” to the translation of the New Testament. As a capstone experience, second-year students spend almost half a year reading, translating and discussing the Gospel of John. God be praised for this precious gift!
Mathematics
In a sense, math is the language of nature. Math symbolically represents the fundamental patterns that God put in creation. As such, math is at the core of the liberal-arts quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.
The academy offers two foundational algebra courses—Elementary Algebra, which drills in the basic skills, and Intermediate Algebra, which focuses on word problems. After these algebra classes, Geometry sits in a conceptual world somewhat on its own. At its core, geometry is about proofs. The academy trains students in this deductive system—a mental “weight room” that prepares students well for the logic class. What follows geometry depends on which track of math is pursued. In general, the academy has two recommended tracks in mathematics:
(1) STEM Track: Students preparing for careers in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) take Elementary Algebra (grade 8), Intermediate Algebra (grade 9), Geometry (grade 10), Algebra II (grade 11), and Precalculus/Trigonometry (grade 12). The two foundational algebra courses help to bridge the geometry “gap year” (grade 10).
(2) Non STEM Track: Many students take Elementary Algebra (grade 9), Intermediate Algebra (grade 10), Geometry (grade 11), and Business Math (grade 12). This sequence also prepares students well for Chemistry.
Science, language, and math classes meet twice a week. Tests are taken and graded at school, not at home. Often two lessons in math are assigned per day. Math placement tests occur in the start of the year. The final exam must be passed in order to pass the course, regardless of the other grades.
Spring Branch Academy - Jonesville, Michigan 