Faith, Family, and Fibonacci: A New Kind of School on the Lower Cape

That question became Cape Cod Christian Academy (CCCA), a school where the edges between classroom, kitchen table, and community garden are purposefully porous.

Five years later, the Harwich-based academy hums with laughter on campus three days a week, while Mondays and Fridays find students curled over science kits at home, guided by the parents that Waters calls “co-teachers.”

🎓 Building a Hybrid Without the Screens

The rhythm is deceptively simple: campus on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday; home on Monday and Friday. This approach isn’t a traditional hybrid—it follows the University-Model®, blending structured in-person teaching with parent-guided home days. Yet there is no Zoom timetable, no asynchronous video dump. Parents receive a detailed online plan book—pacing, worksheets, project prompts—but the teaching happens face-to-face, whether across a desk or a kitchen counter. Over the summer, the teaching parent is provided training on the curriculum.

Lisa Radtke, who joined the staff after years in public education, loves clarifying that “hybrid” here is the opposite of remote.

Small really does mean small. Class sizes hover in the single digits, which gives the school permission to weave in specials most micro-schools can only dream about: Latin chants drifting down the hall, logic puzzles scribbled on the whiteboard, and art class that spills into pottery sessions hosted after hours by local volunteers.

Those volunteers are a Cape treasure in themselves. Ninety-two-year-old Korean War veteran Mr. Max shuffles a stack of chessboards into the classroom every Wednesday, joined by fellow Marine Mr. Frank and Mr. John, who did not serve in the military but volunteers as a beloved chess mentor at both the CCCC and Cape Cod Christian Academy. On a different afternoon you might catch a knitting circle that doubles as an impromptu math lab (“How many stitches per row, if we expand the pattern?”), or students foraging for beach-rose hips with a grandparent who knows every edible weed on the Cape.

🏡 A Community That Refused to Leave

CCCA opened its doors in fall 2020 with fourteen students tucked into a borrowed church classroom. “We honestly thought we’d stay K–4 forever,” Waters admits. Then a fourth-grader begged to stay another year. Fifth grade appeared, followed by sixth, seventh, and eighth. Next autumn the school welcomes both kindergarten prep (K4) and ninth-grade pioneers, and enrollment charts show an average of 45% growth each year—over 60% this past cycle.

Marketing budget? Almost nil. “Parents recruit us harder than we recruit them,” Waters laughs. “Word of mouth is relentless.”

That loyalty has everything to do with what happens outside the lesson plans. Families trade carpools like baseball cards, crowdsource science-fair supplies, and slip seamlessly into one another’s routines; it is not unusual, Waters says, “to drop off three kids and drive home with five.”

✨ Faith at the Center, Walls Kept Low

The “Christian” in the school’s name is a statement of identity, not a gatekeeping badge. Twenty-two churches—from high-liturgical to hand-clapping charismatic—are represented in the student body, and several families do not claim a church home at all.

Waters is more interested in shared values than denominational trivia. “It’s not about dogma,” she tells prospective parents in her mandatory one-hour consultation. “It’s about mind, body, and spirit—and raising citizens who lean toward compassion.”

Morning devotions, she believes, sit comfortably beside a rigorous STEM block; both teach attentiveness to a bigger story.

🛠️ The Unlikely Techie-Turned-Educator

Before she deciphered curriculum grids, Waters deciphered code. She holds a bachelor’s in computer systems and information technology, a field that suited her analytical streak until family life asked her to pivot.

When her husband Buster began consulting across five states, she pulled their children from private school so the clan could travel together. Homeschooling, undertaken first as a lifestyle hack, revealed itself as an academic accelerant. “They soared,” she says simply.

Surprised, she chased credentials: a master’s in education completed while living in Costa Rica, then a doctorate in Boston. Classroom stops in charter, public, parochial, and international schools expanded her toolkit. The through-line she carried into CCCA is the conviction that children rise to meet real standards—kindergartners skip-count their way into multiplication long before anyone hands them the word “times.”

💭 Dreams on the Horizon

Ask Waters what keeps her up at night and she’ll answer in one syllable: space. The academy, still borrowing and renting, can only squeeze so much further.

Her five-year roadmap sketches a dedicated Pre-K–12 campus with science labs, dual-enrollment partnerships, and summer programs that throw the gates wide to the wider Cape community. “I’m tired of telling families we’re full,” she admits.

👥 A Husband’s Footnote

The last ten minutes of our interview belong to Buster Waters, who drifts in from the hallway and politely asks for the floor.

He marvels at her late-night phone calls coaching nervous parents, her ability to list every child’s current reading score and favorite pizza topping, and how she grew a school while also teaching full time. “She lives this 24/7,” he says, equal parts pride and awe.

▶ Best walk to reset your soul? "The lighthouse trail at Hardings Beach, Chatham."

▶ Book every parent should read? Raising Up Dreamers by Sheila Irwin

▶ Coffee or tea? "Coffee—sweet, hot, non-negotiable—but I’ll never say no to iced sweet tea."

▶ Local caffeine fix? Hot Chocolate Sparrow, unequivocally

▶ Pizza night splurge? New England Pizza at Knots Landing in Chatham

🌿 Where Classroom Meets Kitchen Table

Cape Cod Christian Academy is still young, still flexing, still borrowing space. Yet inside its borrowed walls — and its many living rooms — a tangible confidence hums. Children greet octogenarian chess mentors like old teammates, parents trade sourdough bread recipes while marking Latin quizzes, and a former IT professional with an educator’s heart continues to ask a simple question: How can we make this even better?

If you want to see what happens when community and curriculum hold equal weight, Dr. Waters is happy to talk. Just don’t be surprised if the conversation runs past bedtime.

🌿 Where Classroom Meets Kitchen Table

Want to see what makes Cape Cod Christian Academy truly different?

Visit capecodchristianacademy.org to explore the program, get a feel for the community, and learn how the University-Model® works.

📧 Questions or just curious if this approach could be right for your family? Reach out directly to Dr. Waters at [email protected] — she'd love to connect.

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