The Larson family settled the school question years before their daughter was old enough to have one. They bought land inside the Wayzata School District and built a house on it. Around here, that counts as doing your homework.
Then a friend started in about Providence Academy. She was not gentle about it. She was certain, in the way that makes a person raise something again after you've already changed the subject. So that November, with her husband unavailable, Lexie's mother went to the open house alone, mostly so she could tell her friend she'd gone.
She came home with a conviction she hadn't gone looking for.
What got her was the students. Upper-schoolers greeted her and walked her through the building, and what stayed with her was their confidence, their poise, and how plainly they loved their school.
Her husband asked her not to describe it. He wanted to walk the building without her impressions in his head. He went in January.
When he got back, he didn't open a discussion. He said the decision was made.
The house stayed. The plan didn't. Lexie is a junior now.
Dan and Teresa Burns came at the same question from the other end. They were living in a Plymouth apartment, planning to move within the year, and didn't want to move their kids twice. Both had gone to public schools with AP and IB programs, and for their own children they wanted that same rigor with their faith in the same building. Teresa, who attended a Spanish immersion school and used the language daily at her last job, liked that Providence teaches Spanish, French and Latin.
What settled it was a story about someone they'd never met. A friend on staff told them about that year's valedictorian, who had used his graduation speech to talk about praying with his family every day.
They bought a house within twenty minutes of the school. They now have five children.
Five children means a Tuesday that starts with prayers and songs in the car and ends with everyone at the dinner table, each person expected to share something about their day.
Ask either family what they're grateful for this year, and you get names.
For Lexie's family, the list starts with Mrs. Hohenecker, who had a gift for teaching organization, and expecting it. Then came Ms. Taylor, in middle school. Lexie's mother remembers confessing how closely she tracked her daughter's assignments, how much she worried about staying on top of all of it. Ms. Taylor heard her out, then told her, kindly and without leaving much room, that seventh grade was where Lexie needed to start managing this herself. That's what middle school is for, she said.
Any parent who has stood in a doorway at ten at night doing a mental inventory of a seventh grader's backpack understands both halves of that moment.
It took. Lexie still gets overwhelmed sometimes. She gets frustrated. Then she refocuses and pushes through, and her mother has watched the things that once intimidated her turn into things she knows she can do.
And there is Mrs. Wolfe, the strings director, a fixture since Lexie picked up a violin in third grade. Beth Wolfe has spent five decades performing and teaching in the Twin Cities and is a founding artistic director of the conductorless Philomusica Chamber Orchestra. At Providence, strings students meet with her individually or in small groups for ten minutes during the school day.
Ten minutes, once a week, from her.
Lexie's mother says she can't fully describe what happens in those lessons. She can describe the result: her daughter holds an immense respect for Mrs. Wolfe and never wants to disappoint her.
Lexie still plays. She also plays guitar, sings, performs in musicals and plays in a rock band.
Dan and Teresa's list runs just as long. They say they fall in love with their kids' teachers every year, and then they prove it. Mrs. Dierberger and Mrs. Wiederholt made a reader out of their oldest. Mr. Donohue, who teaches Spanish through games, has been a household celebrity through three of their children. And Sister Anne Therese knows precisely what a second grader's memory can do, and puts it to work on the thing she considers most worth knowing: that they are beloved children of God.
The moments they say they'll remember are almost all small, and almost none of them are academic. A phone call from the Lower School Director's office, the kind that stops a parent's heart for a second, turned out to be about a Virtue Award. And their kindergartner, new to all of it this fall, complained about the weekend. She wanted it to be a school day.
What surprised Lexie's mother most was how much the school's traditions would come to matter. The one she always comes back to is the tree.
Anyone who drives Schmidt Lake Road at night in December has seen it, standing out front of the school. Lexie's mother encourages people to pull in for a moment to take it in, and she attaches no conditions. You don't have to be considering anything to appreciate a good tree.
The lighting itself is short on purpose. The school chaplain blesses the tree, families sing carols in the cold, and everyone is back inside before seven.
Then comes the Christmas strings concert, which runs from second graders through seniors. The second graders have only a few months of instruction behind them and walk onto the stage anyway, unintimidated by the teenagers sharing it. The older students, in her telling, return the favor with a quiet, steady support that makes the little ones feel seen.
The tears start early and last through most of the performance, every year.
“I always wish I’d remembered to tuck a tissue into my purse,” she says.