Grades: K5-5th (a grade added each subsequent year)

Projected Total Scholars for 2016-2107: 170

Principal: Castenzio Venegas

1. What is the mission of HOPE Christian School: Via?

HOPE Via’s mission is Christ. College. Character.® We believe the Bible teaches us the truth—God loved us; therefore, we love Him. With Christ as the primacy of what we do, we will model this same truth to our scholars each and every day.

We believe that we own the future of the Racine community; therefore, we tenaciously prepare our scholars to take charge of it. We stand in our choices and are unshakeable in our commitment to ensuring that every scholar has the opportunity to attend the college of their choice.

Excellence is our expectation! Thus, we cultivate citizens of the world through the implementation of rigorous, culturally relevant, multimodal learning. We believe and model after what Dr. King declared, “Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of a true education.”

HOPE Via expects more from its scholars, more from its parents, more from its teachers, and more from its administrators. For only by expecting more can we achieve more. Our high expectations require us to push our children to reach higher, work harder, and learn more than they have been asked to do before. This requires us to be both firm and loving.

2. What are HOPE Via’s virtues? How are they introduced and reinforced?

HOPE Via’s virtues derive from our Christian Character Formation Project (CCFP)—a Biblically-based program that seeks to train scholars and staff to live Christ-centered, fulfilling and virtuous lives as serving leaders. Individual character is acquired in the larger context of Scripture and the fulfillment of God’s plan for scholars in the classroom, community, and country. Our seven virtues are Justice, Respect, Responsibility, Integrity, Self-Sacrifice, Diligence, and Courage. As a school we want to see these virtues in action with all of our scholars.

The CCFP program emphasizes that character development extends far beyond cultivating “virtues.” Indeed, it focuses on three pillars of the Christian faith (faith, hope and love), described in the Pauline epistles (1 Corinthians 13:13). With regard to Identity, the Christian materials focus on faith as the foundation for a Christian’s identity (i.e., one’s Christian identity comes through believing in God’s promises). With regard to Purpose, the Christian materials address one’s purpose to make God known through serving leadership in light of the biblical hope (i.e., the present certainty of things yet to come grounded in the words and actions of God in the past). In teaching the seven virtues of the program, which represent the outward manifestation of love, the Christian materials specifically and intentionally focus the content on a Christian’s Performance rooted in identity (faith), and purpose (hope).

With this unique Identify-Purpose-Performance (IPP) based system, the program is inherently intrinsic. Character grows not because an adult is insisting it must, but rather in the life of a Christian, this comes through the power of the Spirit of God working within the Christian (Hebrews 13:20, 21). Moreover, virtue is not an end in itself but rather a means to fulfill a purpose greater than oneself. By living virtuous lives, children of God make God known to the world. A “Christ-centered fulfilling and virtuous life” is expressed when one’s God-given identity, purpose, and performance are lived out fully in all areas of one’s life in complete alignment.

The Christian Character Formation Project covers all parts of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. However, it is not intended to cover all teachings expressed in Scripture. Instead, it is designed to complement other Christian curricula and programs. The Christian Character Formation Project utilizes the Directed Inquiry, which is a teacher resource that not only gives information about a particular Biblical narrative but also guides one through a discovery questioning technique built on the IPP process. The questioning technique first examines what God has revealed through the protagonist of the story, then, it seeks to put the reader into the protagonist’s shoes to reflect on the reader’s own character, and finally it encourages personal character growth and restoration motivated and guided by the Spirit of God.

3. In what ways is character education explicitly taught and infused throughout HOPE? On a daily basis our character education is taught through our language and how we positively praise students for their hard work. For example, we ask, “Did you complete

ChristianIPP

BiblicalPillars

Identity: Child of God Faith

Purpose:To Make God Known through

Serving LeadershipHope

Performance:Expressed in Seven Virtues1. Integrity2. Respect3. Responsibility4. Justice 5. Courage6. Diligence7. Self-Sacrifice

Love

your work with excellence?” Rather than saying, “Your handwriting is not neat.” Scholars are celebrated each week for living the Christian virtues at our weekly Community Circle assembly by their teachers. As a Team and Family staff, we are constantly looking for and acknowledging scholars who are demonstrating their strength of character. Scholars even give shout outs to each other based on the value they see in action.

Throughout the year we focus on a particular virtue each week and teach Biblical lessons associated with that value. For example, kindergarteners may learn about the virtue of Diligence (or perseverance) through a read aloud of The Little Engine that Could, followed by a role play or pictorial presentation.

4. What does professional development for teachers look like? All staff begins professional development with a four and half week session before our scholars begin on August 26th. We spend significant time getting to know each other as teammates, building our school culture, and planning for the year. Our expectation is that our scholars will RISE in everything they do; in their Christian walk, on their pathway to college, and within their character development. Therefore, during the summer months we will take time to set goals, meet with families, and participate in sessions that detail best practices for execution.

Each Friday afternoon, we will narrowly focus on a strategy or technique that teachers can immediately use the next day always focusing on closing the achievement gap.

We realize we each play huge roles in developing a positive staff culture at HOPE Via. Our culture will begin developing on day one of staff orientation.

We respect all members of the staff, in both teaching and non-teaching roles. We recognize and value the contribution that each person makes in supporting our individual and collective success.

We believe that our daily Morning Motivation are times for everyone to be engaged and to participate actively—this includes teachers, staff and the school leadership team! We can’t expect our scholars to participate if we sit silently or focus on other tasks.

We believe that data should drive our instruction. We believe that assessments provide valuable data about student achievement, which must inform our instruction. HOPE Via teachers analyze, reflect upon, and make sound educational decisions based on these assessments and the data from them.

We are building a culture of open, honest, and productive dialogue with one another. We are expected to share our ideas, feedback, thoughts, and concerns. We are also expected to buy into and own group decisions even if we originally expressed disagreement.

We celebrate our successes. We pause to survey our accomplishments, and appreciate our collective efforts, and smile.

We believe in giving feedback, both constructive and positive. We celebrate success by sharing positive, descriptive praise with our colleagues. We offer a hand and suggest next steps when we see a colleague struggling.

We believe qualitative and quantitative data provide insight into our current effectiveness. We use this data to plan how to better our daily work and interactions with others.

We incorporate feedback readily to increase our instructional and discipline techniques.

We believe our actions shape our scholars’ success and failures. We examine our actions and mindsets and the underlying mindsets that inform them in order to brainstorm solutions to problems we face in the classroom and throughout the school.

5. Why do you have small group instruction? All of our classrooms, from K5-5th grade, will be instructed in small groups for the majority of the time. We firmly believe that small groups can greatly impact our scholars’ achievement, because it allow us to intentionally focus on the data for each individual scholar. We believe that differentiated small group instruction for math and reading will help us urgently close any achievement gap by allowing us to react quickly to the individual needs of every child.

6. How would you describe the reading and writing instruction at HOPE Via? At HOPE Via, we place a large emphasis on developing strong literacy skills by devoting over 190 minutes per day to instruction. Scholars receive reading comprehension, explicit phonics instruction, guided reading with appropriately selected texts, center-based learning on computers, and small group instruction with each component. Literacy is also woven into math, science, social studies, as well as our Christian Character Formation Project (CCFP).

7. What arts programs are offered? HOPE Via scholars will have Physical Education, known as Recreation. As we grow, we believe in expanding our arts program to encompass more Enrichment instruction to provide our scholars with a comprehensive education (i.e. Foreign Language, or Music, or, or Dance, or Art). We intend to explore a new Enrichment course in the 2016-2017 school year.