Letter from the Director

“At SGCA we are training hearts and heads for Christ” – Colleen

The name of our Academy has its origins in Latin, meaning “grace alone,” a phrase coined during the Reformation as one of the “Five Solas.” I find it also fitting for me as a Christian adoptive mother of four children and a passionate educator of both hearts and heads for Christ. “Sola Gratia” exemplifies my roles as a child of God, saved by Grace alone, as a mother through Grace alone via adoption, and as the Director of SGCA, given this opportunity to help raise up leaders that will impact the Kingdom. I run and see this community as a ministry.

We provide homeschooled students with a rich, embodied learning environment that, in many ways, mirrors a school experience. We prepare them for their future in college and beyond while partnering with our homeschooling parents to teach the main lessons on campus and then assigning core work for the other days students are at home with their homeschooling parents. We work alongside parents, helping them guide their students in the pursuit of excellence in the classical tradition. Given that we are still homeschooling families, we have the opportunity to pool our resources, education, and experiences to offer passionate and well-educated teachers collectively working for our students. There is grace in that, too.

We have four children: Mason (25), Sarah (20), Kendra (11), and Dominic (10). We have adopted three of our children out of our experiences as foster care parents and one from an international adoption in Russia. I began homeschooling when my oldest son was four years old, 21 years ago. Having a severely impaired child who requires full care, a mentally ill child, and a child with severe dyslexia, life can be messy and hard many days. We have endured days where God’s Grace alone got us through. We have also had many Grace filled days of laughter and joy. It’s a messy, Grace-required journey without a final destination until we see our Savior face to face. My children have taught me to work hard, pray hard, and trust God for the results, and I still live by that motto today.

When my oldest daughter was younger, I felt the calling to offer classes out of my home basement, where we met weekly for messy, crazy science experiments, dressed up to represent various historical events we were studying and created a love of learning through embodied experiences. I began blogging about those experiences on www.solagratiamom.com. Then I felt the Lord calling me to expand what I was doing, find other passionate teachers who loved the material they were teaching, and start a homeschool group that has now blossomed into a hybrid that straddles the lines of homeschooling and school.

We maintain both high standards of behavior by expecting students to pursue their personal best, making excellence our banner while extending grace in the journey. We welcome you to join us and become a part of the Sola Gratia family!