The St. Luke's Episcopal School mission states; “St. Luke's Episcopal School is a Christian community dedicated to academic and personal excellence, lifelong learning and service to others.”

Episcopal schools are, in my view, the model for what an independent school today must strive to be, and as I have got to know St. Luke’s over the past months, I have been deeply impressed by the degree to which St. Luke’s is itself a model of what an Episcopal School must strive to be. Look in detail at our mission; “We are a Christian community dedicated …[to]…service others.”

Every day at St. Luke’s we gather in chapel, every day a portion of each child’s life is set aside so that they may worship and give thanks, may think about what it means to be honorable, to be a good friend, to be dutiful, to know that we must serve the needs of others, and that creation is greater than the desires of our own selves. Above all, as an educator, I give thanks every day, for the great Episcopal tradition of daily chapel, because it means that for a moment each day our impressionable, vulnerable, searching, questioning children can think of themselves, not as math students or soccer players, or someone who lost their agenda book or missed a homework deadline, but as a child who is loved.

When people now ask me what happens at St. Luke’s, I say we are learning the Art of Life. Anyone who knows children, and anyone who knows great independent schools, knows that such learning depends upon the child’s sense that they are loved and are cared for. This knowledge is what empowers them with the confidence to question, to discover, to be the independent learners we want them be, not just until the next exam or next standardized test date, but for the rest of their lives. “Lifelong Learning”!

The lessons of chapel are lived out through the rest of the day, and through the community service that our children perform, far beyond what this school actually requires of them as a graduation requirement. This is what we say at 8:00am each morning, and these words define us and confidently tell the world what we care about. This is the St. Luke’s Way: “As members of a Christian community our conduct is guided by love and respect for God, our school, our neighbors and ourselves. We demonstrate the St. Luke’s Way through behavior that is courteous and cooperative.”

The academic life of the school more than lives up to the robustness and vitality of our values, and in this sense too, St. Luke’s is a model Episcopal School. We are intellectually grounded in providing our children with the classical education that transcends the fads and marketing gimmicks of the contemporary world, a classical education that has been created and endorsed by the experience of centuries. What a gift to give our children! And if you wander our hallways and sit in on our classes, you will see that our children embrace this gift with joy and excitement, because our teachers guide them with joy and excitement and creativity and verve.

Most importantly, our sense of the classical, of the great work of the past, does not lead us to ignore the future. Quite to the contrary I would claim, it is in fact precisely our sense of what is wonderful and timeless in the past that drives us to innovate in the present. Even whilst our English teachers introduce our students to Shakespeare, and our music teachers lead them through hymns, our science labs are humming, smelly and messy.

Three middle school math classes have only four students apiece, for that allows us to best challenge those children. Meanwhile our math teachers are researching the international best practices in math education. Our early childhood teachers are experimenting with radically creative pedagogies, and our chess teacher is asking our children to consider the relation between space and strategy as a way to learn problem solving, and as a great way to have fun. Our technology teachers are thinking through how to teach our children, not just the technological skills they need to possess to be employed and prosper in the 21st century, but how to think about the role and place of technology in a healthy, balanced life. A life in fact, which begins each work day by reciting the St. Luke’s Way….

So how lucky we all are to be a part of such a learning community, how thankful we should
be for St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and School.

Dr. Mark Reford
Head of School