Academics
Blue Ridge Christian Academy
What We Offer
The Center for Cognitive Formation
Equipped with new scientific data and a strong belief in a child’s potential, Dominion Ridge is taking a fresh look at how students learn. Since its inception, Blue Ridge Christian Academy has been committed to the spiritual, moral, and intellectual development of its students.
We understand and appreciate the intrinsic relatedness of these foundational dimensions of the human person, but as an educational institution we recognize that our primary contribution is intellectual formation. The key component of our educational vision and mission is namely that of cognitive development through neuroeducation.
An Emerging Field
At Dominion Ridge, the focus is on your child. We leverage a variety of cognitive tools and techniques designed to foster a child’s innate learning potential. The process begins with an assessment of the child’s strengths and vulnerabilities. Education therapists utilize various assessment tools for determining the optimal course of action for individual learners and monitoring their success.
If it is determined that additional support is needed, the child is recommended to join The Center for Cognitive Formation at Dominion Ridge. Teachers and therapists then develop a customized plan that will serve as the student’s personal roadmap to academic success. Our experience shows that with the right kind of support nearly all students can become critical thinkers and competent learners.
Our Methodology
Our methodology is based on the groundbreaking work of the late Dr. Reuven Feuerstein, an Israeli developmental psychologist who was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2012. Dr. Feuerstein’s ability to bring out the best in students is legendary and his methods are now applied worldwide through the organization that he founded –the Feuerstein Institute.
Every teacher at Dominion Ridge receives training in Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment (IE). With the benefit of these instruments, focusing on cognitive development, Dominion Ridge teachers are equipped to identify and respond to individual student learning strengths and vulnerabilities.
Additional Support
For students who require additional support beyond the classroom, Dominion Ridge provides individual and small group cognitive skills therapy with trained and experienced education therapists. There is an additional fee for this program. In addition, Dominion Ridge offers a Life Model Program for Dominion Ridge high school students and recent graduates who need additional life skills instruction, socialization skills development, and trade and workforce skills.
Dominion Ridge believes that teaching someone subject matter can get them into a college or a job, but teaching a person how to learn creates a lifelong learner that can be adaptable to new situations. And with our technologically-driven, fast-changing, culture adaptability is more important now than ever before.
Classical Education
For some, classical education means adding Latin and the study of classical literature to a school’s curricula. Though Blue Ridge incorporates these into the education of its students, it also includes three stages of learning: grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric.
These combined form the same classical model of education used by great thinkers like Aristotle, Plato, C.S. Lewis, and Thomas Jefferson. But, Blue Ridge combines it with the modern science of neuroeducation to not only teach our students how to learn, but also how to think.
It goes beyond the what to mediate students to ask questions both of themselves and of the content —through these skills, it is our goal that our students grow a passion for learning that follows them a lifetime.
Two Stages
The first stage, grammar, begins with students learning the vocabulary associated with every subject. For example, names and sounds of letters, math terminology, and words for days of the week, and more provide the foundation upon which the child builds future knowledge.
The second stage, dialectic, utilizes the knowledge learned in the grammar stage to ask questions, sort, compare, and practice.
This usually takes place most often between the ages of ten and thirteen. The rhetoric stage utilizes writing, speech, and conversation to build upon prior knowledge and expand to problem solving and elaborative communication.
The Socratic Approach
It is the end goal that your child becomes a critical thinker and gains skills for being a lifelong learner.
BEYOND Program
The Dominion Ridge Beyond Program, administered by the Center for Cognitive Development, provides students with exceptional learning abilities the opportunities to increase their learning experiences through a variety of projects and assignments, including STEM-oriented activities, additional reading and associated tasks, dual-enrollment with Lord Fairfax Community College, extracurricular events, and more.
Students are recognized for the Beyond program through a variety of assessment tools.
Parents are notified of their child’s acceptance into the program.
Additional fees may exist for this program.
Students in the Dominion Ridge Beyond Program are also encouraged to participate in the on-campus dual enrollment with Lord Fairfax Community College beginning in tenth grade.
If you would like your child evaluated for participation in the Beyond Program, please contact the school office for more information.
Interact Club
The Interact Club of Blue Ridge Christian Academy is a service learning club for students in 9th -12th grade. DRA students have the opportunity to gather with other young people to develop leadership skills and learn the importance of serving others. To read more, visit rotary.org/en/get-involved/interact-clubs.
Why Cursive Writing
“In opposition to the current trends of promoting screen time and keyboard use by students, educators and parents have overlooked the benefits of handwriting in stimulating several areas of the brain, creating deeper memory pathways, lowering emotional tension, increasing fine-motor coordination, producing fluency, establishing multi-processing efficiency, and clarifying personal thought” (Hopkins, 2016, p. 5)
“Mastery of script by a child is one of the most important signs of a child’s socialization into humanity and its intellectual treasures. Writing is the principal basis for the development of abstract thinking. Writing transforms our cognitive abilities, heightening awareness of the implicit properties of language” (Grigorenko, 2012).
“Children today who do not learn the skill of handwriting, like generations before them, may be missing out on an important developmental process. Compared to using two hands to type out letters on a keyboard, writing with one dominant hand uses more complex brain power. Writing by hand is more complicated because it integrates three brain processes” (Berniger, 2012).
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College Counseling
Blue Ridge Christian Academy works with your learner throughout his or her academic career, seeking opportunities to explore interests and strengths, to identify potential career paths.
Beginning in ninth grade, Blue Ridge centers its college counseling program on working with students individually to identify the colleges and programs that suit them best and form the bridges between their past achievements and future aspirations.
High school students are guided in their registrations for PSATs, SATs, ACTs, and preparatory programs. Tours to college campuses of interest are scheduled each fall for students to get firsthand experience with the schools that interest them.
The results speak for themselves.
College and Universities
Our students have been accepted at the following colleges and universities:
Blue Ridge students have a 95% acceptance rate at the college of their preferred choice. Some of our students opt for vocational school or the military.
Service Learning
Love is a one-way street. It always moves away from self in the direction of the other. Love is the ultimate gift of our selves to others. When we stop giving we stop loving, when we stop loving we stop growing, and unless we grow we will never attain personal fulfillment; we will never open out to receive the life of God. It is through love we encounter God.
— Mother Teresa
Blue Ridge partners education with formation. Through acts of service, students develop compassion, humility, and mercy as crucial character traits that they will take into their future lives. Jesus Christ taught us to serve through His own acts of service.
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