As parents, grades and teachers’ comments mean far more than when we were students ourselves. Our hearts frequently beat with the rhythm of the successes and failures our children experience at school. Their delight with a good grade thrills us, too. Just as their tears at a poor grade can tempt us to become vigilantes – ready to string up the teacher that dared to “hurt” our child this way.

 Salem School is not an easy school in which to maintain an “A” average. In fact, for many students, being at Salem means a lot of hard work just to maintain passing grades, not to mention the honor roll. That fact has caused a number of parents and students real distress over the years. Some parents have been tempted to resent the standards, or to assume that Salem appeals only to “smart” kids, while not caring about the success of “average” or slower students. We have had families leave Salem because they felt the school was just too difficult for their children. That may have been true. We can tell you truthfully that we are mentoring students to become well rounded and well (g)rounded in Christ in their daily learning environment. Things worthwhile are things that have been earned and through which hard work and discipline are key.

 Our expectations as parents for our children and our school, teachers, daily work, grades, behavior standards, etc., will necessarily vary from family to family. That’s a fact that has contributed to my loss of sleep and Larry’s loss of hair as no doubt it has to other administrators’. Some parents come close to destroying their children’s childhood for the “A.” Others put school work lower than the laundry on the priority scale. Nevertheless, Salem was and still is being formed to offer a certain kind of education – Christian, taught in a certain way- developmentally.  Through years of trial and error, we have come up with the program we currently offer to families seeking this kind of education. Admittedly, it is not a “one size fits all” program.

 Therefore, while experience has taught us that the vast majority of students from families committed to a Christian education will, with varying degrees of effort, succeed at Salem, there are students who will find it very difficult. My heart, just like our teachers’ hearts, goes out to the student of any age who, year after year, struggles to do his best, and pulls

“B’s” and “C’s” at best. However, because those grades represent consistent, gut-it-out work, in the long-run they will be worth far more than the “A’s” of the student who earned them without much effort at all.

 School is not all there is to life; in fact it is a very short part of it, relatively, as we adults have discovered. The students who, in their homes and at Salem, learn to work hard for everything they get, will gain much more from their school years than the students who breeze through school with little or no effort. We as parents need to remember that, just like our long-forgotten report cards, our children’s grades will have little impact in the adult world for which we are preparing our children. Grade expectations need to be kept in perspective, by the school and the families. After all, we are primarily in the business of raising godly children, not GPA’s.