About
Who We Are
Vine Classical Community is a Christian homeschool community that meets one day a week at a central location in Austin, Texas. We meet on Tuesdays from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m at a local church for 25 weeks during the school year. Vine offers Lower Grammar (PreK-2) and Upper Grammar (3-6) students instruction in grammar, writing, art, science, literature, geography, math facts, and Latin.
Vine also offers a “Bridge” class for Dialectic students (7-8) that meets for 30 weeks and includes classes in writing, grammar, apologetics, geography, science, and history.
Vine Classical Hall offers classes for Rhetoric students (8-12). As a family-centered and parent-led community, classes for older students depend on the needs of current students and the availability of a teacher.
Benefits and Services
We provide our members with these benefits and services:
- Community: A loving community of support and encouragement centered on Christ where the fruit of the Spirit is evident.
- Life balance: A community where both children and parents flourish. A community that is fun, life-giving, and academically meaningful without overwhelming families’ time.
- Growth: Cultivate leadership and servant-hearts in our children.
- Academics: Educational programs that are instructional, support parents at home, and help to round out the education that our children are receiving.
- Flexibility: Freedom to customize for our children as the community agrees.
- Grace: A community that extends grace and love to all in whatever season we are in.
Our Guiding Principles
Pursuing Wisdom . . . through a Classical Curriculum
Classical education is a long tradition of education that has emphasized seeking truth, goodness, and beauty and the study of the liberal arts and the great books. What are the liberal arts? They are grammar, logic, rhetoric (the verbal arts of the trivium), arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy (the mathematical arts of the quadrivium). Classical education also includes the study of Latin. The study of these subjects in the pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty teaches students how to learn and how to think, and how to pursue wisdom.
It is precisely this kind of education that has produced countless great leaders, inventors, scientists, writers, philosophers, theologians, physicians, lawyers, artists, and musicians over the centuries. Classical education never really disappeared, but it did diminish starting around 1900 with the advent of progressive education. In an effort to restore this most proven form of education, the liberal arts tradition has been renewed and expanded again over the last thirty years.
Discovering Delight—in Restful Learning
As our name implies, we value the concept of “restful learning” that is at the root of the word scholé. The word scholé (pronounced skoh-LAY) comes from a Greek word that means “restful learning,” with the connotation of “contemplation,” “conversation,” and “reflection.” Scholé is also the basis for our English word “school,” but this modern term has lost the connotation of restfulness. Progressive education often cultivates a learning experience that is frenetic, as students and teachers rush to “cover” required material. As a result, students tend to learn to cram, pass, and forget. Even within the classical tradition, it is easy to find ourselves approaching education from a state of stress, striving anxiously to recover a rich tradition and thus missing the great depth it offers.
We believe excellence in academics need not be frenetic. Instead, allowing the concept of scholé to guide our teaching practices, we pursue restful learning by modeling peace, love of the subject, and unrushed learning. It is important to note that restfulness does not mean idleness. Instead, it means that we pursue depth instead of breadth, valuing contemplation and conversation over merely “covering” a wide range of material. We seek meaningful engagement of fewer books and concepts so that learning becomes enjoyable and memorable. We dig deep into classical subjects so that our students experience refreshment as their studies come alive.
Growing Together—as a Community of Learners
We are seeking to recover an approach to education that few—if any—of us experienced ourselves. As such, it is sometimes difficult to see the path ahead of us, and our process is often one of trial and error. Recovering the classical tradition and the scholé approach is only made possible by collaboration. We are united by our commitment to pursuing restful, classical education for our children, and we gather together to share our gifts, experience, and learned wisdom with one another in pursuit of this goal.
Statement of Faith
We, the leaders and families of Vine Classical Community, live to love and glorify God. Our community and educational endeavors are centered around and united in the love and grace of God as revealed to us in the Lord Jesus Christ. We affirm that the Bible is the infallible Word of God, fully inspired by the Holy Spirit, and is the supreme and final authority on all matters on which it speaks. The Essentials of our faith rest upon this sure foundation of Scripture. We believe in one God, infinitely perfect and eternally existing in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the cross a sacrifice for our sins, according to the Scriptures. Being estranged from God and condemned by our sinfulness, our salvation is wholly dependent upon the work of God’s grace through Jesus Christ alone. In the Great Commission, Christ commands all believers to proclaim the Gospel throughout the world and to make disciples of all nations.
We are an ecumenical community that welcomes believers, who through saving faith in Jesus Christ and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit are united together in the body of Christ, regardless of denomination, and who agree with the theological truths expressed above and in the time-tested Nicene Creed.
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, for our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; and is seated at the right hand of the Father. The only son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit and was made man. He suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father [and the Son]. With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. AMEN.
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