What is CFT?

Covenant Family Tutorial is a Christ-centered classical educational support program established to enhance, augment and encourage the work of Christian homeschooling families. We understand well that there are many different educational routes that your family can take, and we believe that our distinctives as an organization: being consciously Christ-centered, decidedly classical, and home-education oriented, warrant careful consideration as you make educational decisions for your family.

CFT began in 2001 with a small group of homeschool students, grades 1-8, and a team of several teachers. Out founding director, Leah Lutz, left full-time day school teaching to start this program focused on the needs of the local home schooling community. In an effort to meet the needs of the families God brought us, we started with our weekly full day class program, offering group learning experiences, curriculum planning and weekly subject guidance in several key subjects. This weekly class remains the heart of our organization today.

All that CFT does is first and foremost defined by our commitment to being Christ-centered in all we do. We aim to equip students to know, love, and practice that which is true, good and beautiful as they live purposefully and intelligently in the service of God and man. Without a doubt, this aim is the center of our calling to work with families and students. We work and pray to provide a clear model of Biblical Christian discipleship through our tutorial staff, who themselves are committed to our purposes and statement of faith. Our statement of faith is deliberately limited to the broad arena of Biblical Christian doctrine, which is considered to be central to all orthodox Christian churches, and which sets Christianity apart from all other faiths. Therefore, we subscribe to the great historic creeds and confessions---including the Nicene, the Apostles, and the Athanasian- as they have been elaborated through the ages by the synods of the church. To carefully establish the parameters of doctrinal teaching in CFT classes and to maintain our nondenominational status, we will adhere to the standards of historic orthodoxy in all essentials but to Biblical diversity in all peripherals. As the staff plans, prepares, and presents each class, we strives to teach all subjects in the curriculum as parts of an integrated whole with Jesus Christ, as portrayed in the Christian Scriptures, at the center.

With our commitment to Christian education, we are also committed to the methodology of the Classical educational model, known as the liberal arts education. A liberal arts education includes the trivium and quadrivium. Our current efforts and focus are on the application of the trivium- grammar, logic, and rhetoric in all subjects. Throughout each year of our kindergarten to high school classes, we incorporate grammar as we teach the fundamental rules and parts of each subject. These fundamentals are important in every stage of learning as they provide the necessary pieces for all future knowledge. Each class also moves to carefully consider and contemplate the ordered relationship of the rules and parts of each subject, and this is the logic arm of the trivium. We see the importance of logic in every stage of learning, when we understand logic to be an emphasis on sound reasoning. The final arm of the trivium is rhetoric,the “art of the fitting expression.” This is what brings the grammar and logic of each subject together as students learn to effectively and clearly communicate the things they have learned and considered.

The third important element that defines our organization is our commitment to home education. While it is very important for our communities to have strong Christian and classical schools, we are not a school, and we do not intend to develop into one. We are decidedly a resource and aid for parents who choose to take on the primary responsibility to teach their children. Even in our weekly classes, it is neither our intent nor desire to assume the primary teaching role of the parent. Our desire is to support and encourage parents in their role as the educators of their children. We believe that home education provides unique benefits, and in combination with this, our organization provides, among many things, a place for Christian fellowship and friendship, a venue for community discussion and study, an extra measure of accountability, and motivation to stay the course. With this underlying philosophy of education, we seek to provide parents with tools to more effectively fulfill their role as educators. Our goal is to support, not supplant, the role of the parents.

We have no doubt of the great need for supporting families in their pursuit of a Christian, classical, home education. Over almost ten years of service to the Santa Cruz community, some of the specific offerings have varied, but our core focus remains the same- we prayerfully continue in our calling to enhance, augment and encourage the work of Christian, classical homeschooling families.