We were both raised in Christian homes. Those early years gave us a great Biblical foundation, but it wasn’t until we were both older (post college) that we both really understood what it meant to walk in faith and have a personal relationship with Christ. We met in 2015 at our current church where we were serving as volunteer youth group leaders. Through our marriage, we have learned how much we need to depend on the Lord to grow as “one” rather than separate, self focused people. We feel that we are constantly growing in our faith and will always be growing in our faith. We challenge ourselves to pursue a deeper relationship with Christ and some of the ways we’ve done that is serving our church and leading a community group - just walking through life and life’s hardships and triumphs with other believers in our community as we continue the sanctification process.

Alex and Kory were both public school kids and we always thought we would send our children to full time public school. In the last couple of years, we have felt called differently. The idea that our child would be away from us more than with us in these formative years just didn’t seem right once we had our own child. We want it to be a team effort. A friend of ours articulated it so well - who do you want to walk arm in arm with you as you raise your children and who do want speaking into their lives? We believe that Saints Classical Academy aligns with what we were looking for - a place that will balance pushing our child to his full potential while also recognizing where he is developmentally and nurturing and loving him through a Biblical worldview. We loved Jennifer’s background in education but also in childhood development because those two go hand in hand and it can often be overlooked when it comes to school and one can be the focus over the other. Ultimately, through doing our own research on different types of homeschool/tutorial options and through prayer, we felt a peace that this is where we were supposed to be and that’s exciting!

We incorporate our faith throughout each day by modeling for our children what living out our faith looks like by physically doing things like devotionals, reading our Bibles/Children’s Bibles, going to church, bible studies, community groups, etc. We are also talking out loud about our faith throughout the day. For instance, if a conflict arises as a family, praying out loud for help and when we do wrong as parents, we apologize, use the word sin and ask for forgiveness and explain why we forgive.

Our hope and goal would be that he gets plugged into community where he can have the opportunity to learn from other Christian adults besides his parents. That Saints Classical Academy would be a safe place that he looks forward to going where he has a structure to learn and grow not just into a well rounded student but a well rounded person who loves the Lord and will ultimately serve His kingdom. Socially, we want him to learn to work in a group and with others, how to work through conflict, and show care towards others as well as building meaningful friendships. As parents, we know we can’t do this alone and we don’t want to do it alone! We look forward to walking arm and arm together with Saints staff as well as fellow parents to support not just our son but all of the kids in the community.

We are new to the homeschool world - Alex was a special education teacher in an elementary school for nine years, but this is a whole new world with so many options! We’ve heard the words classical education for awhile and that it had great results, but just weren’t really sure what that meant until we came to the info night! One thing that we’ve both seen in our work lives or just in the world in general is that critical thinking is an art and it seems to be a lost art in so many ways. It is so important to us that our children learn how to think critically. We understand that Christian, classical education is not just learning facts, but learning HOW to think from a Biblical worldview. Through her nine years of teaching, Alex saw a lot of what worked with kids and what didn’t and a lot of what Saints shared at the info night and what we have researched really aligns. We are excited to dive in and learn more.

We would describe ourselves as Authoritative parents. Alex studied a lot about behavior as a part of her schooling and in practice in her years of teaching and this is not only the most evidence based, but has seemed to work the best in practice for us personally. The root word of discipline is “disciple” and we know we have to address our children in what is developmentally appropriate for them and that we are “teaching” them. We are teaching our children about emotions and that their emotions are always safe however, that does not mean that we do not hold boundaries for behavior and not all behaviors are allowed. We try to be as consistent as possible when holding clear and firm boundaries. Ultimately, we want our children to go through life knowing that they can come to us with anything and that it’s safe, but that they can also trust us to hold parental boundaries and to have related consequences.