Giving Thanks

Dear Founders community,

This Thanksgiving, while the turkey is brining and my husband’s parents are on the road to our house from Houston, I am profoundly grateful for Founders Classical Academy. Over the course of the last 5 years, we have built an American classical school where students and teachers are allowed to return to the tried and true methods of teaching and learning, where parents’ authority in their children’s lives is recognized and honored, and where the true, the good, and the beautiful guide all that we do together.

For me, Founders Classical Academy of Leander has been a a great gift. It has given me the chance to work hard at something worth doing, and through this work I have met a group of teachers who pursue of knowledge and virtue each day, and a group of parents who demonstrate how to raise young men and women of character. Then there are the students we are educating together, who are some of the most important people in my life. As we continue in our 5th anniversary year, I am grateful most of all for the chance to be with these people each day–to work alongside them and to learn from them.

Thanksgiving was established in 1789 by President George Washington, who asked that Americans remember “with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”

In The Federalist, the Founders teach us that our country is rare because it was founded through “reflection and choice,” rather than by “accident and force.” The United States of America came into being because a group of people thought about what the relationship between the government and the people ought to be, and then designed a system of government built upon those principles. Our students learn in history classes how unusual that is — the founding of nations are usually much less deliberate. The result is that we Americans are here because of an idea, something that we can discuss and consider that idea as we think about the future of the United States.

The founding ideas of our nation are contained in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. This Thanksgiving, join me in rereading these documents and perhaps studying them in more depth. Join me in gratitude that our nation began in a principled way, and that it allows schools like ours to thrive.

In gratitude,

Headmaster

P.S. The support of friends of Founders Classical Academy is important for the continued success of our school. This Giving Tuesday, please consider Founders Classical Academy of Leander in your charitable giving plans. This Tuesday, all donations go directly to our talented teachers, who provide our students with an American classical education in the liberal arts and sciences each day.