"I don't want you to hide behind the screw."

That is what science teacher Mr. Kevin Miller tells his high school students, and it is the thread running through this conversation with Katy McKinney.

Mr. Miller came to Lafayette Classical Academy (LCA) from the field. He spent years as a wildlife biologist and aquatic entomologist, studying mayflies, before a phone call in the middle of an Illinois wildlife reserve brought him into the classroom. Now, as Mrs. McKinney puts it, he has lit "scientific fires all over the campus."

Mrs. McKinney, LCA's Founder and Head of School, asks Mr. Miller to walk through two programs: their middle school Rocket Program and their highschool Common Arts. In middle school physics, students learn Newton's laws by building rockets, and nothing launches until each student has wired a controller that can fire it safely. A retired Boeing engineer once watched the process and said it was exactly how his lab tested ejection seats. In the new high school Common Arts class, students build chairs with no screws at all, from honeysuckle they cut and hauled out of the woods themselves. And on a school camping trip, a bluff scattered with chert became a lesson nobody planned.

Mr. Miller makes the point that none of these lessons happen quickly, and that is the point. Students stay with a breadboard until the circuit works, log every launch, and keep bracing a chair until it stops rocking. The goal, Mr. Miller says, is to challenge the students enough “to where they're invested in it."

Both Mrs. McKinney and Mr. Miller push back on a world of instant answers, where, as Mr. Miller puts it, "it's really easy to just give up." Mrs. McKinney names the payoff: "incredible triumph and satisfaction," which no one reaches without "incredible determination, perseverance and dedication." Mr. Miller points out the same valuable lesson from an engineer when he and his family stood under a Saturn V in Huntsville, AL.

Lafayette Classical Academy is a classical school pursuing excellence in academics and excellence in character, together. If this episode encouraged you, share it with a friend — because our nation is not renewed first in the courts or in the capitals, but in our classrooms, in our families, and in our children's hearts.

For more information about Lafayette Academy, A Classical School please visit https://lafayetteacademy.org/

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