It's not a one-room schoolhouse. It’s the education wing at the rear of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. But the rooms look and feel like a Class 1 school — a Class 1 school from the old days — when students focused on phonics and diagramming sentences. When they learned Latin instead of Spanish and Chinese.
The leaders of the church planned the grades K-8 school that way. Teachers emphasize classical education because it “goes with the grain” to teach in ways that complement a child’s natural behavior, they say.
They drill and practice, memorize as they learn.
“A sentence, sentence, sentence
Is complete, complete, complete
When five simple rules
It meets, meets, meets.
“It has a subject, subject, subject
And a verb, verb, verb.
It makes sense, sense, sense
With every word, word, word.
“Add a capital letter, letter
And an end mark, mark
Now, we’re finished,
And aren’t we smart!
Now our sentence has all its parts!”
They also memorize Bible verses and songs. The young ones have memorized the “Stille Nacht” German version of “Silent Night.”
The older elementary students recently memorized Lincoln’s Proclamation of Thanksgiving.
“The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. ...”
As they get older, they pass on to the logic stage, in which they organize the facts they learn, then to the rhetoric stage, in which they can intellectually discuss the subjects they’ve learned.
Through it all, the children practice “mannerly interaction.”
“As far as we know,” said Cindy Dull, Good Shepherd school board chairwoman, “we are the only Lutheran school in Nebraska that does classical education.”
The program has been somewhat of a hard sell, she said. But compared to the type of education used in public schools, classical education is not new.
“It takes the student, teachers and parents to really make this work,” she said.
Fourteen families send 24 students to the K-8 school this year. One goal is to start a high school.
“In the next five years,” Dull said, “we would like to triple the enrollment. We have the space to do it.”
Dull’s triplets, Claire, Hannah and Zach, are fifth-graders at the school.
Toward the end of their school day, three times a week, they learn Latin from Pastor Clint Poppe. The Dull children are in their third year of the language, and each has a Latin name.
Claire is Lucia. Zach is Ambrosius and Hannah is Helena.
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