About Capstone

Capstone Classical Academy believes education is meant to cultivate students into virtuous human beings who are equipped to live well. Therefore, education should be about formation, not just information.  

This process of education in a child begins in the early years and, if done well, creates a love for learning that spans the child’s lifetime. Laying a foundation with specific curriculum and teaching techniques that build into the child’s natural abilities during each phase of growth creates the best soil and fosters healthy growth of knowledge and application to life.

Capstone brings a classical Christian program, noted for its educational excellence, to North Dakota for the first time. The process of education at Capstone Classical Academy begins in Pre-Kindergarten. We currently serve families through 8th grade and will add a grade level each year until we have a 12th grade class. This education will accentuate students’ natural development and style of learning, forming students who actively engage in learning and elect not to be spectators in their education. 

Every day, Capstone hands its students more pieces of a puzzle. Each school day, the child studies the individual pieces, placing them in the correct place with the guidance of their teacher. There will be days that the pieces just won’t fit—or days when the end picture seems unclear. The teacher exists to pull the student back in and provide clarity where there was once murkiness. 

Over time, a fuller picture will come into view. The student will be able to look back and understand that what had felt like disparate and individual sections and pieces were in truth creating a larger, cohesive, and more beautiful picture. The student will be able to look back on the process and understand why some pieces did not fit with others, and why some other pieces that did not initially seem to be connected in fact were integral to one another. 

As the days unfold, the child learns that even though the subject matter changes from math to history, each subject is a different part of a unified whole. When a Capstone graduate enters college or the workforce and is required to learn new things along the way, he or she will be able to use the skills they learned to piece together his or her own puzzles.

The child that graduates from Capstone will be taught to think critically and grow in virtue through study of history’s greatest works and respectful engagement with their peers.  This is the takeaway—the child is learning to think, to reason, and to love what is good for its own sake and is not merely absorbing facts.