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If you have been around Saint Constantine for more than a minute, you know that choir is our primary means of music education. The reasons are myriad: some practical, some pedagogical, and some, we hope, reflect our mission as an Orthodox institution as well as our ecumenical efforts.

As a teacher at TSCS, I am thankful that I get to help guard and protect the opportunity for our children to be children: to play, to laugh, to pretend, and to wonder. 

As a philosopher preoccupied with foundational questions in physics and cosmology, my heart frequently ponders themes of time and eternity, finiteness and infinity, mathematical reality and physical reality, beginnings and never-endings, the Mind of God and the limitations of man.

We’ve been given this day with these people. Yes, we have work to do, but we can do our best to balance our work with moments of joyful communion with those around us.  

I count it a privilege to teach the youngest students on campus, for it affords me ample opportunity to see the world through the eyes of a small child, to contemplate a time when every day reveals something new.

Part of the trouble with doing something new is getting comfortable with the struggle of being unfamiliar. Often in those moments when I want to take away conflict, the Holy Spirit convicts me that doing so robs me of opportunities to grow.

When we learn a foreign tongue, we learn not only its vocabulary and grammar, but more importantly the culture, philosophy, and history behind it. We learn to see the world and to understand the naming of the shadows through its lens.

Why do we expect nine- and ten-year-olds to comprehend the rise and fall of Camelot and the intricate rules of chivalry? What are we expecting them to get out of this reading? Can they do this? The students are the ones who answer.

“He filled them with wisdom, understanding, and skill to do all manner of work of the holy place, and to weave the woven and embroidered work with scarlet and fine linen, and to do all work of curious workmanship and embroidery.” — Exodus 35:35

Why is the study of mathematics so important? To the ancient Greeks, it isn’t so that math can be used for something practical. Rather, mathematical studies move us beyond ourselves towards something eternal and transcendent.