My son, Noah, is a graduate of The Saint Constantine School and a student at Saint Constantine College. What follows is my reflection of his vast experience in Houston schools, shared with his permission, and how our eventual landing at TSCS has shaped our entire family far for the better. 

My motives in parenting a firstborn of firstborns were equal parts lofty and naïve—isn’t it often so? Noah learned to read, perhaps too early. He wrote block-letter thank-you notes, much too early. Upon becoming a brother, Noah found himself enrolled in school to keep up the momentum. Preschool wasn’t financially viable, so instead he attended a KIPP charter school for Pre-K4 and Kindergarten. The 8:00–5:00 (plus daily homework) program was committed and rigorous, though to exhaustion. 

We began home-educating with ambition and hope, first making time to reestablish the basics: time to play, to be outdoors, to watch insects move across pavement. As my son relaxed, I discovered one blessing well-worth fighting for, but which had never crossed my imagination—a growing friendship between siblings. Homeschooling progressed. We joined a play group, then an academic tutoring group. I heard of a Great Texts program at Houston Baptist University for middle school students and happily tucked the picture into my vision for the future. (The program disassembled, but morphed into the beginnings of The Saint Constantine School.) Eagerly, I consumed books about classical education and the pedagogy of Charlotte Mason. I delighted to redeem bits of my own public-schooled-youth by learning alongside my children of the hero Odysseus, the painter Giotto, the composer Handel. To my astonishment, we studied with friends (Thank You, TSCS’s Dr. Hong!) and began to identify native trees, flowers, shorebirds, songbirds. 

Noah’s world expanded into adolescence just as mine compressed for a baby and household matters; I honored his request to enroll in our neighborhood public middle school. Magnet school followed, and then a small, dual-credit, magnet-only high school, seemingly suited to his studious and (then-!) quiet disposition. 

For us, it worked alright until it didn’t work at all.

Noah, my husband, and I found ourselves meeting with TSCS founding Instructors Mr. Mueller and Mr. Dalbey. We’d not once considered private education before; it was a leap, a stretch, and we couldn’t imagine explaining the shift to our frugal families. But the alternative was unthinkable, because it’s literal when I say that my son couldn’t sleep, couldn’t write, sometimes couldn’t breathe. We decided to enroll him in 10th grade, which he had already completed, simply to offer him the benefit of experiencing the year’s studies at TSCS. The day that I picked him up from the Upper School Fall Retreat, the students’ first major event of the year, Noah said words that have etched themselves into my memory: “I feel like I’m a person here.” 

His brother observed, and transferred into TSCS Middle School the next year. The youngest, that compression-inducing baby, later joined TSCS for Lower School. Our family came aboard Upper School–Middle School–Lower School, a reversed entry. Somewhere in the middle, I joined the staff as associate in Laura Nicol’s Marketing office. Reflecting Student Life through words and photos has been an easy, joyful, authentic experience. The candid photos reveal a story that says, “It’s different here.” Or in Noah’s words, “I feel like I’m a person here.” 

This blog post is too long. The retelling is too short. I am grateful for the enormous investment of faithful care from educators such as Dr. Bartel, Mr. Dalbey, Ms. Ewalt, Mr. Harris, Dr. Kilgore, Mr. Mueller, Mrs. Neacsu, Mrs. Nicol, Mr. Nicol, Mrs. Ramos, Mr. Yee, and myriad more in the Saint Constantine community. Yours is assuredly the greatest kind of impact—that which sharpens minds to discern wisdom and emboldens hearts to trust and carry goodness. You have changed us. Thank you.