School News

 

Welcome, New Families!

July 13th, 2023

New families should have received an email from the office last week with login information for the Trinitas website. While most of our website is accessible to the public, your family account will allow you to view classroom newsletters (Current Students menu). Please contact the office if you have questions or run into any difficulties logging in.

Welcome to Trinitas! We are so happy you have joined our school community.


Virtue Update

July 12th, 2023

Summer is a great time to use our Home Connection materials. We hope you’ll continue to talk about and practice the virtues of WORK, COURAGE, HONESTY, and HUMILITY together as a family.


Back to School Shopping

July 6th, 2023

Trinitas Apparel & PE Uniform Items

Our online store will be open until Wednesday, August 2, at 11:59 p.m. Orders will be available for pick up at our Open House and Picnic on August 28. When asked to enter an address for the order, you may use your home address or the school’s address, but all orders will be delivered to the school.

School Supply Lists

No, school isn’t starting anytime soon, but retailers will start running sales in July. Please review the school supply lists for your child’s grade before you make your purchases.

Lands’ End

Land’s End School Summer Sale starts tomorrow. Families can take advantage of 20% off retail prices as well as logo application for only a penny (this is an especially great deal as all PE attire requires school branding). Shop for approved uniform items through our curated online portal (School #900115726). At check out, use code: PENCIL with PIN: 2466.


Welcome, Ms. Sytsma!

June 22nd, 2023

If you stop by the office, you might see a new face behind the desk! We are pleased to introduce Ms. Natalie Sytsma (soon to be Mrs. Mouw) as our new administrative assistant and art teacher. Ms. Sytsma graduated from Calvin University with a B.A. in classical studies and literature. Having been raised in a classical school, she knows the fruit of classical education firsthand and is eager to join the Trinitas community both in the classroom and the office. For the past year and a half, Ms. Sytsma has taught Latin to K–8th graders. She is also a self-employed artist and proficient in drawing, painting, and calligraphy and has been able to share her experience with students teaching in various art camps. Her professional experience includes working at Calvin University’s Center Art Gallery (architectural research and gallery exhibitions) and administrative assistant roles at both Calvin and in a church office.


Summer Office Hours

June 9th, 2023

Please remember that the office is open Monday through Thursday, from 8:00 a.m. to noon. If you plan to stop by school this summer, we recommend you call first as staff may be unavailable or away from their desks during office hours.

Keep an eye on your mailbox as report cards and certificates should be arriving the week of June 26.


CCE Corner – Goldilocks, Creaturehood, and the Posture of Humility

May 25th, 2023

Our Virtue of the Quarter is Humility. “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” may not be the first story that comes to mind for instruction in this virtue, but had the tale of the burglarous little girl been available to Aristotle, he might have chosen it to illustrate a fundamental observation about all virtues. According to this ancient Greek philosopher, virtue is a mean between two extremes. In Goldilocks’ vocabulary, “A virtue is something not too much and not too little, it’s just right.” Courage, for example, is the mean between the extreme of cowardice on the one hand and rashness on the other. Neither Goldilocks nor Aristotle had much to say about humility specifically, but we can use the idea of getting things just right or finding the mean between extremes as a fruitful way to explore this virtue.

So, what are the two extremes, the vices, on either side of the virtue of humility? The more obvious vice is pride. Simply put, pride is thinking too much of oneself, of one’s abilities or importance or worth, especially in comparison to others. Pride can be a private sentiment, but it also often seeks to draw the attention of others. The proud “are like the fly on the chariot wheel, crying, ‘See how fast I make it go!’”1 The other extreme is a less obvious vice because it is sometimes mistaken for the virtue of humility and it goes by a less familiar name: pusillanimity. Pusillanimity is thinking too little of oneself; it is a “smallness of soul,” a smallness “that shrinks from noble or arduous tasks.”2

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CCE Corner – Shaped by Story

March 29th, 2023

Mrs. Tellinghuisen returns to the CCE Corner with another reflection inspired by the Calvin Worship Symposium and the March 6 Vital Worship Grant event.

We are story-shaped people who live in a story-shaped culture. Let’s withhold any “that’s good” or “that’s bad” judgment for the time being (spoiler: it depends on the stories we hear and tell) and simply acknowledge the reality. Everyone and everything tells a story. For all that we see around us has history, context, function, and purpose. When we walk through a neighborhood, we are not just seeing houses and sidewalks and trees and utility lines. We are seeing a story. When we stroll through an art exhibit, we aren’t just seeing pictures and sculptures and artifacts. We are seeing a story. When we meet a person for the first time, we aren’t just exchanging words and social pleasantries with someone. We are seeing a story incarnate.

Granted, we don’t see the whole story. To know more about that neighborhood, you’d need to talk to some of the neighbors and research the history of the city that led to that area being developed. To learn more about the area or people group featured in the art exhibit, you would have to read some books, take some classes, or even travel to that location. To learn more about another human? Well, you would need years together. And even a lifetime together wouldn’t tell you everything. (You’d probably learn more about yourself along the way too!)

Stories are involved and complex. They take time to tell. But we like facts, don’t we? “Just the facts, ma’am,” said Dragnet’s Sergeant Friday. Facts are simple, obvious, clear-cut. Unless they aren’t. One need only flip through the various news channels to see that we don’t always agree on facts. But you don’t have to take the path that leads to flat-out relativism to recognize that facts are always internalized and interpreted before we inject them into our conversations and contexts. If this sounds at least a little disconcerting, it is. How can we live in community (familial, local, national, global) if we are “my story is what I know” kind of people? On our own? Not so well. But there is a good answer for this, and hopefully your mind is already going there.

Before we talk about that answer, let’s look for the good in the fact that we all have “my story” and the fact that we are story-shaped storytellers and—story listeners—at our core. Consider the different answers to these “simple” questions.

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CCE Corner – Thoughtful Readers: Playing with and Talking About Good Stories

March 9th, 2023

Trinitas recently hosted two annual highlights: Book Character Day and Thoughtful Reader Book Club. Each year, students and staff look forward to leaving their uniforms home and coming dressed like a favorite Biblical, historical, or book character. Last Wednesday was a delightful day for the likes of Fantastic Mr. Fox, Ebenezer Scrooge, Anne of Green Gables, King Arthur, and St. Paul to be greeted at the door by Principal Gandalf and to do their math lessons with Grandmother West Wind and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, literature with Athena and Laura Ingalls Wilder, Latin with the golden fleece, history with the Cat in the Hat, and logic with Tweedle Dee (or Dum, we’re not sure which). Students return home excited to read new books or re-read an old favorite. Some even begin planning next year’s costume.

During Friday Focus time the previous week, we enjoyed activities and discussions related to our Thoughtful Reader Book Club selections. This year, our shared reading for the younger grades included fables by Aesop and Arnold Lobel. Students in grades 3/4 talked about how stories that feature animals and their particular characteristics (e.g., monkeys are inquisitive, beavers are industrious) can communicate truths about human strengths and weaknesses. The morals at the end of the fables continue to instruct over 2,000 years later!

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Special Presentation – “Complicated Narratives and Important Failures”

March 3rd, 2023

We are pleased to present “Complicated Narratives and Important Failures” on Monday, March 6, at 7:00 p.m. Dr. Jennifer Holberg from Calvin University will speak about the shaping influence of stories and storytelling. Register online or call the school at (616) 855-6518. (Registration is not required, but encouraged for planning purposes.)

This program is free and open to the public. A reception will follow the presentation.

Attendees should use the upper parking lot and entrance for Saint Mark Lutheran Church on the west end of the building (access to the lot is from Maple Creek Ave.). Please note that childcare will not be available.

This program is made possible through a Vital Worship Grant from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, Grand Rapids, Michigan, with funds provided by Lilly Endowment Inc.


CCE Corner – Where the Air Is Clear

February 23rd, 2023

We continue our series of reflections inspired by the recent Calvin Worship Symposium. This week, Mrs. Tellinghuisen shares about a faith practices workshop she attended.

A few weeks ago, the summit of Mount Washington in New Hampshire recorded overnight wind gusts of over 100 miles per hour and a temperature of −47 °F. This produced a new US record low windchill temperature of −108 °F. These conditions are comparable to what airplanes experience at cruising altitude. I was told by my brother (a biologist and weather fact enthusiast, who lives in South Dakota, where they know a lot about cold and wind), that it wasn’t the cold and wind that led to such extreme conditions, but an interesting atmospheric phenomenon. In effect, the top of Mount Washington became part of the stratosphere. Talk about a mountaintop experience! But not one anyone would want.

Mountaintop experiences usually involve moments of clarity, conviction, or renewal. From a spiritual—and Christian—perspective, it might be descriptive of a moment when someone felt especially close to God or felt the moving of the Holy Spirit in a very tangible way. For me, any visit to mountains can lead to a mountaintop experience. The landscape inspires awe and draws my eyes upward and inclines my heart toward praise and wonder.

I will lift up my eyes to the hills—
From whence comes my help?
My help comes from the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth. (Psalm 121:1–2)

The psalmist was saying more than just mountains are pretty. High places were locations for pagan rituals and sacrifices (e.g., Ahab and prophets of Baal as told in I Kings 18). But the psalmist is saying that when he looks to hills, it is not to seek answers in the idols of man. He trusts in the one true God, maker of heaven and earth. In the gospel accounts, Jesus goes to a mountain to find solitude and to commune with his father in prayer on several occasions. One of the most memorable accounts is the Transfiguration, where Jesus appears radiant in his glory to Peter, James, and John. And, more than that, Moses and Elijah appear alongside him (Matthew 17:1–13; Mark 9:2–13; Luke 9:28–36). Now that was a mountaintop experience! Isn’t it remarkable then that those same three disciples were the ones who fell asleep, ran, and even denied? How could they have seen that and not stood firm? Or maybe, if we are honest, we know all too well what it means to see and yet forget.

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