From Hurry to Harmony: Hillcrest Teachers Dive Into Scholé
The faculty filled the chapel with laughter, drawn in from the aroma of coffee. The Monday morning in-service was a welcomed huddle for Hillcrest’s community as they buzz of conversation in the room waned as President Luke Fiskness stood to greet them. The greeting was part welcome and part invocation, asking each person to praise the Lord by recalling a moment when God had revealed Himself in the classroom. The gathering paused, President Luke Fiskness invited his colleagues to slow down, as he pulled an ancient word out of his pocket: scholé. It means leisure, but not the lazy kind. On the screen behind him the definition appeared: scholé is “restful, intentional learning that cultivates wisdom and virtue.” The idea that a classroom could be both restful and rigorous washed over the room of teachers who battle college preparation, SAT test compliance, and rigorous reading expectations.
To drive the point home, Fiskness played a TEDx talk by Rebekah Hagstrom. She confessed with a grin that most modern Americans are unfamiliar with classical education, even though it nurtured minds like Galileo’s, Shakespeare’s, and Einstein’s. Hagstrom spoke as a parent first and an educator second, admitting that she tried every kind of school before embracing this ancient model, and even helped start a school when she couldn’t find one. Classical education, she said, follows the contours of childhood. As Hagstrom described each stage, teachers around the chapel nodded; they had witnessed the delight of a first‑grader singing a Latin song and the intensity of an eleventh‑grader defending a point in a mock trial.
Hagstrom’s voice rose when she shared results: her school’s students score among the top in the nation on standardized tests and are offered generous scholarships. Yet she insisted that the greatest success is invisible; her graduates have learned to speak eloquently and honor those they disagree with. She closed her talk by asking listeners to imagine a society where everyone could reason well, write beautifully, and act charitably. The question hung in the chapel like a dare.
When the screen went black, Fiskness turned the conversation back to Hillcrest. He was quick to dispel any romantic fantasies. Rest doesn’t mean disorder. His PowerPoint was blinding. One slide, stark in its simplicity, warned that scholé is not an excuse for sloppy management or wandering conversations. At the same time, he noted the growing pressure on students to build resumes of AP credits, sports, and volunteer hours. It is tempting for schools to mimic that race, yet Christian classical education takes the radical stance that a soul matters more than a transcript. When upper‑school classrooms foster calm reflection and delight in what is true, good, and beautiful, they are forming men and women for life in Christ’s kingdom, not just for college.
He offered three principles that act like anchors to steady the classroom. The first is to make room for rest; the pace of modern schooling can feel like a factory conveyor belt, but scholé insists on space to savor ideas. The second is to aim every lesson at what is truly worthwhile: the goodness of creation, the beauty of art, the truth of Scripture, and the wisdom of history. The third is to remember that people are not machines; we are created to worship and to wonder, not merely to produce. Those principles are simple enough to write on a sticky note and profound enough to change a culture.
Teachers left the chapel carrying notebooks, coffee mugs, and something harder to quantify, a sense of purpose. Hagstrom’s vision of classical education danced alongside Fiskness’s challenge to create classrooms of peace and wonder. Teachers saw that embracing classical education is not a nostalgic hobby; it is a bold act of resistance in a culture that reduces learning to credentials. By the end of the day, the phrase “restful learning” felt less like an oxymoron and more like a calling. Hillcrest’s staff walked back to their rooms, determined to trade the treadmill of productivity for the pilgrimage of wisdom so education is not merely an academic endeavor, but a way of life.