Monday, June 9th starts four weeks of summer camp at The New Classical Academy. We still have plenty of room for kids who want to beat the boredom of summer vacation. Royal battles, digging for pirate gold, recreating the Pleistocene era, and hand-cranking ice cream are just a few of the fun activities that will fill our summer days. Don't let your children sit inside this summer in front of media. Send them to us and we guarantee they will get dirty and have fun doing it!

With his parents' permission I wanted to share a story with you about one of our students. When Blake came to us year before last in the third grade he was failing academically. A bright and inquisitive boy, he couldn't focus, didn't get his work done, and was frequently frustrated to the point of anger. If Blake had been in public school he would have been referred for ADHD. Instead we backed off of Blake academically and worked on making him feel safe and comfortable at school. We saw great progress with respect to his behavior, but still Blake struggled to do his work. At the end of 3rd grade Blake took his first standardized test. He was overwhelmed, the reading was difficult for him and he finally gave up, filling in random answers. The results were expected. His score placed him on a first grade, eighth month level, which put him in the 2nd percentile of all third graders taking the test. Luckily Blake didn't attend public school, because if he had, he would have "failed" third grade. Instead he returned to us this fall for 4th grade and we continued to work with him slowly, patiently, regularly, guiding him and challenging him to complete his work. This April he again sat down with the IOWA Test of Basic Skills in front of him. He was a changed child. He not only did his best, he was upset if time ran out before he finished a section. He stayed with the whole test though it took several hours over two days, and he never became frustrated. The results were amazing. Blake scored on a sixth grade, fourth month level! This puts him in the 77th percentile of all fourth graders who took the test. This story supports our beliefs that labels don't help. standardized tests are not legitimate means of determining who passes or fails a grade, and children are on their own timetables which don't necessarily match ours. If you have a child who is struggling in school we recommend the book "Right-Brained Children in a Left-Brained World" by Jeffrey Freed. Perhaps the struggles are not your child's fault but the fault of the system. Blake is living proof that a child can succeed without drugs, and we have no doubt that he will continue to do so.

The end of the school year brought a host of fun activities. The younger students took a field trip to a classmate's farm, everyone saw the Tourists play baseball, we had an amazing talent show, and the teen club went on a back pack camping trip on the Appalachian Trail. We also had carnival day, water day and Olympics day to round out the last week of school. Lest you think it is all fun and no work around here, out of 38 students taking the IOWA test 34 of them scored above grade level.