Important Lessons From The Hiding Place

After we finished reading The Hiding Place, I asked the students to write about the lessons that they carried away from the book. Everyone did a wonderful job with this assignment, and I would like to share a paper that struck me as particularly insightful. This paper is by a student who often questions the Christian belief system at Flint Academy:

IMPORTANT LESSONS FROM THE HIDING PLACE

"I will admit that at the beginning of this book I found both Corrie and Betsie to be your typical sheltered religious fanatics. However as the story progressed I learned to respect them. Even from my agnostic point of view I could easily respect them for their undying loyalty to their faith. I also learned to respect them for being so kind and righteous.

I have no trouble admitting that I could never have done half of the things they did. I'm selfish, I'm aggressive, and even at times cold hearted. Never in my whole life could I have not only forgiven the Nazis, but actually have the desire to heal my own tormentors.

The thing that I have learned is to forgive and have the desire to do so as well. The fact that people can be like this shocked me to no end.

I'm a pessimist by nature; very rarely do I have a positive view on the world. And like every other pessimist, once I am proven wrong I'm happy. They showed me that the world can be a wonderful place, no matter how much evil there is.

I couldn't believe that all this good happened in such an evil place. Yet why would she lie? That thought was what sparked the entire realization that they truly were saintly people."

To compliment our study of The Hiding Place, the upper school went on a field trip this week to the Dallas Holocaust Museum. The students were very interested in all of the information presented there and I was proud of their behavior. The museum staff told Dr. Flint that we were one of the best-behaved and engaged groups that has been there in a long time!

Sacrificial Love

In our English class we have been reading The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. This is a firsthand account of Ms. Ten Boom's experiences hiding Jews and working with the Dutch underground during World War II. It has really brought the realities of the Holocaust to the students' attention and given us a lot of food for thought. Primarily we have been discussing what we would do if we were placed in a similar situation - if we would risk our lives over and over to help strangers.

One of the most striking examples of this is a part of the book where the Ten Boom family is trying to find a safe hiding place for a mother and her newborn baby. They asked a minister to help, and he refused on the grounds that the baby posed too great a risk. Casper Ten Boom, Corrie's elderly father, responded by saying:

"You say that we could lose our lives for this child. I would consider that to be the greatest honor that could come to my family."

We discussed his response as a group, and then the students were assigned response papers, detailing how they would react in the same situation - if they thought they would be willing to risk their lives for a stranger's baby. All of the papers were wonderful! Here is a paper by Zola Wilson, as an example:

"My family and I will do the same. It will be worth it, because the baby will have a chance in life. That way when he's older he will know what my family and I have done for him. Hopefully he will be grateful. Life is too short and I wanted him to live. I am glad to give my life up for him. I just hope that when I'm gone, his life is peaceful and kind to him. I pray and hope that God will be with him through out his days. Whoever takes my life and my families lives well, may God have mercy on their souls. My family and I will forgive them. We may not be perfect but at least our lives were worth it for the baby. I'm glad that we did this for the baby. I think there is good in people, its just that fear kind of over shadows that. It makes you wonder if other people would do the same.

September 19 Newsletter

I am really looking forward to our field trip this coming Friday! We will be attending a performance of The Importance Of Being Earnest at the Campus Theatre in Denton. The students have been doing a great job reading the play aloud in class, and I have loved hearing the different accents and voices they are using to make their parts stand out! I think that seeing the play performed will make it come alive for them even more, in addition to being a great cultural experience!







My language arts class finished taking a practice SAT this week. After reviewing their scores, I will make individual plans for the students, so we can work on any problem areas. The class is working really hard, and I am so proud of their dedication!



In humanities class, we are nearly finished with our picture studies of Paul Cezanne's Still Life With Apples. The students' work will be on display at Barnes And Noble this Friday for a fundraiser, so make sure you check it out!






I hope everyone has a great week!
~Mrs. Hallford

September 12 Newsletter

Well we certainly had an interesting first week of school! Since the flooding prevented us from doing the majority of our planned lessons, we will resume them this week. I was very impressed though, with the enthusiasm that the students showed for reading their parts of The Importance Of Being Earnest aloud. They got off to a very fun start! I am also in the process of planning a field trip to see a performance of The Importance Of Being Earnest, which I think would be a great addition to our classroom reading.

Here are some pictures I took of my homeroom class on our first day of school - the students are enjoying a welcome-back breakfast while going over their schedules and basic school policies.













I'm looking forward to getting a lot of work done this week in all of our classes. Hope everyone is ready to really get into it!

~Mrs. Hallford

Back To School!

Mrs. Hallford's Newsletter

Hi! I hope that everyone has enjoyed their summer, and is rested and ready for the school year to begin. Our family has had a wonderful summer, as we welcomed our newest daughter, Lainey, into the world!

I am very excited about this school year, and we are going to start off with some great projects! As your child's English teacher, I will begin with the subject of Comparison in our writing classes. By studying comparison, students learn to think more deeply about the topic of their papers, which enables them to develop well-argued essays. In our literature classes, we are beginning the year by reading The Importance Of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. This is a very funny play, and the students will tale turns reading different parts aloud in class. Not only will this play give the students a great introduction to the time period we are studying, but it will provide a lot of opportunities to learn new vocabulary, and to practice reading aloud with expression. Any students who would like to earn an Honors Literature credit will also read The Picture Of Dorian Gray independently and write an essay.

I will also be teaching a portion of our afternoon Humanities class, focusing on art and music appreciation. In music appreciation, we will be listening to the works of Claude Debussy. For art, we are going to begin by studying a still life painting by Paul Cezanne.

This picture study will be on display in Barnes And Noble on September 23 for our school fundraiser. After studying a still life by a master painter, the students will then create their own original still life paintings.

I hope everyone has a great first week of school. If anyone needs to contact me for any reason, my e-mail is nicole.hallfor@gmail.com and my cell phone is 817-372-0179. I would love to talk with you!

God bless!

~Nicole Hallford

September 8-10

We had a really great first week back at school! The students of the upper school are showing so much promise and enthusiasm, and I thoroughly enjoyed beginning to get to know each of them.

In Writing class, each student wrote a brief journal entry (something we will be doing periodically) about what they want from their educations. This was an opportunity for the students to reflect on their long-term goals. It also gave me a chance to get to know everyone a little better, as well as discover a little about their writing styles and abilities.

We also began a project that will be ongoing throughout the school year. Any time that students are finished with their writing assignments earlier than their classmates, I wanted to have a relevant project for them to work on. Our spare time project for the year was inspired by our study of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin last year. We learned then that Benjamin Franklin taught himself to write using some intriguing methods. He would read a selection of beautiful, classical writing, and then re-write it in purposefully poor language, as badly as possible. He would put that away for a few weeks, and then, using only his poor version as reference, attempt to re-write the beautiful selection. Franklin commented that on some occasions, he was pleasantly surprised to see that his final revision was better than the original!

In this vein, each student is given a book that is very simply written, and while good reading practice, not beautiful or meaningful literature. Their assignment is to re-write that book using rich, beautiful language. It should be a lot of fun to see what the students can come up with!


We have had a lot of fun in our Literature classes. The concept of narration (a student retelling a paragraph or page of a book after it has been read aloud) was quickly understood by the students who are new to Flint. In Mrs. Roy's class, we began Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, and have really enjoyed it so far. Mr. Flint's boys began Edgar Allen Poe's Tales of Mystery And Terror. The first story in that collection is Ligeia. The boys are impatiently waiting to discover how Ligeia is a scary story, because so far it has only been about love :)
For Coach Hallford's boys, we have begun Frankenstein, and the class has been intrigued by the author's device of narrative letters to introduce the story. The plot of the story did not begin where they expected, and we are enjoying learning how different the book is from the more familiar movie versions.


My class has begun Johnny Tremaine for literature, and we are really enjoying the descriptive language of the book. We completed the first chapter, and the class illustrated it. Most chose to depict the loft that Johnny shares with his fellow apprentices.

In all of the literature classes, we begin each lesson with a few minutes of recitation. Each class is memorizing a poem, and we take a little time to learn a new line each day.


I am really pleased with all the classes, and I'm very proud of my class for adjusting so quickly to all the changes that joining the upper school presents. They are doing a great job! Next week we will begin our first picture study, which should be a really fun project for the afternoons.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!
God bless,
Mrs. Hallford

Back To School!

Welcome, everyone! I'm very excited about starting the school year! Our family has had a wonderful summer, and I hope you have all had the same. Although I will primarily be posting about the writing and literature classes I am teaching this year, I wanted to go ahead and put a walk-through of what my own class will be doing on there first day. If you want to go over this with your child and discuss everything, it may help soothe some nerves that they are feeling.

I can't wait to see everyone tomorrow!
~Mrs. H

Before 9:30 - Go to the upper school morning room (the old lunchroom)
9:30 - Mrs. Hallford will bring everyone into the classroom. We'll start the day with a devotion and the pledge of allegiance, then we'll introduce everyone, have muffins and orange juice, talk about some behavior expectations for the class, our class schedule, and get familiar with the work we'll be doing in Language Arts every morning. Every student will be given a schedule of their own, so they can know what is coming next throughout the day.
10:15 - Mrs. Hallford and Mrs. Parsons will help everyone find their math classes.
10:55 - We'll have a ten minute break, either playing on the playground or in the upper school break room (old lunchroom, stocked with games, a ping-pong table, etc.)
11:05 - Go to the Science/Nature study room for a Biology lesson with Mrs. Roy. Mrs. Parsons will go with the class to help out, and Mrs. Hallford will stay in her classroom to teach a different class.
11:45 - Go to Coach Hallford's classroom for a US Government lesson. Mrs. Parsons will go with the class to help out, and Mrs. Hallford will stay in her classroom to teach a different class.
12:30 - We'll have an upper school assembly in the break room, and Dr. Flint will address the students regarding the handbook, dress code, etc. Then we will all go to the new lunch room (was the chapel room last year) and eat lunch.
1:15 Go to Mr. Flint's room for a Latin lesson. Mrs. Parsons will go with the class to help out, and Mrs. Hallford will stay in her classroom to teach a different class.
2:00 Go back to Mrs. Hallford's classroom. We'll discuss the different kinds of work we'll be doing in Writing class this year, and write a short journal entry.
2:40 We'll have a ten minute break.
2:50 Go back to Mrs. Hallford's classroom. We will have a discussion about how the first day of school went, and begin reading The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe, which will be our secondary novel.
3:30 Mrs. Hallford will explain our "Service Learning" assignments (class chores) and students will complete their tasks. Students will return to their seats after finishing, and then wait to be dismissed by 3:45
(Since we are starting chores at 3:30, please plan to pick your child up at 3:45 to give them adequate time to complete their tasks.)