February 14, 2005

Every other week we are excited to bring you a personal story from someone within our own community who shares our passion about what StoneBridge School is and does. We hope you will find these words encouraging and inspiring. If you have something you'd like to share, please e-mail us.

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StoneBridge School
P.O. Box 9247
Chesapeake, VA 23321

(757) 488-7586
Primary school

(757) 488-2214
Upper school

StoneBridge Ninth Grader Kellie Wells

A Returning StoneBridge Student Tells Her Story

My name is Kellie and I am the middle child of five. My parents homeschooled us starting when my oldest brother Tim was four. When my mom needed help keeping up with our education, my sister Kathleen came to StoneBridge. She was soon followed by me and my brother Tim.

StoneBridge was different than home. I had to get used to notebooks and reason questions, and I learned that the “Jesus, Bible, God” answer was not as easy to pull over on Mr. Soto [high school Bible teacher] as it was on other teachers. In other words, I had to think. At the time I thought the back section of our notebooks, the place for all those extra research questions we were supposed to come up with every quarter, was really stupid. I thought we did enough work to not need something else to get graded on. Little did I know what a treasure I had.

With Tim graduated and in an expensive college, mom and dad brought us home. My two younger siblings went to another local Christian school where the tuition was less than at StoneBridge. Kathleen and I took one class there so we would be eligible for athletics. I took Earth Science. It took about three weeks for me to feel like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, far from home and certainly not in Kansas. Our teacher “covered” material. Sometimes she lectured and sometimes we read from our textbook. We always filled in worksheets. Class was BORING - more work sheets, more covering information. By the end of the first six weeks I was begging my mom to put me back in StoneBridge. Believe it or not, I missed having to really learn something and understand it. At StoneBridge I had to interact with the teacher and really integrate what I was learning into my thinking. I realized I wanted a TEACHER not just a “curriculum technician,” as my mom called my teacher at the local Christian school.

I also missed the faculty at StoneBridge. At the other school, we were treated like little kids needing a babysitter. There were a few teachers who seemed interested in me as a person, but the rest were, in my opinion, overly concerned with outward appearances. So long as things looked good on the outside, all was well.

My parents made the decision to re-enroll us at StoneBridge this year. I would say that I feel that the faculty love me here at StoneBridge. They are like aunts and uncles. I want to be like them when I grow up. StoneBridge reminds me of the Apostle Paul when he said, “Follow me as I follow Christ.” I love StoneBridge because I know that I am getting a really great education here in a setting where I feel loved and looked out for. StoneBridge is a greenhouse for growing Christians and I am grateful to be back.