Our Approach

The lower school years at First Baptist Academy are spent absorbing facts, systematically laying the foundations for advanced study. This is referred to as the grammar stage, not because we spend ample time focusing on English grammar, but because they are the years in which the building blocks for all other learning are laid! In the lower school years, the mind is capable of absorbing large amounts of information. Children at this age actually find memorization fun! We focus on rote memory & repetition as methods of learning. During this stage, education involves the learning of facts, including the fundamentals of phonics, rules of grammar, Latin & Spanish vocabulary, descriptions of plants, animals, and the human body, the mechanics of mathematics, important historical events, Bible history – the list goes on! All of the information gained during the grammar stage – lower school years – comprises the basic building blocks for the second stage of education: the logic stage.

In the middle school years, students learn to think more analytically. First Baptist Academy students are less focused on finding out facts than on asking “Why?” In the logic stage, the student begins to pay attention to cause and effect, the relationships between different fields of knowledge, and the way facts fit together in a logical way. During these years, the students begin to apply logic & reason to all academic subjects. The logic of writing, for example, includes paragraph construction and learning to support a thesis; the logic of reading involves the criticism and analysis of texts, not simple absorption of information; the logic of history demands that the students find out why the War of 1812 was fought, rather than simply reading its story; the logic of science requires that the student learn the scientific method; the logic of Latin expands on the vocabulary and basic grammar concepts learned in the grammar stage and applies those things to diagramming and translating. These years prepare our students for the final stage of the classical education process, the rhetoric stage.

In the upper school years, the final part of a classical education, the rhetoric stage, builds on the first two. The student of rhetoric applies the rules of logic learned in middle school to the foundational information learned in lower school and expresses conclusions in clear, forceful, elegant language. Students also have the opportunity to focus on specific branches of First Baptist Academy student life & extra-curricular activities that appeal to them; these are the years for art camps, college courses, foreign travel, apprenticeships, and other forms of specialized training. The upper school at First Baptist Academy desires to develop and equip leaders. Students learn to take information that they’ve learned and communicate it in both oral and written formats. They should be able to convey what they believe and why they believe it. We also provide classes in which students are trained as leaders in the FBA community. One example is our Worship Arts class, in which students plan and implement weekly chapel services. We want to see our students go on to be godly, productive leaders in their families, churches, communities, and careers.