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About TPA :: Family Handbook
The mission of Tempe Preparatory Academy (TPA) is to educate students for the lifelong pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty. TPA graduates have a foundation in the liberal arts of grammar and rhetoric, logic and mathematics, history, natural science, and philosophy. Graduates will also have practiced the fine arts of music, drawing and painting, and drama. TPA graduates are thus prepared for every career, every course of advanced or specialized study, and every kind of leisure.
TPA will fulfill its mission by the following means:
- Service to a rigorous, core liberal arts curriculum in the Western tradition that is the same for all students.
- Small classes of 22 or fewer.
- Dedicated, enthusiastic, and intellectually excellent teachers who serve as models of learning and of character.
- Detailed student evaluation, with an emphasis upon written, narrative evaluation of learning rather than upon grades and percentages.
- Regular and meaningful homework assignments.
- High standards of personal conduct and comportment for students.
Though the curriculum is rigorous and expectations of students are high, TPA is not an exclusive school for the best and the brightest. Our mission is to provide an environment that allows every student who is curious and diligent the opportunity to fulfill her or his potential.TPA offers a core curriculum in which each of the grades builds on previous grades over the student’s six-year tenure. The 11th and 12th grades in particular gather all of the previous years of liberal arts study together to offer the student a critical and comprehensive understanding of the Western tradition.
All parents and students should maintain a vision of what the TPA graduate will look like at graduation. Our graduates are confident, articulate, and prepared to live full human lives.
They have studied some of the greatest works in the history of the world; they understand the intellectual foundations of the world in which they live; they are trained in advanced mathematics and science; they appreciate art and culture as expressions of the human spirit; they are approaching fluency in a modern European language or have access to the riches of Classical culture through knowledge of both Latin and Greek; and they possess the intellectual skills and disciplines which make a lifetime of learning possible. Of course, a liberal arts education is not one that can be completed hurriedly or with a sense only of its immediate benefit or material value.
The formation of our students’ characters and imaginations involves an exposure to great works and thinking over time, and it is not complete even at graduation. It is an important stage of a journey that must continue throughout life.
For more information about the school, please download the Family Handbook on the left.