Tualatin Valley Academy has ninth-grade students on its campus once again and while they have had high school students in the past as a junior academy, this year is different. They plan for this ninth-grade class to be the first graduating senior class from the school in 2026 as their program expands.
While having a four-year high school program at the school has long been a dream of teachers and Adventist community on the west side of Portland, the school is now going through the steps to request accreditation to offer 11th and 12th grade. Now that the school is undergoing the approval process, they are making plans for the future with their students and families.
With highly qualified instructors and small class sizes, TVA is equipped to provide excellent education to their high school students. TVA’s vision is to support whole person wellness as they mentor their students. One of the high school teachers, Michael Blackburn, commented, “What we are currently doing, and what we hope to achieve, would not be possible with a very large class. We are able to spend time getting to know each student and really trying to find what interests them and keeps them motivated to learn.”
Blackburn is specifically seeking to encourage student interest in learning through his technology class. While he is currently introducing his pupils to a variety of uses of technology as freshmen, in the upcoming years, he plans to let them hone their focus to their areas of interest through a special collaborative project. He said, “There are few better examples of integrating the fields of STEAM — science, technology, engineering, art and math — than computer game development and I would love to see students with very different passions work together to produce a computer game with original 3D modeling, art, programming and music.”
The computer game project Blackburn intends to use to develop his students’ technology skills is just one example of the unique instructional approach employed by TVA’s high school teachers. Sara Beck, science and math teacher, commented, “All of our curriculum is really focused on hands on, applied learning. There’s not a lot of lecture that takes place here. It’s a lot of interaction.” Beck reflected that steering away from a lecture-driven model leads to deeper conceptual understanding while also developing students’ communication, collaboration and critical thinking skills.
While offering quality academics to families is important to TVA, the school’s motivation to expand is for a greater reason — retaining more students in Adventist Christian Education throughout their high school career. In the past, most of their graduating eighth- or tenth-grade students living on the west side of Portland have chosen to transition to public school rather than commute to an Adventist senior academy. TVA’s desire is to continue to support students through their teen years to build a relationship with Jesus that will last their whole lives.
A TVA student works in the computer lab.
A student works on photo manipulation.
TVA students work on a physics project.
