Sophia Academy

Largest Class Graduates with Gratitude

Graduations are always exciting. Graduating five seniors who have shown incredible growth and achievement in their years at Sophia is extra special. Seniors are moving on the college, trade school, and into jobs.

Our salutatorian had this to say on graduation day: “Sophia Academy helped us realize we have more potential that we had thought when we were younger.” He confessed that when the class came together in 9th grade, they had not always liked each other, but through the kindness of both teachers and other students, along with an encouragement to share vulnerabilities, this class formed a tight bond with each other. He also expressed gratitude on behalf of his fellow classmates for the patience of the faculty, the safe space that Sophia provided, the acceptance each student felt, and the educational help given to each.

Our valedictorian shared that for her, the “future is a collection of our hopes and dreams [that have been] slowly blossoming . . .the seed that we’ve planted throughout our time at Sophia.” She reminded her fellow classmates that no matter where each student goes, God has already gone before them and knows their future. She concluded by encouraging them all to keep planting, keep growing, and to embrace all there is to love and to fight for.

All the City Has to Offer

Sophia Academy loves to use the resources of our city to help students learn and prepare for the future. Here, junior and senior students visit a the Philadelphia Technical Training Institute where post-high school students learn one of seven trades such as building houses

And here the art students use watercolors to paint the Wissahickon Creek.

Whether we take trips to museums, check out geological features of local creeks, use the park behind the school for PE classes, or head to the Free Library’s central branch, Sophia students enjoy outside the classroom learning.

Community Changes Lives

Four years ago, four scared fourteen-year-olds arrived at Sophia Academy. They didn’t know each other and they didn’t trust each other. “Play nice,” their science teacher kept telling them. That first year, we had meltdowns and tears, anger and frustrations along with laughter and kindness, calm and encouragement. At some point the four became five and at another point five individuals became a cohesive, warm-hearted and tight-knit group of friends who supported each other, listened to each other, and cheered each other on academically. In their senior year, we found them discussing Physics together, teaching each other concepts. We saw them using skills learned in both Executive Function class and Social-Emotional Learning to navigate relationships. We heard them advocating for themselves when the content of a class made them uncomfortable, and then pushing through the discomfort to find meaning.

What made the difference? Honestly, a combination of warm-hearted teachers who believed that each student had great potential along with the student’s own growing maturity, prayers of family and faculty along with the students’ own perserverence have all played a part in changing struggling young teens into confident young adults.

The senior class of 2025 will be attending college, trade school, and entering the work force. We are so proud of who they have become and look forward to hearing of their successes in the future.

Cooking With Garbage

Sophia students participate ever year in the Philly Service Award project. This year, students in STEM classes are building –from scratch–a methane digester that can be used as an outdoor lamp or stove. It will be powered completely by organic trash. Anyone living in a city knows that there is usually plenty of trash to be found. Students have gone into the neighborhood multiple times to pick up trash, thus meeting two needs at once: beautifying the school’s neighborhood and securing a stash of free fuel for the methane digester. Win-win. Just another way for Sophia Academy students to use all their senses and abilities to learn.

Unanimously Recommended for Accreditation!

Sophia Academy is on track to receive accreditation after the site visit team unanimously recommended us this week for accreditation from Middle States Association and Christian Schools International. This caps over a year and a half of rigorous self study.

Here is one commendation the Accreditation Site Visit Team gave us:

“Teachers understand the learning differences of students. Students and parents are thrilled to be in a school where there is a focus on awakening genius and where the student is identified as an image-bearer of God with a lot of potential.”

Hope Rising: Raising Scholarships for Urban Students

February 22, 2025 was a momentous day for Sophia Academy as we held our very first fundraising dinner to raise money for student scholarships. The hall was beautifully decorated and the catered meal was fine, but the best part of the evening according to our attendees were the short testimonials given by a parent, a teacher, and a student.

The parent shared how Sophia Academy had helped his autistic son so much. Because of the work that Sophia did with his son, his social skills were leaps and bounds ahead of where he started. His ability to organize himself for school was stellar. His grades were high. This parent couldn’t be happier.

You may like to actually listen to the student’s talk: honest, vulnerable, and giving a lot of credit to his teachers and to the school:

We agree with our student: with the right supports, every student can succeed academically and personally.

Once evening fell, floor lamps strategically placed gave a wonderful ambience

Blind Photography: Really?

That’s right. In Sophia Academy’s photography class, student not only learn composition, parts of a camera, and the difference between abstract and representational pictures. They also had the challenge of taking pictures while blindfolded, depending only on touch, sense of heat and light, and so on. We think they produced some mighty fine photographs. Here is one. Stay tuned for some of their abstract work and focus on color.

More Hands-on Opportunities

(JR intubating a “patient” prior to surgery)

The annual Minorities in Health Sciences Symposium, held at Esperanza College of Eastern University, provided students from Sophia Academy and numerous other high schools in Philadelphia with the opportunity to explore the many varied options in the health sciences field.

Morning speakers passed on great nuggets of information. What do our students remember?

–That when you feel a panic attack coming on, placing your right hand firmly over your chest will simulate the feeling of a hug. That four hugs a day are necessary for life, eight are necessary for growth, and a minimum of twelve hugs each day are necessary to thrive.

–That Jefferson Hospital and Esperanza College have a PACE program which gives students full-time jobs at Jefferson while they take pre-nursing or pre-med courses at Esperanza. And that Jefferson provides scholarships for tuition in addition to the jobs. Win-win.

–That there are many ways to the future and everyone can take the path that works best for them.

The afternoon sessions were completely hands-on as students could choose between dissection, virtual reality, healthy cooking, extracting DNA and much more. Our students compared healthy and diseased retinas under microscopes, used VR to rescue victims of a car crash, handled real human brains with the eyes still attached, and practiced forcing the brain and eye to work together while looking in a mirror to draw a star. Now, that was hard!

Bringing Home the Trophy

Students at Sophia Academy spent the last eight months working on a service project as part of the Philly Service Awards program. We received financing from the organization to carry out the service project and for classroom supplies. At the end of the year, we competed against 75 other high schools in the Philadelphia area for a money award. The Philly Service Awards program gave 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place prizes in three categories. At the awards ceremony on May 2, Sophia Academy students were both shocked and thrilled to hear our school announced as the 2nd place winner in the “Safer Philadelphia” category. This award comes with a great trophy and $5000. A student committee will work together to decide how to spend a portion of that prize money.

What was our service project? Cleaning the bandstand in the local park, ridding it of vegetation overgrowth, moss, trash, and more; offering free yard clean-ups in the neighborhood; visiting our local elementary school to have them help us create artwork about the community; turning their artwork and ours into a mosaic to be installed in the park near the bandstand; and purchasing a doggy waste system to be installed near the band stand.

Every January a New J-Term

One of the distinctives of Sophia Academy is our use of the month of January to study in depth a subject of our choice. Often hands-on, these electives vary from year to year. This year’s J-Term offerings are three: Around the World Culinary Adventures, Chess, and Theater Arts. The chefs are proud of the incredible, tasty food they have produced, from a Moroccan Tagine to Korean Beef Bowls to French sauces. They have gone the extra mile by making even their pasta and wraps from scratch. Meanwhile, cries of excitement have been emanating from Theater Arts as students and teachers have written their own script as a team, turned white sheets into beautiful backdrops for the set, and are busily heading toward opening day–well, production day. The quietest class is, of course, chess, where even newcomers have learned the logic and strategy of chess while old hands strengthen their skills and all develop their competitive edge.