The following is from a speech I gave before Bethel Prep's Third annual Thanksgiving Celebration. Before we feasted three of our classes performed performances that displayed what they had been learning.
Greetings to each of you. For those who do not know, my name is Joe Canney and I am the Upper Grammar school teacher, which this year includes our fifth and sixth grades. I am also the lead teacher here at Bethel Prep.
Before we get started I wanted to give you an idea of what you are seeing today and more importantly why you are seeing the performances you are seeing. I would like to begin by highlighting the content of our three performances. At Bethel Prep we study the history of western civilization, our history, from the beginning, creation, up to the present. We do this three full times. Once in grammar school, once in dialectic school (our middle school) and once in rhetoric school (our high school). The performances today all come from our grammar school. In grammar school, we focus on our students acquiring knowledge – what can be called the grammar of history. So what is the grammar of history? It is people, places, events and dates. We take the history of western civilization and teach it chronologically over five years beginning in second grade. In doing so, we are laying a foundation of knowledge that will be built on in dialectic and rhetoric school. So with that in mind, the first performance you will be seeing today is our third grade. In history the focus for them is the Old Testament, Ancient Greece and Rome time period. Our fourth grade then picks up about where third grade leaves off. Today our fourth grade will share what they have been learning about the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Reformation. Our final performance will be from my class and what we studying this year – the events leading to the founding of America. My class will perform a play that will focus only on the first nine events we study this year – the events leading to the first Thanksgiving. But what is interesting to examine is that all three performances move in chronological order. Thus it is easy to move backwards in time and to realize and understand that all of the performances in order are the events that lead to the first Thanksgiving – a timeline of about three thousand years.
So that is the content of our performances, but I also wanted to mention why and how we perform. First is how. The common thread you will see in all the performances is song. Music is a powerful tool for any educator. Students in the grammar school are able to easily remember baskets full of information when it is put to a tune. But it is more than just finding a trick to get kids to remember stuff. When we sing at Bethel Prep, we make a joyful noise…it is fun. We are creating a culture where students sing everyday and multiple times a day. Many of you here attended our number parade. Some of you have seen Memory Period in action and others have heard your child singing some a familiar tune with unfamiliar words from the back seat of the car. It is fun, engaging and most importantly we use quality music. When our students attended the Veterans Day Service many of them recognized the official song of the navy – Anchors Aweigh because it is the tune we use for a science song. For me personally, many of a car ride and tubby time with my daughter Addison is spent singing the classic nursery rhymes, along with many Bethel Prep jingles. Now I do not encourage any of you to subject your children to my singing, but it has been a blessing to see how Addison has developed and interacted with us because of the use of music. It has also been a blessing to see how our students increase in memory power because of the use of songs. And they enjoy it.
That addresses one way we learn and the how to our performances. The other piece I wanted to touch upon is why. At Bethel Prep we want, Lord willing, to produce students who can articulate and communicate the truth. In order to be able to do so, they must be comfortable talking to and in front of large groups. We as educators and parents know that the best way to prepare our children to do something is to practice. That is why our students stand to speak in the classroom. It raises them above their peers and all eyes focus on the speaker. In the beginning some students are uncomfortable, but over time they adjust and soon it is no big deal to rise up and answer a question. Doing our performances today is taking it one step farther. The audience is larger and older…by larger I meant there is more of you. Again, if the students come up on stage enough, soon it becomes no a big deal. What you will notice in our final performance, which is a play, is that every student has an individual speaking part. It is part of our focus to educate the entire child and prepare them for the work God has for them.
One final note…for the performances today, we chosen to have our 3rd-6th grades perform. At Easter, our Kindergarten – 2nd grades will perform. We thought it was better to give the younger students more time to prepare. Also in the spring, Bethel Prep will be putting on a major production under the direction of our music teacher Miss Lia DiOrio that will feature many of our dialectic students.
So my hope is you understand that while today’s performances are cute and fun, that they are much more than just the opportunity to showoff. They are part of the much larger picture of Bethel Prep, which is serving God in training students to shape the future and restore our Christian Heritage with Jesus Christ at the center of everything.
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