All courses are interactive; in the junior program, interactivity is delivered in two different modes: teacher directed and parent directed.   In addition to lesson plans, message boards, self-correcting assessments, and instructor email, teacher directed courses meet live with instructors at regularly scheduled times, using the most reliable web-based and cost-effective conference applications available.  At the seventh grade level, fifty percent of the courses are teacher directed; at the eighth grade level, seventy-five percent.  The use of two modes serves the two-fold purpose of (1) orienting junior students to the technology in a gradual and methodical manner and (2) facilitating schedules.

Junior students begin the transition from rote learning to critical thinking. These budding scholars bounce ideas off one another in live classes and on message boards; they learn to respond in charity when viewpoints differ, whether the subject at hand is literature, history, or a particular rhetorical device applied to a composition. They learn to accept correction gracefully.  In sum, they transcend the elementary process of data-gathering and memorization, i.e. they learn to organize and compare data and to precisely express the fruits of their ongoing investigations. The program is designed to encourage discernment of causes and to form correct judgments, all within the safe framework of Holy Church’s magisterial teaching.  

Organizing, expressing, and judging require more than reading comprehension; they also require interpretation.  The junior program develops interpretive reading skills through religion, history, imaginative literature, geography, and natural science.  Classical pre-rhetoric exercises (progymnasmata) hone communication skills acquired through elementary language arts.   Math and Latin grammar prepare the way to the high school’s Aristotelian logic.  Students will be tested for appropriate placing in either seventh grade math or pre-algebra.  

Since maturation of children takes place at different rates, parents and local supervisors remain a vital part of the teaching team; at the junior level, parents and supervisors can usually begin to relinquish academic duties and focus on academic virtues such as perseverance, honesty, and reasonable goal-setting.  Supervisors provide a quiet, well ordered, learning environment; they prudently balance academics with parish activities, home duties, and recreation.  Acting on behalf of individual student needs, parent/supervisors moderate, when necessary, the program’s built-in structure after consultation with teachers and admin.

Unfortunately, some scientific Catholic texts are not always available for some disciplines. In order to provide students with the science background they need, we have chosen the least offensive secular texts that still provide a rigorous scientific course.

With our consistent application of Catholic principles, the student will gain an appreciation for the level of apologetics with which they must be prepared to face the world.  Hopefully, they will gain the scientific tools they need to meet objections full on.  

When the Christian scientific texts have been used in the past, heretical ideas and anti-Catholic sentiments were often very subtle and difficult for students to identify.  A secular text has the “advantage” that the inconsistencies between the secular belief and the Catholic belief are glaring.  When these are encountered in the course, they will be addressed and the Catholic viewpoint identified and discussed.

Use the chart below to help determine the best course for your student. If a student has not previously taken a QHA Latin course, placement exams or email interviews with the instructor are given for enrollment in Latin courses 2 - 4.  

Math or Latin assistance is a once a week, one hour a week, per individual tutoring session. Students spend the hour one-on-one with the teacher working through homework problems, preparing for upcoming tests or quizzes or reviewing concepts covered in class. Assistance can also be used for those students seeking more challenging work than what is covered in the classroom. Assistance is available for all grades and all levels.

Where:
Private tutoring sessions are held in the teacher's virtual classroom using Adobe Connect conferencing software (audio, video, chat, and whiteboard).

When:
Student and teacher schedule a time and day of the week for the tutoring sessions.

Tuition:
One academic year $800 (Tuition is prorated if enrolling after September 30th.)