In keeping with the ethos of classical education, and in an effort to maintain a rich student culture, Tall Oaks Classical School divides all students and faculty in the Schools of Logic and Rhetoric (grades 6-12) into four separate Houses.
The Tall Oaks House System is akin to those of traditional European boarding schools, where students of varying age and gender are forged into a team overseen by invested faculty.
What is the House System?
The House System is a student-led community. Each House consists of 20-25 students. This breaks the larger body of students into a more intimate group for our younger students to assimilate into and build relationships throughout the school.
Each house is a cross-section of the Logic and Rhetoric students. Each house will compete in friendly competitions through the school year that are meant to foster Christian character.
There are many benefits to such a system:
- It provides chances for student leadership and mentoring.
- It allows for constructive competition and positive peer influence.
- It is an additional organizational structure beyond traditional grade and gender divisions.
- It helps to foster student mentoring relationships across grade levels.
- It allows for a new relational dimension in student-teacher relationships.
- It encourages student self-government.
How a House is organized and governed
Each house is maintained at an equal number of students and a relatively equal distribution of age and gender. Faculty serve as House Counsel (two per House), and one senior and one junior serve as House Captains. Both students and faculty remain in the same house during their tenure, and siblings are placed together in the same House.
Competitions and opportunities to earn points
A friendly competition between the houses will be held each year. Students will have the opportunity to earn points for their house through many areas including academics, athletics, musical performance participation, Bible memory, behavior, and service, among many other opportunities. We have seen God use the House System to strengthen our school culture and develop Christ like characteristics in our upper school students.
House Names
House of Edwards
Named for Jonathan Edwards, America's most important and original philosophical theologian; one of America's greatest intellectuals.
House of Kuyper
Named for Abraham Kuyper, a Dutch politician, journalist, statesman and theologian. He founded the Anti-revolutionary Party and was prime minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905.
House of Kepler
Named for Johannes Kepler, a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer. He entered the Protestant seminary at Adelberg in 1584 and in 1589 began his university education at the Protestant university of Tubingen. Kepler published his first important work in 1597.
House of Wilberforce
Named for William Wilberforce, a British politician, philanthropist, and a leader in the movement to abolish the slave trade. In 1785, William Wilberforce underwent a conversion experience, becoming an evangelical Christian and undergoing a major change in his lifestyle. He began a lifelong concern for reform.