House System

The Upper School Westminster House System is designed to promote a healthy and meaningful Christ-focused community among the student body and faculty. The House System’s goal is to use its platform to see, know, pursue, and champion every student in Christ for their good and the glory of God. This is accomplished through regular community events. The following are annual mainstays.

Salutatio

The Upper School’s House System Induction

Each May, the Lower School sixth graders participate in the ceremonial Salutatio event. After a formal send-off from the Lower School, the soon-to-be seventh graders make the Knightwalk through the tunnel that unites the two campuses. After the initiates emerge from other side, they are met with cheers and applause from enthusiastic Upper School students, who are there to welcome them into their Houses. The evening involves the House sorting, House hospitality, and a Salutatio fellowship on the back lawn with House leadership joining their new Housemates and their parents.

House Lunches

Weekly Gatherings to Get-to-Know One Another

On a regular basis, the 8 houses meet in their House classrooms during lunch to fellowship and receive updates about House happenings. Within each House, students are paired with students from different grades, promoting relationships that otherwise occur only in co-curricular activities like athletics and the arts. The students are guided and encouraged by the three House faculty advisers in specific ways to love and serve their brothers and sisters in Christ across the different grade levels. Regularly prayer requests are spoken, and the students pray for one another. There is nothing quite like sharing a meal together to get-to-know and invest in another person.

The Upper School Westminster House System is committed to leading students in volunteer service projects for their churches, for their school community, for their local communities, and for the global community. A few examples House Service activities include the following:

A Variety of Opportunities for Students to Volunteer

• Students participate through their Houses in greeting students in the morning at the Upper School and greeting students in the afternoon at the Lower School.
• Students serve their neighbors in the community during the annual Middle School and High School service days and the Christmas food drive for Oak Mountain Ministry.
• Students, through their Houses, compete in the Operation Christmas Child Shoebox Collection and Competition. Which House can produce the greatest number of presents!?
   

The Upper School Westminster House System is dedicated to promoting structured and life-giving leisure, play, and competition. Such events permit the 8 smaller House communities to fellowship, work, and play together while competing for the annual House Cup. Some of our events are as follows:

 Major House Events

• September’s “House Scavenger Hunt,” requiring the individual Houses to work as a team, employing strategy to race against the clock—and each other—in hopes of winning.
• October’s “House Capture the Pumpkin Contest.”
• November’s “House Knightfall Costume Dance."
• December’s “House Deck the Halls Christmas Celebration”: a week filled with Christmas-themed door decorations; dress-up days; House-selected Christmas music; the Candy Cane Toss; the Elf Relay Race; the Human Christmas Tree Competition; the House-themed Christmas Tree Decorating; and Christmas Movie Knight—to mention only a bit of the week’s merriment.
• January’s “Homecoming Celebration,” including the Houses’ Burns Knight Week and Burns Day—all filled with Scottish-themed competitions (like curling, caber toss, and the poetry competition—parodies of Robert Burns’ “Ode to a Haggis”); Scottish folk dancing; Burns Knight Liturgical Dinners; and our Homecoming Burns Knight Dance.
• March’s House Kickball Tournament.
• April’s Grand Finale! “The House Olympiad.”