By Bob Sylvain
In September 2018, after many years of prayers and planning, Sparhawk Academy opened for grades three to eight with 36 boys and a faculty of seven on the site of a former horse farm. We designed our boy-friendly curriculum using two guiding principles: parents are the primary educators of their children, and boyhood should be celebrated, not squelched. Sparhawk serves parents by helping their boys to use their freedom wisely in pursuit of their academic, physical, spiritual, and character development. Parents love this. In just over two years we have nearly doubled in size and outgrown the small home we converted into a schoolhouse and chapel. In 2021 we will add a new classroom building, positioning ourselves to grow to 150 students over the next few years.
What constitutes a boy-friendly curriculum? For one thing, lots of time outdoors. Every day boys dash outside during their 15-minute recess and 45-minute lunch period to build forts, climb trees, and catch frogs. Boys can invent games with their own rules or play basketball or football. Daily gym classes and after-school soccer, cross country, basketball, and baseball provide more organized physical activities.
But the outdoors is also a classroom for us. Boys study local bird species by quietly observing their habitat and learning their calls. They may re-enact Pickett’s Charge across our Lower Paddock during history class or sketch the root system of a fallen tree in their science journals.