Charis Christian School
at Bethlehem Baptist Church
Set Your Mind on Excellence.
Charis Christian School is a ministry of Bethlehem Baptist Church. We educate the whole student — mind, character, and heart — to know and love God, to think well, and to live well. Our students learn to think clearly, speak honestly, choose wisely, and love what is good. We do this through a Christian education in the classical tradition, guided by Scripture and centered on Jesus Christ.We are glad to serve any family who wants their children educated this way and who is willing, while their child is enrolled, to support what the school stands for and to honor the Bible as its standard.
A Christian education in the classical tradition — in the foothills of North Georgia.
A Day at Charis
Students will begin the day in Chapel where we open in prayer, sing a hymn, say recitations, discuss our character word of the month, and dismiss to class. Students will learn in small classes with loving, qualified teachers, who are continually pointing our young students to Christ. We have regular lunch and learns, in which we learn self-defense, have tea with Shakespeare, and other activities that enrich hands, hearts, and minds. Then we'll resume afternoon classes. At the end of the day, we have a benediction of prayer, closing hymn, The Doxology, and a closing recitation.
Our Mission
Charis Christian School at Bethlehem Baptist Church partners with parents to provide a Christ-centered education that cultivates wisdom, virtue, and a biblical worldview, equipping students to think critically, communicate effectively, and live faithfully for God's glory.
Our Vision
We want to graduate young men and women who think clearly, speak truthfully, judge rightly, act with integrity, and love what is good. We want them to know the great writers, thinkers, and ideas that have shaped our civilization — not just from summaries, but from reading the great books themselves. We want them strong in reading, writing, speaking, math, and science. We want them ready to take their places — at home, at church, at work, and in their communities — as people of good character and sound judgment.Our deeper hope, beyond every academic and civic benefit, is that they would come to know God in Christ and to serve him gladly.
Our Values
Faith
By "faith" we mean two things. First, the faith once for all delivered to the saints — the body of Christian doctrine given in Scripture and summarized in the ancient creeds and confessions. Second, faith in the older, biblical sense: not "belief without evidence," as the modern definition has it, but trust in a reliable authority — Scripture being the Christian’s foremost written authority. Charis stands unashamedly in the classical Christian tradition. Faith, in both senses, is not kept in a separate room from learning. It is the soil in which all real learning grows.
Wisdom
Wisdom is more than information. It is knowing how things really fit together, joined to the good judgment to act well — at home, at work, and in public life. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom. Charis pursues wisdom by joining the Bible to the great fields of human learning, and by teaching students, year by year, to see how every subject takes its place in one world — a world that God made and rules.
Excellence
Excellence isn't about being a perfectionist, and it isn't about chasing prestige. A thing is excellent when it does what it was made to do — and a person was made to know what is true, to choose what is good, and to love what is right. The classical tradition names four virtues this work builds: good judgment (prudence), fairness (justice), courage (fortitude), and self-control (temperance). The Christian tradition recognizes these and adds three more, worked in God's people by grace: faith, hope, and love. Charis pursues excellence by refusing to settle for sloppy work, good-enough work, or paint-by-numbers work — in studies and in character alike.
Our Name
Charis (KAIR-iss) is the Greek word for grace — God's unearned kindness toward his people in Jesus Christ. Every student here is here by grace; every teacher teaches by grace; every lesson is offered to the God who gives every good gift.The middle three letters of Charis spell ari — the Hebrew word for "lion". A fitting echo of the Lion of the tribe of Judah — Christ our Lord.The connection isn't built into the word, but it nonetheless remains a happy meeting of two biblical languages and the One whose grace they both proclaim."For the law was given through Moses; grace (Charis) and truth came through Jesus Christ." — John 1:17
Our Verse
“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. — Philippians 4:8 (ESV)
Our motto — Set Your Mind on Excellence — is drawn from this verse. The Greek word Paul uses for excellence is areté: the same word the classical tradition uses for virtue. It refers to a person’s trained ability to do well what he was made to do. Paul calls the Christian to fill his mind with whatever shows the quality of excellence, and our motto applies the call to every student.The motto is a command. To set the mind is to fix it on purpose, with effort, for as long as it takes. That is a discipline, and it is one we deliberately intend our students to learn.
What Makes Charis Different
A ministry of a Bible-believing local church. Charis is not a private business or a parent-led co-op. It is a ministry of Bethlehem Baptist Church, accountable to the body of Christ both locally and historically.
Honest about where we are. We hold the classical tradition's vision of the student and its core commitments — the great books, character formation, and the basic skills of reading, writing, and reasoning. We do not pretend, on day one, to have every classical practice fully in place. We are a young school, and we will be honest about the road we are on.
Skills, not stages. Many classical schools teach grammar, logic, and rhetoric as steps tied to a child's age. We treat them as three lifelong skills every student practices at every level — a first-grader and a senior both work at all three, in their own measure.
Faith and reason work together. God speaks in two ways: through the world he made and through the Bible. Honest study of his world and honest reading of his Word will not finally conflict. Where they seem to, we have misread one of them — or both of them.
The whole person matters. Education is not just for the head. We aim to form what a student knows, what he chooses, and what he loves — together — knowing that what he loves shapes what he is willing to learn and to do.
Class time for what only class time can do. Textbooks teach facts. Class time is for what only a teacher and a roomful of students can do together — discussion, recitation, public speaking, and learning in community.
The home comes first. Parents are the primary teachers of their children. The school's job is to serve the home, not replace it.
Open to families willing to share our vision. Charis is an unapologetically Christian school. We are glad to serve any family who supports our vision and mission, including our duty to honor Scripture as the final written authority for the school's faith and practice.
Curriculum
Charis curriculum is designed to follow a Christian classical model with Charlotte Mason influences. Students will be learning through a selection of living books. The entire family will be reading literature and history from the same time period. Our curriculum supports our belief that a child is a whole person-body and soul, intellect, will, and affections-made to know God and the world He made.
What is Christian Education
Christian education starts with this conviction: God has made himself known. He has done it in two ways. He shows himself in the world he made — in nature, in history, and in the human person. And he shows himself in his Word, the Bible. Both are real. Both are his. Both are worth honest study.The world is worth knowing for its own sake. Every law of nature, every truth of mathematics, every fact of history is God's truth, and is therefore worth learning well. The Bible is the final word — the standard by which we test what we think we have learned, and the lens that helps us see the world for what it really is.A Christian school, then, isn't Christian just because it adds chapel to a regular curriculum or removes a few books from the shelves. It is Christian because the whole enterprise — math in the early grades, history in the upper years, every subject in between — is taught in the conviction that God is, that he made and rules all things, and that Jesus Christ is Lord over every square inch of the world. That is what Charis is trying to be.
What is Classical Education
Classical education is a recovery of an older way of learning. Three things mark it.The basic skills, taught well. The medieval schools taught seven core subjects, called the liberal arts. The first three were grammar, logic, and rhetoric — the skills of language. The other four were arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy — the skills of number and measure. They were called liberal because they were the skills a free citizen needs: to read carefully, to think clearly, to weigh evidence, and to speak well in public.These three language skills are not stages a child passes through and leaves behind. They are skills practiced at every age. A first-grader does grammar, logic, and rhetoric in his own measure; so does a senior, with greater range and depth.The great books. Classical schools have students read the great books themselves — Greek and Roman authors, the Church fathers, the Reformers, Shakespeare, and our founding American documents — instead of relying on textbook summaries of those books. Students grow up alongside great minds across the centuries.Forming the whole person. The primary aim of classical education is not to score well on a test, to get a good job, or to get into a good college. Those are byproducts, not goals. It aims at forming a person — slowly, carefully, over years — who has learned to think well, choose well, and love rightly. An older word for this is character. Classical education aims at forming virtuous people, not just skilled laborers — free men and women, not tools to be used by others.
What "In the Classical Tradition" means at Charis
We hold the classical tradition's vision and its core commitments — the great books, the basic skills, the formation of character. Charis is also a hybrid school by design: students are on campus 2–3 days a week for community study — discussion, recitation, performance — and at home the rest of the week for study under parental oversight. This is not a workaround. It is a working-out of what we already believe — that parents are the primary educators of their children, and that the school's job is to serve the home, not replace it. We give our class time to what only a teacher and a roomful of students can do together: the fundamentals that everything else is built on. We trust students and parents to round out a complete curriculum — music lessons, athletics, the arts, family work, mentorship in a trade, and the daily life of the home, where the deeper formation happens anyway. We mean to equip both parents and students for that calling — parents to lead it well, and students to learn, in time, to lead themselves.
Our Leadership Team
Daniel C. Ippolito, Headmaster
Classical education is a recovery of an older way of learning. Three things mark it.
Anne M. Davis, Dean of Academics
Classical education is a recovery of an older way of learning. Three things mark it.
Kathy A. Ippolito, Dean of Operations
Classical education is a recovery of an older way of learning. Three things mark it.
Academics
Charis offers a thoughtful, ordered course of study from the lower grades through high school, built around the basic skills and centered on the Bible. Bible, history, literature, language, math, and science are not taught as separate compartments. They are taught as parts of a single, intelligible world.
We organize the school in five divisions: Primer, Lower Grammar, Upper Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric. As mentioned elsewhere, every Charis student — from his first day to his last — practices grammar, logic, and rhetoric in age-appropriate measure. However, the labels are also helpful in grouping students by level and ability.
Primer and Kindergarden
First habits. Phonics readiness, letter formation, counting, listening to good stories, basic Bible knowledge, and the earliest practice of attention, speech, and self-control. The aim of this year is to settle the child into the rhythm of school and to lay down the first habits of a learner.
Lower Grammar (Grades 1–3)
Foundations. Phonics and reading, handwriting, arithmetic, memory work and recitation, Bible stories and basic doctrine, beginning history, and careful observation of the natural world. The aim is to put the building-blocks of knowledge securely in place.
Upper Grammar (Grades 4–6)
Building on the foundation. Continued reading and writing at increasing levels of difficulty, arithmetic moving toward pre-algebra, real literature read together, expanded Bible knowledge and church history, beginning [Latin/Greek], and the natural sciences with greater rigor.
Dialectic (Grades 7–9)
Serious work in the basics, with the first formal training in careful thinking. Formal English grammar at a higher level, formal logic, algebra and geometry, expanded Bible and church history, literature read with attention to argument and form, and the natural sciences with experimental method.
Rhetoric (Grades 10–12)
The fuller course. Public speaking and rhetoric, advanced classical and biblical languages, theology and the great Christian thinkers, philosophy and ethics, advanced math through [pre-calculus/calculus], the natural sciences, and a senior project in which the student presents and defends a substantial work of his or her own.
Across the divisions, five time-tested programs guide our academic work. Tapestry of Grace is the spine of our humanities — history, literature, fine arts, worldview, Bible, and church history. Saxon Phonics teaches early reading and spelling. Saxon Math runs from Primer through Rhetoric, building the step-by-step mastery that pays off in algebra, geometry, and the higher mathematics. Shurley Grammar provides systematic English grammar instruction. And Apologia teaches the natural sciences at every level.
The whole school moves through history together. The cycle runs four years before repeating.
Year 1 — the ancient world: Egypt, Israel, Greece, Rome, and the life of Christ.
Year 2 — the medieval and early modern world: the rise of Christendom, the Reformation, and the American founding.
Year 3 — the nineteenth century: westward expansion, the Civil War, and the rise of modern Europe.
Year 4 — the twentieth century: the world wars, the Cold War, and the present.
A family with children in different levels works through one era together — at school, at home, and around the dinner table. A student who comes through the school all the way moves through the full cycle two or three times, each time at greater depth.
The course itself is integrated. A student studying ancient history reads ancient literature in the same year. A student in formal logic learns to write essays that obey logical form. The point is not to cover topics but to form a mind.
And the kind of mind we mean to form is more than intellectual. The basic skills, taught well, have always shaped character — the kind of person whose habits of attention, honesty, courage, and self-discipline make him fit to live well, work well, and govern himself well. We aim at that, too.
Admissions
Charis is an unapologetically Christian school. Its curriculum, its leadership, its discipline, and its daily life are shaped by the Bible and the historic Christian faith. We are glad to serve Christian families who want their children educated in line with what they teach at home and what their church teaches on Sunday. We are equally glad to serve families of other backgrounds who support what we are doing and are willing, while their child is enrolled, to honor the Bible as the standard for the school's faith and practice.
Step 1 — Family Inquiry. Families interested in Charis begin with a conversation with the Headmaster.
Step 2 — Application. A complete application includes the application form, the application fee, references, and any prior school records.
Step 3 — Reading and Discussion. Each family is asked to read a short text in advance of the family interview and to come ready to talk about it.
Step 4 — Student Assessment. Each prospective student takes an age-appropriate readiness assessment.
Step 5 — Decision and Enrollment. After the interview and assessment, the school issues a decision and, where the fit is good, sends enrollment paperwork.
If you are interested in joining us for the 2026-2027 school year, please fill out the application below and a member of the Admissions team will be in contact.
Tuition and Fees
Tuition at Charis reflects the real cost of doing what we have promised to do. We have set it as low as a healthy school can be set without cutting teacher pay, materials, or the long-term strength of the school. We are committed to working with families for whom the published rate is hard; needs-based financial aid is available.
| Grade Level | Full Enrollment | Humanities | Math | Science |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-K - Kindergarden | $3,500 | $1,750 | $875 | $875 |
| 1st - 6th Grade | $4,000 | $2,000 | $1,000 | $1,000 |
| 7th - 12th Grade | $4,500 | $2,250 | $1,125 | $1,125 |
Support Charis
Charis does not accept federal or state education funding. Government funding comes with strings, and the strings have grown shorter and tighter over recent decades. To keep the freedom to teach what we believe is true — without compromise on what we teach, who we hire, or who we admit — we depend on three things instead: tuition paid by the families we serve, the support of Bethlehem Baptist Church, and the giving of friends who share our mission.If you would like to help build a school where the next generation of children can be educated whole, we are grateful for your prayers and your gifts.
Contact Us
If you have further questions about our school or the admissions process, please feel free to contact us.Daniel Ippolito, Headmaster
Phone: 706.705.2052
Email: [email protected]Anne Davis, Dean of Academics
Phone: 706.429.5401
Email: [email protected]Physical Address: 1101 Camp Wahsega Road, Dahlonega, Georgia 30533
Mailing Address: PO Box 457 Dahlonega, Georgia 30533