In the sophomore geometry class at Trinity Lutheran High School, there are 20 desks but only five students. Emily Carpenter, who sits at the front of the class, is the only girl in the five-student sophomore class. And she doesn’t even mind.
“I love these guys, they’re great,” she said.
Carpenter, 15, has been a student at Trinity Lutheran since the second grade.
Trinity Lutheran, which up until last year offered a pre-kindergarten-through-eighth-grade education for students, started a high school program last year, and there are now seven freshmen and five sophomores. The result is a serious environment with plenty of teacher-student interaction and a chance for students to get all the attention they need.
Carpenter said that her parents gave her the choice of where she wanted to go to school, but they pushed her to try out public school.
“I decided … this is where I want to be, this is where I’m supposed to be,” she said. “I love the community.”
This year the high school students have their own modular classrooms, tucked at the edge of the school grounds. It’s a step up, considering Carpenter remembers last year when, during classes, her freshman class had to shut the door or risk overhearing the younger students singing.
The students move from classroom to classroom in a modified block schedule. They take all the same classes as kids at public high schools, with the addition of a religion class.
“It’s rough for Emily being the only girl, but she’s really holding her own and she has set some solid goals for herself,” history teacher Wendy Fitzhenry said. “They’re like brothers and sisters; it’s worked out really well.”
Carpenter’s only frustration is that she has a ton more homework than she did last year, but in a college-preparatory environment, she can’t complain too much.
“I’m learning stuff,” Carpenter said. “There are way less people begging for attention here.”
Bob Fowls, the principal at Trinity Lutheran, said that a plan to start the high school had been in the works for years, but that it takes a special kid to succeed in that environment.
‘Blazing new trails’
“You need a pioneering kind of a kid because they’re on new territory, blazing new trails, and what they do now will be the traditions of the future,” Fowls said.
For kids who aren’t interested in the public school system, there aren’t many alternatives. Aside from Trinity Lutheran, there are options like Cascades Academy and Morning Star Christian in Bend and Central Christian School in Redmond.
The small size of the first two classes hasn’t shocked Fowls.
“We expected it to be rather small at first,” Fowls said. “You need this pioneering, entrepreneurial student who is willing to take this step; it’s a different direction.”
Brandon Mallea, a sophomore at the school, went to High Desert Middle School before entering Trinity Lutheran as a freshman. Mallea said his parents made him attend the startup high school for the student-teacher ratio. Even in certain classes where freshmen and sophomores mix, the ratio is still 12 students to one teacher.
He doesn’t really mind the small classes.
“It’s more like you just come to school with the clique you would have at Mountain View,” he said. “Except that you have all your classes all day, all year, with those friends.”
Sometimes, though, that starts to feel a bit small.
“There’s no way to go from one group of friends to another,” he said. “You’re all in the same room all day.”
The friends Mallea has from High Desert Middle School think that going to school at Trinity Lutheran would be boring, but Mallea said that’s not the case at all.
“There’s a lot of things we do here that you can’t do (at the public schools),” he said.
His favorite example? In PE last year, Mallea said that the freshmen played bocce ball, went paint-balling and spent a couple weeks going bowling.
Personal interaction
In addition to having opportunities students at large schools might not have, the personal interaction is also something often missing from public high schools.
Brian Denise, a 15-year-old sophomore at Trinity Lutheran, went to Mountain View as a freshman. After struggling at the 1,400-student high school, he and his parents decided that for at least a year, he needed to get away from some of the bad influences he’d met there.
“It’s a lot different. The teachers really know you — there are only five of us so they really know you,” he said. “It’s tough. I’m used to sitting in the back of (class) and coloring … and I can’t do that here.”
Denise is in several classes with the freshmen, but he appreciates that there aren’t 30 other students in his class.
“I can move at my own speed,” he said. “I needed to find myself and get my work habits back.”
This is the place for that, Fowls said.
“It’s pretty hard for a teacher not to know where each of their students is,” Fowls said.
‘I think it’s been great’
Jessica Fowls teaches seventh- through 10th-grade math as well as the Old Testament class for sophomore religion. It’s her first year at the school, where her father is the principal.
“I think it’s been great,” Fowls said. “It’s been stretching me as a person, but it’s been very rewarding.”
The hardest part for Fowls has been making sure that it feels like a high school setting for the freshmen and sophomores.
In order to make the students feel like they’re at a real high school, Trinity Lutheran has been working with some of the public high schools’ counselors, not only to sort out testing but also to make sure that Trinity students can participate in athletics and other extracurricular activities if they choose.
While sometimes it would be nice to have a few more classmates, there is one bonus to being in the fledgling sophomore class.
“I really enjoyed being at the top of the school in eighth grade,” she said. “Then we were at the top in ninth grade, and now we’re at the top in 10th grade. It’s kind of fun.”