Virginia Episcopalian Magazine Summer 2014 Issue | Page 10

Church Schools Integrate Outreach and Creativity
Ed Jones

The breeze off the Rappahannock
River gave the springtime campus
of St. Margaret’s School an idyllic,
otherworldly feel. But as I learned
during a visit this April, that’s
not the whole story. Within the
walls of the cozy Tappahannock
compound, the 123 girls and young
women of St. Margaret’s were
revving up their academic engines.
At the smallest of the Diocese’s six
Church Schools, nestled in a town
on the Middle Peninsula, splendid
isolation and academic energy can
creatively co-exist.

Eighty-five miles to the northwest,
within a couple of traffic jams of the
nation’s capital, St. Stephen’s and
St. Agnes School spreads over three
Alexandria campuses. The largest of
the Church Schools with 1,100 students,
SS&SA sports hallways that feel like a
large suburban school. But within the
classrooms, small, creative groups offer
the intensely personal touch that has been
a hallmark of a Church School education.

It’s an educational opportunity
made possible by the foresight of
Bishop William Cabell Brown and the
diocesan Councils immediately after
World War I, who created a school
system with a direct connection to the
Diocese. Indeed, during the 1930s and
‘40s, as much as half of the diocesan
budget was committed to service the
bond issues floated to acquire land and
construct buildings for the schools.
Today, through his presidency of the
Church Schools, Bishop Shannon
Johnston remains thoroughly involved
in the life of the schools, which, with

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Students at St. Margaret’s, Tappahannock, make outreach a focus – including when
student body helped plan and execute this mural at St. Timothy’s Catholic Church.

the probable exception of Trinity Wall
Street, constitute the largest single
Episcopal institution in the United States
– not to mention the church’s largest
youth group!

There’s plenty of diversity within
the Church Schools, which include St.
Christopher’s and St. Catherine’s in
Richmond, Christchurch in Middlesex
County and Stuart Hall in Staunton. For
example, most of the eighth- through
12th-grade girls at St. Margaret’s board
there, while prekindergarten-to-12thgrade, coed St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes
is exclusively for day students.

But all the schools share a
commitment to providing a student
experience that not only educates but
also helps to form the character of
young men and women. As part of that
formation, they share an emphasis on
outreach to the community – efforts
that Johnston has suggested might
be integrated more closely to parish

Virginia Episcopalian / Summer 2014

outreach in the Diocese.

At St. Margaret’s, outreach can
range from art students painting a
mural on an abandoned building in the
town to senior projects that can lead to
opportunities around the globe. During
our April visit, one senior reported to her
classmates on spending spring-semester
time teaching in a school in Mexico.

At SS&SA, outreach opportunities
include a school in Haiti, an orphanage
in Romania and a feeding program
for mothers and children in Northern
Virginia. Every small cluster of students
in the Upper School has an outreach
project to help the poor ܈