Cross Shield
Mr.
Credits
Mark Koscak, Director of Development
Destany Keesecker, Design, Layout, Editor
Jordy Whetsell, Images
Samuel Adams, Writer
Katherine Anderson, Writer
Mission
Providence
Ordo Amoris
Our aim as a school is to partner with parents to give their children an education designed to enable them to live as free people. Paul told us in God’s Word that “all things are permissible, but not all things are beneficial” (1 Cor. 6:12). We will fight ardently against the callings of our society to “follow our hearts.” We know that one who follows the desires of the heart will one day become a slave to those desires. We will also fight against the temptation to make ourselves slaves to the law. We only deceive ourselves if we teach our children to inadvertently become a performer of a prescriptive set of rules to gain acceptance with the absence of love in their heart. We will soon find that we have only done what Paul David Tripp calls apple nailing. By becoming slaves to the law, our children’s behavior may deceive us into believing that their heart has changed, but like apples nailed to a tree instead of grown, the fruit will soon rot.
This year, we are exploring the concept of Ordo Amoris. This concept is what I believe to be the heart of the matter. Our inability to articulate the order of the value of our choices has left us defenseless in the face of arguments like “love is love” and “only God can judge me,” while derision is thrown at “pearl clutching” and “small-mindedness” when we attempt to articulate that something is amiss. We must be able to explain why we value some art and music over others. And we must make very intentional choices about what books we should teach our children.
This concept of teaching children what to value and watchfully cultivating what they are exposed to, making sure those things are true, good, and beautiful, was the common practice in education throughout the Western world. Even the pagans understood that this type of education was the only way to cultivate reason and virtue. Christian thinkers took this concept even further with the writings of St. Augustine in his masterwork The City of God.
Augustine simply puts it, “When the miser prefers his gold to justice, it is through no fault of the gold, but of the man; and so with every created thing. For though it be good, it may be loved with an evil as well as with a good love: it is loved rightly when it is loved ordinately; evilly when inordinately.”
This is where the conviction starts to get uncomfortable. Are there places in your life that you have inordinately loved something? It’s usually not bad or evil things that we love out of order, but rather good things. Things like “me time and self-care” or our child’s athletic endeavors or a certain affinity for true crime, or a desire to maintain our youthful vigor and appearance. In and of themselves, these things aren’t evil. Taking time to take care of yourself and appearance is healthy. Encouraging the great things that a child can learn being on a sports team is truly good. These things only become evil when we begin to love them inordinately.
I think if we were honest with ourselves as a school, we can think of times where our loves have become disordered. Have we loved grades or a test score more than the soul of a child? Have we inordinately loved a successful program for its success instead of its virtue? Have we loved our perception in the community and school growth more than our development and growth of the character and love for Jesus within our hearts. Again, loving success isn’t bad. It’s when we love these things out of order, when we let our base passions rule over what is true, good, and beautiful, that problems occur.
So, over the last six months or so, we have been working on a document titled “The Ordo Amoris of Providence Academy.” It started as an expected student outcomes document as a guide for faculty and staff, but then it morphed into a potential guiding document for the entire school. A document like this helps guide us in our decision making.
What a blessing that Jesus gave us the simple but beautiful answer to all our questions, “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. And love your neighbor as yourself.” With this in mind, let’s seek to rightly order our loves as individuals and as a school for the glory of God.
In Christ, Head of School
Orchestra
Gina Gill was raised in Bradenton, Florida, and began playing the violin at age eleven in her school’s orchestra program, quickly developing a passion for playing. She joined the Florida West Coast Youth Symphony and started teaching violin at the age of seventeen. After graduating from Milligan University with a B.S. in early childhood education, she gained fifteen years of teaching experience in various music disciplines. Following a move to Huntington, West Virginia, she was involved with the Marshall University Symphony Orchestra and received the West Virginia Educator’s Golden Apple Award. In 2017, she returned to Johnson City and launched the Providence Academy String and Orchestra program. As a freelance violinist, Gina actively participates in music education organizations such as ETSBOA and ASTA. She constantly seeks professional development opportunities such as the American String Teachers Association National Conference. This past summer, she attended the Ohio State University String Teachers Workshop, learning from some of the nation’s best string educator pedagogues. She considers her role at Providence Academy her dream job and is eager to inspire students for many years to come. When she is not teaching, she and her husband Thomas are busy raising their two boys, Jonah and Canyon.
DR A M A
We are blessed to offer fine arts programs tailored for all ages to explore and engage in their creative interests!
Counting Our Blessings
If you could picture the ideal school for your child to attend, what would it include? Would you imagine a vibrant, well-educated faculty to teach subjects from a Christ-centered focus? We all would love for our children to be prayed over and taught life lessons from the Bible, especially when it comes to how they treat one another. God’s Word says, “Everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40). The ideal school would include virtuous Christian teachers.
Would you imagine a school that strives for God-honoring excellence in academics, fine arts, and athletics? We desire programs that promote the beauty of our divinely designed (six-day) created world, and we desire a school that teaches truth, goodness, and beauty. The ideal school would be Christ-centered, and it would apply a tried and true approach to education. This school would recognize the great books, the great men and women, and the great lessons of Western civilization. The ideal school would also produce students equipped to think and live as free men and women.
What would you imagine about the tuition of this ideal school? It would be great if this school helped families that couldn’t afford tuition by providing need-based scholarship. It would also be great if this school, in comparison to its peers, was affordable. The ideal school enrollment would include families from a broad range of income levels.
Our good, heavenly Father has given us that gift in Providence Academy. Our school is focused on preparing, cherishing, and growing God’s special gifts to us, our children. At Providence, we have all these things and more!
While there may be Christian educators in other schools in our community, at Providence Academy the entire faculty and staff is comprised of servant-minded Christians. Since the school’s founding in 1994, the focus has been to work with parents to fulfill what Jesus taught in Matthew 19:14, “Let the children come to Me and do not prevent them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” In 2024, Providence has grown to 845 students and 140 faculty and staff. Each day, our children are taught and cared for by people who love our children as their own, while preparing them to be future leaders of God’s Kingdom. Praise be to God from whom all blessings flow!
Matt Jones Board Chair Providence Academy
High School Discover Week
Photos & Article Written by Samuel Adams, Edited by Destany Keesecker
Each year, Providence Academy offers high school students a unique opportunity to learn and grow outside of the classroom during Discover week. Discover is designed to stretch and grow students and to encourage a love of learning. It provides opportunities to fulfill the school’s mission through exploration in academics, arts, outdoors, and athletics.
During Discover week, students can either choose to participate in a school field trip or to take part in on-campus intensive courses that are unique and help to enrich students in many ways. This year’s Discover trip options for students included Italy, Chicago, Yosemite, and the Bahamas. The Italy trip included sights such as Venice, Pisa, Verona, Pompeii, and of course Rome itself. In addition to sightseeing, students who went on the Chicago trip served with Breakthrough Urban Ministry by serving food to those in need, packing lunches for children, and helping with other programs. Students who traveled to Yosemite embarked on a transformative journey, serving as the hands of God while embracing lessons in humility, forgiveness, and compassion. Surrounded by the awe-inspiring beauty of God’s creation in the west, they deepened their faith and connection to His work. Finally, the Bahamas trip gave a handful of students the chance to witness Christianity in the Bahamas woven with vibrant threads of faith, culture, and history. These students were also able to learn how to sail a boat throughout the Bahamas!
Alternatively, intensive classes were offered to students who chose not to participate in a Discover trip. Some examples of the classes offered include an intro to basic private pilot ground school, an intro to Spanish, a robotics class, and a faith and fitness class, among many other options. In addition, students had the opportunity to either participate in an internship or a service project locally.
Emem Okpokowuruk
recently started her professional career as a Clinical Nurse at Duke University Hospital in Durham, NC. Emem is a graduate of Providence Academy, Vanderbilt University, and received her BSN from ETSU School of Nursing.
Sam McAllister
will be coaching our 5th-6th grade boys basketball team. Sam played four years of basketball at Providence and was a 1000-point scorer. He is currently a student at Northeast State Community College. Sam attends Calvary Church in Johnson City and directs the youth worship band. He is excited about coaching the team and helping the boys both physically and spiritually.
Audrey Gwinn taught for 4 years in Kingsport Public Schools. During that time, she struggled with the inability to talk about Jesus in her lessons. One day, while teaching about apologies, she realized that the lesson fell short of what it could be. Now, she is a third-grade teacher at PA, where she has the opportunity to teach about Jesus every day!
Reading to Shape Lives
Written by Katherine Anderson & Samuel Adams, Photo by Laura Tomlinson
Reading is an important component to any educational institution, but for Providence Academy it is especially so. According to research by the Foundation for Excellence in Education, “A person’s ability to read is a critical predictor of educational and lifelong success. A strong reading program, beginning in kindergarten and continuing into the third grade and beyond, gives students the best possible chance to maximize their education.” Reading unlocks for each person a world full of wonder, beauty, and great ideas. It connects us to the great conversations of the past and the present. As a classical Christian school, reading is especially important because God has communicated to his people through the written Word. While Scripture is the most important book, other books also have the power to shape our loves and our character to become more like Christ. For these reasons, it matters that our students learn to read well and that we are intentional in selecting the books they read in class.
To strengthen our already successful program, we are continually looking for ways to improve reading throughout the school. Teachers in elementary and middle grades have started to use tools such as anchor charts and journals to help students understand what they are reading and develop critical thinking skills. In elementary grades, the student services team has assisted teachers in administering benchmarks in both reading and math to help students before they get behind. Mrs. Ransom, an elementary learning services teacher, is certified to help students with intervention in reading, which has been a big help to students as the school has grown. Since it is not uncommon for students to struggle with some level of dyslexia, our school is blessed to have multiple members of our student services team ready to help our students learn how to read well.
Recently, we reviewed and made some changes to the literature read in all grades with the goal of selecting the best books that help our students love truth, beauty, and goodness according to a Christian worldview. We desired that these works have enduring value and challenge students to read beyond their comfort zone, even above grade-level. Aesop’s Fables, The Wind in the Willows, and Hamlet are just some of the works recently added to the other great books already being read in classes. These revisions also helped us revamp our summer reading program. All students going into 3rd through 12th grade are expected to read over the summer and complete in-class assignments and assessments related to that reading the first week of school. Moreover, we opened up the school library this past summer, giving parents and students access to great books during the summer break.
A strong reading program is one of the keys to success in a classical Christian education, and at Providence Academy, learning to read and comprehend is a foundation for unlocking a world of literature that can shape a student’s life. We are thankful for a dedicated team of faculty, staff, and parents that emphasizes the need to read!
Congratulations to Brody Fulks on achieving a perfect score on the PSAT! This outstanding accomplishment is a testament to your hard work, dedication, and the talents God has blessed you with. We praise God for your success and pray for his continued guidance in all of your future endeavors!
This year, we were fortunate to celebrate Homecoming on our new football and soccer field! Thanks to God’s provision, the dedication of our volunteers, and the generosity of our donors, we now have a state-of-the-art turf field with updated seating. This field stands as a testament to the power of faith, community, and service. We are grateful for this incredible blessing and look forward to hosting many future events where we can gather in fellowship and continue to create meaningful memories!
Athletics GO KNIGHTS!
Our girls’ soccer team, coached by James Herington, won the regular season championship in their conference! They finished the season with an impressive record of 4-1. Several players received conference awards, including Lindsay Williams (#16), Chloe Henderson (#4), Anarose Kozlowski (#8), and Hayden MacDonald (#24). Additionally, the team won the Smoky Mountain Cup in Gatlinburg, TN, allowing only one goal against them across all three games in the tournament!
Our boys’ baseball team traveled to Mississippi for the postseason and won their best-of-three series against the Northpoint Trojans with scores of 6-2 and 9-5 in the first two games, earning a spot in the State tournament in Murfreesboro, TN. Competing hard, the team achieved second place despite facing late games and injuries. The coaches are very proud and consider them the #1 team in the state!
Two players, Josh Owens (USA) and Rinaldo Matti (Philippines), were selected for national teams, while Josh Owens, Rinaldo Matti, Nathan Eisfelder, and Tine Bowman received recognition from the TWSA at various levels. We are incredibly proud of their achievements and determination!
A Legacy of Giving
By Mark Koscak, Director of Development
A Metamorphosis
Recently, our Head of School, Ben Holland and I met with a group of PA Alumni dads to inspect our new turfed field. Yesterday we had a grass soccer field, and today we have a multi-sport turf stadium with tiered seating. It was a good chance for the group to recall the early days of our Carroll Creek campus when they worked together with other parents and students to lay the original sod on the soccer field.
A 30-Year Legacy of Giving
Talking to the group reminded me of the legacy of giving that we are so fortunate to have at Providence Academy. For thirty years families have paid tuition to pay for things like teacher salaries and utility bills. However, their commitment didn’t stop at tuition. It is hard to comprehend the volunteer hours that have gone into making our school what it is today. Another area where we see this generous giving is the need-based Annual Scholarship Fund. The scholarship fund has been a board priority since day one at Providence Academy. In the last five years alone, we have provided more than $2.3 million to families in need. This year 20% of our students are able to attend because of this need-based help.
We also see this legacy of giving when we realize that we do not owe any debt. We are fortunate to have a 45-acre campus and a 116,000 sq. ft. building that is not only beautiful, but also debt free. If we were starting to build today, it would probably cost $50 million. Imagine having a mortgage payment on a $50 million project, and what that would do to tuition. As I reflect on the generational wealth that we have accumulated at Providence Academy, I am thankful for all of the parents, grandparents, businesses, churches, and friends who gave generously to make Providence Academy a shining light in our community. I am grateful for the PA alumni who are making a difference in the world today, and I am also grateful to our God, the Creator, Provider, and King. Providence Academy is God’s mission.
A Pathway to Follow
The pathway forward is now ours to walk. We have the opportunity to build the future. Join us as we extend this legacy of giving for the next 30 years. Our goal this year is to raise $670,000 for need-based support. You can make a check out to Providence Academy and note Annual Scholarship Fund in the memo line, or you can use the QR code to give online as a monthly or one time donor. Please prayerfully consider continuing the legacy of giving!
Providence Academy
2788 Carroll Creek Road
Johnson City, TN 37615
Memorial Gifts & Honorariums
In Loving Memory In Honor Of
Chloe Davis Bordwine
Mike Chaudron
Mary Grizzle
Robert Lee Jenkins Jr.
Mattie Lou Sholes
Luna Bratz
Blaine Dawson
Evan Dawson
Hagan Dietrich
Hudson Dietrich
Hazel Gabler
Reid Gabler
Afton Roark
Amaris Roark
Avonlea Roark
Beckett Roark
Clement Roark