Academy, from the Greek Ἀκαδήμεια, the garden in which Plato taught.
Trinity Academy students spend a lot of time outside, and this time outside fosters joy and human thriving. Before the school day officially begins, during the morning break and Humane Letters breaks, throughout the lunch period, and again after school, students are playing and gathering outside. Some students have even mastered squeezing in a quick outside game in the five-minute passing periods.
The just-over-two-acre campus includes a basketball court, nine-square court, large chess board, a central green, long benches and ample picnic tables. The students creatively manage multiple games played simultaneously on the biggest spaces and commonly mix with different grades in their play, including the seventh-graders playing with the seniors. Even on rainy or cold, grey days, the hardier students will still be playing outdoors.
While most classes are held indoors, the faculty and students love holding them outside whenever they can. The seventh-grade science students go outside to hunt down bugs as they learn about observation and classifications. The eighth graders, over a stretch of spring days, draw the same tree branch noting the growth of leaf buds transforming into full leaves; and on another day, this grade experiments on the school’s central green with what influences the success of a launch from a trebuchet. Senior drama students practice their lines together on the pavement outside their classroom. A group of tenth graders sit around the picnic tables discussing the Book of Job with their teacher. If there is an unseasonably warm winter day, when the juniors are traditionally working together through Plato’s Republic, they could be seen outside then, too.