#021 Jordan Severn [Class of 2018]

             I want to begin by thanking everyone who has shared their story thus far. It has made me realize that I really wasn’t alone in how I felt, even though it seemed like it back then. I also want to thank my parents for being super supportive and sharing the same thoughts about the school as me. After coming across this website, I knew immediately that I wanted to share my perspective on an Oaks education as a student who went K-12th. If you knew me in my time at The Oaks, you may have thought of me as quiet— in the classroom, due to the fear of failure. You may have known me as Poppa Severn’s granddaughter or the "Hot Lunch" people’s daughter. I hope that this letter gives a little insight to what may have appeared to be a great education on the outside.

                     I may not have had as many years to dwell on my experience as others, but I know that I couldn’t waste a good opportunity to share how I felt during my time there. Knowing that others have felt the same way that you did, even if it was ten years later, is validating. I know my life would not be the same without The Oaks, but there are definitely painful parts that my life could have gone without.

A summary of my 13 year Oaks career:

             My parents sent me to The Oaks because they wanted me to have a good Christian education and honestly didn’t know of any other options. They knew people that went to the school and thought it would be a good option. I remember visiting as a preschooler and seeing my best friend at the time in Kindergarten. Their class was so welcoming to me and made me really excited for what was to come. My Kindergarten class was the class that entered the school following the fire. I remember my mom and I coming to help Mrs. Korver set up her classroom and telling her that the mailboxes were on the other side of the classroom last year. There are many memories like this that remind me of the curiosity and imagination of my childhood that my Poppa Severn instilled in me as well as all the kids he would read to every month. Those days were some of my favorites as he would share his wisdom with the class. From Kindergarten through 5th grade, I was an innocent oldest child who thought The Oaks was as every private Christian school should be. School wasn’t super hard for me, but not easy either and I was able to do extracurriculars and balance everything okay. I loved my elementary or should I say grammar school teachers. Mrs. Korver and Mrs. Holland made learning fun with their creative calendars, word searches, crafts, and rhyming sheets. They made reading enjoyable. Mrs. Wall made cursive fun and made us cursive licenses— and man did I feel like a big kid. Mrs. Culbertson made math fun and made fudge for us when we would finish our multiplication tables and of course the grab bag for good spelling tests. Miss Allard made Geography fun as I fell in love with Europe for the first time and found my love for Geography. Mr. Kolarsky we had for his first year and he trusted me to edit his weekly announcements he would send out every week. I also got to use my passion for detail and organization to circle the problems everyone got wrong on their math tests.

           

            Then sixth grade happened, which I was excited for, but a week before school started I lost my first grandparent to cancer. As I had never experienced death before, it was hard, very hard. My Grammie and I did a lot together and she taught me some of the most valuable lessons I have ever learned-joy and perseverance. Middle school was rough for me as you start having more homework and were expected to do more. Mr. Reidt I enjoyed as well as he offered extra credit in Geography if we could name mascots with the states. If you know me I love sports and when I beat everyone in around the world that day I was beaming from ear to ear with happiness. This year was the only time when I learned about our country, besides the constitution. It was the only time I learned who has previously lead our country. Seventh grade came and I was excited to finally become a secondary student. With this came less time to spend with my family and more stress with the homework. Once I hit secondary it all begins to blend together. I was one who strived for perfection and hated failure. Grace was rarely extended in these scenarios. Grace wasn’t freely given, it had to be pleaded for. Whether it was parents meeting with me and teachers or through a page response on the back of an attention grabber, it rarely worked. Even with tardies as you know it didn’t work. It was always a fight, even when another grandparent died my seventh grade year and I had to miss a week of school. I wasn’t relieved of any of my homework, two weeks before finals. It wasn’t until after I caught up that I was offered to do less of the work. Man was I furious. This was just the beginning of fighting things and by the time I was a senior my family realized there was no more reasons left to fight, even if it was for the right thing.

             Fast-forward to 2017-2018, my senior year, my siblings left The Oaks and I stayed for my senior year. My family did not drink the Koolaid and left for a better option and as a senior it was the hardest thing to walk into school everyday seeing the flaws. My siblings got to have a life outside of school and I was really jealous. Now as I’m in my third year of college, I spent way more time on homework, was more stressed, slept less, and pulled more all-nighters in high school than college. To get an Oaks education, if you care enough about grades, takes a lot of sacrifice, potentially the sacrifice of your childhood and teenage years. Because of the amount of homework, I did not get to participate in my youth group. I did not have much of a life outside of school, sports, and homework. I would be up doing homework most nights until 1am and bless my mother’s heart she stayed up late with me to keep me company. My mom also continued to do pizza at the school so she could spend time with me. She had no desire to do it anymore, but did it so she knew I could come talk to her. It gave me an out to let out my emotions about the school day. There were days where I would have to skip school to either sleep or “catch” up on homework because of the workload. There were nights that my family wanted to go out to dinner and I couldn’t join them because I had that much homework to still do. They would bring me back food, but knowing that I was leaving home soon and wanted to spend time with them, it made me heartbroken to not be able to eat with them. There were things I skipped at school so I could see my family and protect my mental wellbeing, such as the Physics Trip. There were days that my family would skip to go skiing and teachers would get upset at me for not telling them soon enough that I was going to be gone. One even made me cry. I hated confronting and talking to teachers as one who hates asking for help. There were times that I would feel stupid and feel like a failure by asking for help. Since failure didn’t seem to be accepted, it was a hard pill to swallow.

             The only reason I stayed was for basketball and my friends. I doubted my decision to stay multiple times when I knew my siblings were getting so much better of an education at the time. Friendships disappeared as legalism ate them alive and made me wonder if the hassle of this education was really worth it. Basketball was my out and something that made me forget about all the other problems related to school. We had a really good team while I was there and that coach made a HUGE impact on my life. She understood me and my pain. She was one who I felt cared about my life and wanted to be a big part of it. She was the one who told me, “The adult world is waiting for you.” As a desiring to be college athlete, I could have gone and played somewhere else, but I knew that I would not have this same relationship anywhere else.

             Unfortunately, due to this overworked, mentally exhausted brain, I hated reading by about 6th grade and it only got worse with summer reading. Even three years removed from the situation, it’s hard for me to find motivation to read things assigned to me. I hope with time and having time for enjoyment reading that I will find a love for it again. I believe this also is a reason why I struggle to find motivation to read my Bible.

             As other people have mentioned in their letters, there is a mold at The Oaks, and once you realize you don’t fit in, it’s hard to be in it. My youngest brother experienced this the hardest way as one with selective mutism. In Kindergarten, he was outright deemed as not participating and lead to several years of anxiety. As a result, the school forced my parents to attend Kindergarten with him every single day and lead to him not being welcomed back, simply because the way God made him. For me personally, senior year I dreaded going to school everyday. I hated talking one on one with my teachers, cause they didn’t see through the things that I did. I avoided talking to anyone, but other students, except the couple of teachers who didn’t fit the mold and who are no longer there. For those who drank the Koolaid, it’s hard for them to understand what you see, especially the teachers. It is for this exact reason I did not even bother doing an exit interview. My parents actually encouraged me not to as we all were done fighting. My family and I knew my voice would not be heard and changes wouldn’t be made, so I saved myself the pain of bring talked at. I gave my senior assembly speech on the importance of having a balanced lifestyle and the importance of taking time with your family. Since I had my head in school all the time, my life was very unbalanced. I tried to tell others the sacrifice The Oaks takes and how I had to sacrifice sleep to ever see my family and spend time with them. I dreaded having to meet with teachers one on one, whether it was about something I did wrong or about grades. As one who strived to get good grades, it was hard when you would get an F and an attention grabber. But I felt even worse for all my classmates who you knew had failed as well with that big bright colored attention grabber. Not only did I know how all my classmates did on their schoolwork, I knew how other classes did because teachers would write initials with how many attention grabbers they needed to collect from someone on the whiteboard. Name on the boards went about the same way.

            Senior year we also had a teacher lecture us about how the school was not legalistic during our study hall, which only made us all want to leave even more than before. I feel like this desire to rebel against the legalistic ideals ruined what could have been a great senior year anywhere else with these people. Senior year our parents met with our Rhetoric 2 teacher because all of them were furious how strict he was on our thesis grades. Learning Latin from 3rd-10th grade killed me when I got to college at a liberal arts school as I didn’t have the requirements to get out of foreign language core— 4 years of the same high school language. It cost me 11 college credits freshman year for one core requirement. And when Latin words come up in class and the question is asked if anyone knows what this means I can’t even answer it. As a student studying Sport Management, I felt unprepared in my anatomy and biology classes. In Biology at The Oaks, we didn’t even learn the bones, muscles, or more than two organ systems. We spent one quarter on bacteria, another one on parts of evolution, and the rest on the cell. To say that STEM needs help, I believe is an understatement. 

             This school made me a rule follower. And to this day, my mom still tells me to bend a little and do what you have to. I hate this part about myself. This school made me believe that I had to be perfect. This school made me believe I wasn’t allowed to fail. This school made me believe that grace wasn’t allowed—even when you lost a loved one a couple weeks before finals. The tardy system is one area where I was never shown grace. I could have left my house 15 minutes early in the snow and still have been late to school and given a tardy. It took me going to college and figuring out who I was, that it was possible for professors to give you grace, make an extension, not care if you are late to class, being willing to help you after 9pm. My freshman year of college, I missed two weeks of class and being given grace to finish papers after finals was the breath of fresh air I never received while being at The Oaks.

             I’ll end my thoughts with uniform code. As a mentioned above, I was typically a rule follower and wasn’t one to wear whatever color of socks. However, there were still times that I was told “you can’t wear those.” There was a time that I was told by a male teacher that I couldn’t wear dress booties because it was after the time to wear winter boots. They aren’t even the same thing! My senior year I had to wear the formal skirt everyday because the school kept changing the school uniform and who it was provided by. The new skort went halfway down my shin and I wasn’t going to wear that. My parents got tired of changing uniforms all the time and not being able to get rid of what they had because it was no longer allowed to be worn. With uniform code comes dress checks, which were a joke. Since there were so many people checking them, the policy was different for every single person. A dress could be an inch too short on one person and be ok and not ok on another person. Dress checks always seemed biased as to whether or not the teacher liked the person. There was a time I didn’t even get my dress checked cause I struggled to find one. 

 

            Three years removed from The Oaks, I still dread and feel awkward when I have to walk into that building. I avoid it at all costs. The way I felt treated and the very authoritative relationships have caused me to want to leave it behind entirely. Knowing that the school was a part of my life for thirteen years it is sad for me to say this. I’ve spent two-thirds of my life at that school and I want to forget parts of it. As much as I want to believe good came from my school experience, it is hard to unsee all the bad. To say I am not thankful for my Oaks education would be false. It has come of use at times in college, but definitely not as much as I was told it would be. I wouldn’t be where I am at in my life without this part of my story and wouldn’t want it to be erased. Sometimes you have to unlearn to learn the truth. I understand we are all human and have flaws, but I believe these could have been avoidable with change, growth, and continued learning.

             I have really enjoyed my time at college, away from the drama that comes with this education. I have been able to be who I wanted to be and not defined by some uniform or school. I have been able to pursue my passions of sports and play a sport I love. I’ve been able to study athletics, something not worthy to be studied at a classical school since theater is above athletics. You don’t realize how great life can be until you get out of the little protected bubble called The Oaks.

             It’s sad for me to see that The Oaks does not want to see nor make the necessary changes that need to be made and are still trying to control their alumni by sending emails to their current parents not to read the truth. I want to end with this, a quote from my brother. “I’m sorry but is this saying The Oaks is rejecting negative feedback? Isn’t that how they taught us to learn? Through negative feedback?”

             So I hope you may be a rule breaker, unlike I was, and read this letter as a current member of The Oaks community. I hope this gives you a glimpse of what a life at The Oaks can be like and I wish you the best in surviving the fire.

 

 With hope for a better educational experience,

 

Jordan Severn (Class of 2018)