We are excited to announce that five of the students in our Online Learning Community creative writing courses won or placed in the international Saugus Halloween writing contest! At all three levels—elementary, middle school, and high school—first place went to one of our young writers. In addition, Royal Fireworks students also won second place at the elementary level and third place at the middle school level. These results are a combination of great students and a sound educational approach.

Three elements of the Royal Fireworks educational approach are particularly important in gaining these results. First is our relationship approach to education. We believe that fundamental to education is a relationship between the child and the material. In our Online Learning Community, we are able to take that one step further and initiate a relationship between the mentor and the student. To do this, we look to mentors who are experts in their fields—people with the capacity and temperament to help students form strong relationships with the material. People who are experts can provide a richer and more creative learning environment, and they can model for the students the benefits of a lifelong relationship with the subjects that they are studying. This holds true for the students in any one of our courses, from language arts to history to science to philosophy to the arts and more.

Second, we know that the students who do the best are those who stay with the same instructors the longest. The three students who won first place in the writing contest are all multi-year students of Myrna Kemnitz, and all of them have won in previous writing contests. The benefits of working with the same instructors accumulate, no matter the discipline, which is why we have afforded extensive opportunities for independent study with our faculty.

Third, we are certain that an approach based on the classics enables children to form the best relationships. If you have a choice, why not be in the company of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Alexander the Great, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, da Vinci, Descartes, Locke, Kant, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and dozens of other of the greatest writers, thinkers, artists, architects, and statesmen of the last two and half millennia? Students get the best opportunities for growth if they spend their time in the company of great thinkers, writers, and artists. Our ultimate goal is to help our students form happy, lifetime relationships, and the classics are rich in opportunities to grow and mature and find new insights throughout one’s entire life.

Congratulations for their winning stories to Andia Harnell (Tehran, Iran), Fiona Gehrke (Texas), Olivia Reynolds (Georgia), Lorien Strange (Vermont), and Madeline Thach (Texas)!