Dear Board of Administration, Charlie Dowers, Ken Trodder, and Cory McEachren,
For the consideration of those with dedication to the Oaks at heart:
As an alumni, it is my belief that The Oaks Classical Christian Academy needs a redirection and a refocus in direction if it is to continue effectively achieving its goal of bringing up the next generation in the Word of God and instructing them on how to become the salt and light of the world. My name is Aidan Clark, I attended the school for 7 years, and I have grown much in knowledge and maturity thanks to it. I’m currently in continuation training in the United States Air Force and I am on track to become an In-Flight Refueler, or “boom operator,” by the beginning of the summer of 2021. I recall that the goal of many logic and rhetoric lessons is to form a sharp mind and by extension a critical thinker, and I believe that I am now able to say that I do indeed think critically. I have come to realize through my junior and senior years that the Oaks I graduated from is not the same Oaks that it was when I first arrived here in 6th grade. This however is for the most part inevitable, as we know that nothing on this earth stays the same forever. Many good teachers have moved on and left, and the void they left is being filled with teachers that may have the best intentions for the school and students at heart, but lack the qualities and understanding of its values that upheld the Oaks’ standards. Now, this is not to say that the quality of the experience and education is hindered by the quality of some of the teachers exclusively, in fact I believe they are only a part of the issue I wish to voice concern about. I believe that the intentions of the Oaks are well placed, but its practicality and execution are more or less… outdated; incomplete, perhaps even insufficient in the incredibly politically correct and progressive culture we happy few are leaving to explore. Allow me elaborate; I have put together a number of points that I believe, if considered, can truly help future generations when it comes to their education, understanding, and capability when they leave the Oaks and the confines of home. Please do realize that my intent in this letter is not to berate or accuse or belittle The Oaks, but to call it on its shortcomings and challenge it to revitalize its vision for a God-fearing, diligent, and well-rounded student body. I owe the Oaks more than I often realize, and this letter is my way of wanting to give back the love and commitment that was poured into me.
Firstly I wish to throw out some ideas for improving the quality of life when it comes to everyday school activities.
For students using computers, having access to a wireless source for internet access during study hall and work periods would be an incredible blessing. It would allow students more flexibility when it comes to research and typing, and would greatly benefit printing papers at school. Nowadays computers are getting slimmer and slimmer and solid state ethernet ports are becoming more and more rare, not to mention obsolete. Many students, myself included, can’t afford suites like Microsoft Office or Word and resort to using programs like Google Docs because it’s free and intuitive. However there is no option for a document download while offline, making the use of thumbdrive to print impossible. There are plenty of incredibly configurable routers on the market that would allow for a restricted internet access point that still allows students to research or download articles and documents.
As a student who drove himself and his brother every single day, there was nothing more frustrating than seeing parents idling in the student parking lot, taking up several spots after they have dropped their kids off and are just sitting there talking with another parent or teacher. There really needs to be a clear designation or reminder that the lot is for student parking and that parents should drop off on the other side of the building, so that we aren’t forced to park on the street or wait for parents to move out of the way. I have witnessed many incidents where parents enter the wrong way, almost back into students who are leaving, and clog the flow of students leaving in general. There were several instances last year where parents were straight up not paying attention and either blocking or driving straight towards students walking through the lot.
The electives that are currently offered seem to be… lacking. There are very few obviously practical classes available at The Oaks (by that I mean that there are no life skills classes, leaving many of those types of things up to the parents, who may not pass those skills onto their children). There are no home economics classes, no technology or advanced science classes, only those that would most help a student get to a college like NSA, instead of many other institutions with much more industrially relevant career paths. I myself elected to take Christian Lit and Fine Arts, but neither of those equipped me with tools that I can use when in training to become an In-flight Refueling Specialist in the Air Force.
While the idea of having teachers send home attention grabbers via email sounds great on paper (no pun intended), it created much more confusion than is necessary about missing assignments or failing grades. There had been several occasions where my parents received a missing assignment notice a week after the due date or even after said assignment was turned in. In addition, it’s much less apparent to the student that they failed an assignment. Even over Christmas break, my parents received a notice that my brother had failed an assignment the day before classes resumed. The system is a good idea, but is too poorly executed to be used effectively, and paper attention grabbers are better for students and parents.
Secondly, I wish to voice some major concerns about teachers, practical application, relevance of classical education elements, and student health.
It is no surprise that The Oaks has a rigorous set of standards and holds its students to those standards. Its classical elements have been a hallmark of the school and its liberal arts focus since its inception. However, there is a problem with the execution of its classical elements, which is this: The Oaks is trying to achieve a classical Christian education and worldview in a secular modern world. If The Oaks wishes to teach us how to understand and deconstruct other religions or worldviews, there needs to be time taken in order to actually explain to us what those worldviews are and why people believe what they do. There is no teaching of other religions, no explanation aside from a brief, boiled down history in Bible Context and a high fly-over in Geography, which isn’t even offered anymore. As a result we become so deeply entrenched in our own worldview that we risk looking like fools and narrow-minded bigots when we interact with other people of our generation (it’s happened to me and it’s the most frustrating thing to deal with). 11th grade Biology is a great start, explaining many subdivisions of evolution, but it doesn’t go near far enough. Not only that, but many, if not all of the views taught are from the 80s and 90s, most of which aren’t even professed at all anymore. Many teachers warn that college life will be difficult because of the contradictory worldviews that will challenge us in ways we’ve never experienced, yet none of them are explained, essentially leaving us to figure it out on our own. There is certainly value in learning through experience but that experience needs to be gained with a solid context of the bigger picture.
Student physical and psychological health is one of the most important and grossly overlooked things at The Oaks. With just how rigorous and heavy the homework loads and expectations are, students are bound to develop stress-related ailments. Sleep deprivation, high stress, anxiety, and even depression are some of the things I have encountered and heard about from other students. I myself even developed anxiety and stress-related depression when I was fighting to keep my grades up in my freshman year. Whether teachers choose to believe it or not, mental health is an epidemic and it NEEDS to be properly addressed. At the time, I didn’t ever trust any of the teachers enough to actually talk to any of them, nor do I feel any more comfortable talking with many to this day. I was afraid, no, certain, that any teacher I talked to would brush it off as an exaggeration, giving me the all too common response of, “I’m sorry you’re having a hard time,” “just hang in there,” or “This will all be worth it, trust me.” And this wasn’t simply an individual fear of mine. A graduate from last year’s class struggled not only with anxiety but suffered from migraines and they said that they got that exact response. They felt that they weren’t taken seriously. The amount of work assigned is not without ramifications, and the teachers need to be aware of it. Students shouldn’t be spending 3-5 hours on homework a night. There needs to be an outlet for students, someone they can trust will have an objective view (NOT A TEACHER). Several of my peers and former students at the school have also voiced this concern, that there is no objective counselor at the school for students to go if they feel something isn’t right either with themselves or another teacher or student. It would be a tremendous blessing to the students if the board brought on a new staff member dedicated to helping students mental health and isn’t at risk of being biased by being in the position of a full teacher. In addition to this, there are many students, myself included, who attended school daily despite being sick. There is a constant lingering fear of being caught so far behind that drives a student to push through sometimes serious bouts of sickness just to come so that they don’t miss an assignment or lecture. The reason for this fear is that the assignment itself may be hard to decipher, or require an in-class explanation that a fellow student may not be able to provide. This may be expected at the college level, but is much, much too strenuous on highschool and middle school students. There shouldn’t have to be that driving of a fear of failure. This brings me to talk about homework times. I have started to notice a trend amongst teachers when it comes to actually gathering homework times. Many of my peers have observed that fulfilling the daily quota of homework minutes has become more of a checked box than an actual check-in on students like the teachers say it is. Many of us fill 450 or 500+ minute weeks, yet there’s no communication from the teachers about how we are doing or what we think about the workload. If you wish to have students fulfill 20-30 minutes of work per class per night, that is one thing. But the homework load and minutes cannot be allowed to take precedence over the student’s other time. The work seems to be assigned to meet the quota, with no regard whatsoever to the students' social life or free time. I myself wasn’t ever able to have a job after school because of how much homework was assigned and even had to sacrifice aspects of my social life. If the school wants to push accountability in students' homework, there needs to be accountability with the teachers as well. It may be said that the teachers haven’t known about the students overworking or becoming isolated socially because of the work because students haven’t communicated; yet how can we, when the teachers will brush off our real concerns with the clichéd response of “this is what college will be like,” because we aren’t taken seriously.
The teachers at The Oaks are great people. They’re the kind of mentors a young person should have. This however does not mean that all of them are fantastic teachers. As I mentioned above, I believe that the culture of The Oaks has suffered because of the constant shifting of teachers. Just this last year, we lost 3 great veteran Oaks teachers, and had 2 more reduced to part-time. When I first arrived, I could clearly see that the teachers here were a solid team, one that knew how to keep order throughout the classrooms, not only within the student body but their own habits and disciplines as well. However, over the past several years, I have noticed that whenever an old teacher leaves, a new and inexperienced one comes in to fill the gap. Having one new teacher who isn’t used to Oaks culture isn’t too serious of a change, there are still many who know well what The Oaks expects. However, when multiple veteran instructors leave, and new inexperienced ones (sometimes both in Oaks culture as well as teaching in general) come to fill the ranks, it comes as a crippling blow to the strong and predictable expectations at the school. As the frequency of the coming and going of teachers has increased these past years, I have noticed an incredible decline in student discipline as well as command of attention in class. The student body has, as a whole, in my opinion, become like that of a public school; rowdy, disrespectful, uncouth and most of all, undisciplined. Myself and several other students have come to the realization that several of the instructors at The Oaks may be incredible to hang out with and just chat outside the classroom, but once the door closes and session begins, the attitude of the teacher either changes, or stays the same. The teacher is not always right. Among these things already enumerated is the unpredictability of teacher-student interactions. There are, I feel, one or a couple teachers that fail to realize how vital these interactions are. It is important for the student to feel comfortable talking to a teacher about a question on an assignment or assessment. This, I feel, has come as a result of lower standards for accepting teachers (I would like to point out that this is based purely on my interactions and perceptions, so please be gracious if my perception is grossly incorrect). This being said, the teachers need to be accountable to holding and enforcing the schools standards, otherwise there may as well be no point in writing standards at all.
Having recently graduated basic military training, I have come to realize the importance of discipline and order. In my time at the Oaks, I noticed an overall decline in respect, discipline, and accountability in students. Now I realize I elaborated on hard standards and homework loads, however the need for good discipline is one that can’t really be seen until one leaves the “training” environment. I’ll be honest, for as much as accountability was preached at the Oaks, there was effectively zero accountability when it came to the classroom. I can’t even begin to describe how many occasions there were where students talked, distracted others, and goofed off in class in front of the teachers and weren’t called out for it. The name-on-the-board system is there for a reason, use it! Accountability goes both ways, student and teacher. Students need to be held to do the work, teachers need to be held to keep the students on task. I’ve come to realize just how important both accountability and discipline are, and I’ve realized how shamefully lacking the Oaks is in these categories. There is a way to keep a healthy learning environment while still maintaining good order in the classroom.
The Oaks gave me a great foundation to build upon as a young man, but if the Oaks is going to continue to do that for others, it needs some refocus in some crucial areas. I won’t inject my opinions on the current COVID learning situation as I don’t have experience, but I will say that the school needs to be able to be flexible with how it creates and establishes protocol. Work with the parents, don’t make them work around you. This is just my thoughts and experiences, take it how you will. I refuse to hide behind online anonymity, so if you wish for me to elaborate on any of the issues I’ve discussed, my number is (509) 992-4274, or you can reach me at admiralaido117@gmail.com.
Carry on friends, may God illuminate your path.
Aidan Clark, class of 2020
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