Spring brings many good things: the weather grows mild and the trees flower and the halls at GVCA hum with another special energy. This is the energy of the home stretch of senior thesis work. Come April, seniors are weary, they're ready to graduate, and senioritis rules; but despite this, they are hard at work refining and completing a full year’s effort on the senior thesis. The thesis starts with a careful reading/ re-reading of a work or a few works from the curriculum. Then, seniors slowly compose essays that ultimately stretch from ten to well over twenty pages in length. Then, they turn to the difficult task of converting their essays to a spoken defense--a fifteen to twenty minute speech followed by tough questions from their teachers, family, and friends. The defense crowns this work and tests each student’s fluency within their source material, their humility in considering counter-positions, and their ability to think critically about what the wisdom of great texts means for living well.

Mrs. Gilmore has developed and refined the thesis process over the years and we cherish the thesis for the way it features a living expression of what we hope to accomplish at Golden View: “to train the minds and improve the hearts” of our students. The senior thesis, above all, gives students a chance to draw richly from what they’ve learned over the years in reading with careful attention, writing with cogence, and speaking with the right balance of power and humility. Finally, the thesis asks our soon-to-graduate seniors a very important set of questions: What have the discoveries of these years meant to you? How will the things you’ve loved in learning inform your life to come? And maybe most of all, how has examination of truth in these years inaugurated a lifelong examination of life?

From Mr. Beach, Upper School Humanities Teacher

In addition to general fitness, most sports also require a high level of technical and specific skills that take years to establish and improve. Being a K-12 school, we have a unique opportunity at Golden View to build out a progression for our students to develop these skills so that they can be successful and competitive when they compete at the highest levels that we offer. We offer education based, scholastic sports. We do not offer club sports, and we believe that the best way to promote general athleticism is to encourage multisport participation. Therefore, we discourage specialization, and all of our students start learning the fundamental skills required in two of our high skill sports -- volleyball and basketball -- at an early age in PE classes. For each of these sports, our teachers and coaches have created a thoughtful progression so that any of our students who choose to participate in volleyball and/or basketball feel confident in their abilities to contribute to our varsity level teams when they are in high school. 

Let's take a quick look at the program progression of volleyball to give you a sense of our modest and attentive approach. Starting in Kindergarten PE, students are introduced to concepts of hitting a ball to keep it up in the air without letting it touch the ground. As students progress through grammar school, they learn the fundamental hits in volleyball like bump, set, spike, and serve. They also play games incorporating these skills and sometimes using a net. Starting in 3rd grade, there are opportunities for students more interested in volleyball to participate in a parent led program that more intensely focuses on developing those fundamental skills. The school sponsored recreational club starts in 5th grade and is when students get an opportunity to connect with middle school and high school coaches as they further hone their skills and begin scrimmaging at the most basic level of the game. When students enter middle school, they have their first chance to compete against other local schools in the JeffCo League. We offer limited off season training, including week long skills camps. When students enter high school, we have three levels to match any skill level, so that anyone who wants to play has that opportunity. In high school, our students -- girls only, we don't yet offer boys volleyball, which is, by the way, gaining steam in Colorado -- posses the fundamental skills to be successful, and now they get to learn the more nuanced part of the sport like rotations and strategy. The high school team participates in off season training and team camps, but the students are still encouraged to play multiple sports. 

From Mr. Gilmore, Athletic Director