Wheaton Academy

Hey, School Success Makers, welcome to another edition of the School Success Podcast.

I'm your host, Mitchell Slater, joined by a new friend out of the great state of Illinois, Corey Hockett, who is the Chief Academic Officer at Wheaton Academy in West Chicago, Illinois.

And they're doing some really cool things there that we're gonna jump into and highlight here in just a few minutes.

But of course, before we jump over there and do that, we're gonna introduce our guests and have them introduce themselves.

Is it different than, you know, regular Chicago? What are we eating and doing in Chicago? Yeah.

So this is I'll transparently, I am originally from Pennsylvania.

My family all lives in the Northeast and I live in West Chicago because of Wheaton Academy.

If I had superpowers, I would move it to another part of the country.

You know, we hear the stories throughout.

And this isn't what I'm talking about, but I went to Wheaton College and my kids go to Wheaton Academy.

And, you know, if you walk the grounds of Wheaton College now, there's a student center named after Todd Beamer.

It's the Todd M. Beamer Student Center.

He also went to Wheaton Academy, where my kids now go.

And they have next, on Monday, I believe, is the Todd Beamer Memorial Golf Outing.

Todd Beamer, one of the more well-known stories of what happened on 9-11, he was one of the ones on Flight 93 who helped take that flight down and save who knows how many people from a plane that was likely heading to the Capitol, the U.S. Capitol.

Todd Morgan Beamer was born on November 24, 1968, in Flint, Michigan.

His family eventually moved to the Chicago area, where Todd grew up and attended Wheaton Christian Grammar School and Wheaton Academy.

From an early age, athletics was a major part of his life.

He played basketball, baseball, and soccer, and was known for his competitive spirit.

My next two did public elementary school, public junior high, private Christian school for high school.

Jackson graduated last year from Wheaton Academy.

Emily is a senior at Wheaton Academy.

And the reason we did it had less to do with what we saw going on at the public school.

There were definitely things concerning us at the public school in the direction of curriculum or kind of just the general ethos, the general culture and the direction.

But for us, it was less about getting them out of something and instead, and to use the phrase here in the Christianity Today article, to place them in a spot where there was great opportunity.

Opportunity for their faith to grow, not just for their academics to grow, but for their faith to grow.

So a place like Wheaton Academy, where my kids are, where my one just graduated from, my other one is a senior.