Are You Ready to Become a Phone-free School?

The latest catchphrase sweeping the nation is “phone-free school.” In an age where smartphones have become ubiquitous, more and more schools are adopting policies to remove phones from the hands of students. In this article, we will look at the reasons behind this move to create distraction-free environments. Even though many classical schools are already low-tech, it is well worth considering how to approach the role of phones in the lives of students. We will also consider the thesis of Jonathan Haidt in his new book The Anxious Generation to learn more about what we can do to enable our

Continue reading

The Search for Great Teaching: A Comparison of Teach Like a Champion 3.0 and Christopher Perrin’s Pedogogical Principles

One interesting addition to Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion series in his third edition (Teach Like a Champion 3.0) is his notion of a mental model. He introduces the idea like this: “In a typical lesson you decide, often quickly. Then you decide, decide, and decide again. You are a batter facing a hundred pitches in a row…What do you need to decide quickly, reliably, and well, while thinking about other things under a bit of pressure in the form, of, say, twenty-nine restless students, twenty-five minutes’ worth of work left to get done, and a ticking clock to

Continue reading

The Narration-based Science Lesson

The method of narration articulated by Charlotte Mason is a powerful tool that involves children retelling what they have learned in their own words. Students tell back the content of what they have read, seen or heard. This actively engages their minds in the process of assimilating knowledge, making connections and cultivating language skills. Narration is dynamic and grows in complexity as students grow, meaning that as students enter higher grade levels and encounter subjects that have dense prose, we need to understand how to modulate our use of narration to fit the needs of the texts they read. When

Continue reading

The Great Cause of Teaching

In Aristotle’s writings, the philosopher famously articulates four causes, or explanations, for why a thing exists: Together these causes serve as the foundation for whatever knowledge we can know about anything that exists. In this article, I will explore the final cause, or purpose, of teaching. It practically goes without saying that there is great confusion in the world today about what the purpose of education is, broadly speaking, and teaching in particular. What precisely is the teaching act and what is its end goal? Let us take a modern primer on teaching as an example. Doug Lemov’s Teach Like

Continue reading

The Role of Imagination in Education

Imagination. The word brings so much to mind for us today. If there’s one thing that everybody can agree on for children, it’s the need to help them develop a vivid imagination through school, play, and well… everything they do. Or perhaps, ‘develop a vivid imagination’ is the wrong way of putting it. “Every child is born blessed with a vivid imagination,” said Walt Disney. “But just as a muscle grows flabby with disuse, so the bright imagination of a child pales in later years if he ceases to exercise it.” So maybe it’s not children who need to develop

Continue reading

Wisdom from the Heights of the Mountain Top: Inspiration from Thomas Aquinas

Onlookers viewing the reconstruction of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris might experience something similar to what onlookers in the 1200s had when the original construction of Notre Dame was still underway. Having begun in 1163, it was not completed until 1345. The site of its construction rests upon an island in the middle of the Seine. Crossing the Seine, one can make their way to the Latin Quarter, where one finds the medieval University of Paris. The Rue Saint-Jacques cuts through the Latin Quarter, aiming at Notre Dame on Seine. It was the street Thomas Aquinas daily walked

Continue reading

Three Key Skills to Develop during High School

For high school students, college looms large in the mind. Frequently, the focus is on grades and graduation requirements. But the most effective way to become optimally prepared for college is to delve into concepts surrounding human learning. In particular, students who gain a sense of themselves as learners who can manage their own learning gain a master skill that will put them in the driver’s seat of their college career. In this article we will dive into a few areas where students can optimize their understanding of themselves as learners through practical tactics. Each of these skills is backed

Continue reading

5 Elements of Faculty Culture for a New School to Implement on Day 1

With the skyrocketing number of new classical schools opening each year in the United States and beyond, the launch teams for these schools are no doubt busy working to prepare for the first day of school. On the one hand, this inaugural day probably feels far away yet. But on the other hand, for these pioneers, it is coming all too fast.  To prepare for a launch year, there are a number of elements for school founders to discuss, care for, and organize into a cohesive plan. These elements, many of which are minute, taken individually may at times feel

Continue reading

Gifted to Serve: Spiritual Gifting and High School Students

The Via Sabaste was a Roman road that cut through the heart of Asia Minor, bringing traffic of all sorts through the small town of Lystra. Well-formed routes such as this enabled the rapid expansion of the church in the first century. Despite the ease of travel, Paul’s first visit to Lystra could not have gone worse. When Paul and Barnabas healed a crippled man, the locals insisted that they were Zeus and Hermes (Acts 14:12), offending the two missionaries and inciting the local Jewish population to stone Paul (Acts 14:19). Undeterred, they continued to preach the gospel, making many

Continue reading

Ancient Wisdom for the New Economy

Our educational renewal movement comes at a peculiar time in history. Classical education around the globe plugs us into something the predates many of the movements that shape the conventional educational assumptions of our day. One could identify the Enlightenment as the starting point of conventional education, largely because of the empirical epistemology that championed scientific fact over religious faith. Surprisingly, the classical educational renewal movement has not attempted to rewind the clock to take us back to a world before modern plumbing let alone the internet. Instead, it has called out today’s conventional education for selling short our view

Continue reading