Author: Kolby Atchison

A Poem for Advent

With the Christmas season now in full swing, there tends to be a strong focus on the joys of being young. This is notably displayed in the excitement our culture generates around shopping and gift-giving, particularly for children. Movies like Home Alone, Elf, and A Christmas Story feature the idea of youthfulness prominently in their plots, and in some way or another, cast an adult or elderly person as the antagonist. The wonder and joy of Christmas, it would seem, is reserved for a particular age. As Christians, we need to resist this inclination. One way we can preserve the

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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

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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

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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

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Discipleship in the School, Part 2: Spiritual Formation

In my first article in this series, I explored the idea of discipleship and what it means for the Christian school to make disciples. I noted from the offset that the Christian school and local church have different purposes, and therefore, we should expect their discipleship approaches to look different. At the same time, both institutions share a goal to promote the gospel of Jesus Christ. In this regard, there is to be found a shared vision of discipleship, namely, to help others follow Jesus and grow in conformity to his image. I then went on to offer two general

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Discipleship in the School, Part 1: An Introduction

What is discipleship and how does discipleship happen in a Christian school? Like most good questions, we must begin by defining our terms. What is discipleship? According to Mark Dever, a pastor in the Washington D.C. area, we can define discipleship simply as helping someone follow Jesus. As an expanded definition, he writes that discipleship is “…deliberately doing spiritual good to someone so that he or she will be more like Christ” (Discipling, p. 13). Greg Ogden, a pastor who served for many years in the Chicago suburbs, defines discipleship as “walking alongside other disciples in order to encourage, equip,

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Preserving the Inheritance: Christian Education in the Post-Christian West

In The Air We Breathe (The Good Book Company, 2022), author Glen Scrivener explains how western society came to believe in the core values we now take for granted: equality, compassion, consent, enlightenment, science, freedom, and progress. He contends that belief in these values is not self-evident, trans-cultural, or historically necessary. So where did these values come from? His answer: Christianity.  It is a great irony, therefore, that even while western society continues to secularize, leaving belief in the Christian faith behind, its moral instincts remain largely unchanged. Westerners do not question the existence of human rights. Nor do they

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The Goal of School Education

What is the goal of school education? This is a foundational question that demands an answer. Organizations are complex entities with moving and disparate parts. Schools are no exception. Facilities, insurance, safety, technology, admissions, marketing, communications, and development are all essential functions of school operations, and I have yet to even mention academics. Each department of the school must be aligned toward a singular purpose, what we call the school’s mission. This mission must answer the question: What is the goal of school education? To consider a response, let us turn to philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff (b. 1932), whom I have

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Paul’s School of Mentorship

Classical school leaders often emphasize the centrality of mentorship in the educational process, particularly in grades 6-12. They have wisely observed that the junior high and high school years are a pivotal phase in a person’s development. As students gradually spend more time with peers in settings without their parents, small yet formative opportunities emerge for these students to make decisions for themselves. Overtime, these decisions will form nothing less than their personality and character. Thus, the presence of wise and intentional mentors who can offer advice to these students becomes all the more crucial. In a similar way, the

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Classical Education and the Rise of A.I.

Since the early days of the classical education renewal movement, one of the primary distinctives of a classical education has been strong academics. Through books like The Well-Trained Mind and Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning, classical educators have sounded a clarion call back to a tradition that offers a challenging yet rewarding academic program steeped in the liberal arts. It should be no surprise that a message promoting academic rigor would gain traction. Public education in the United States has been the subject of criticism for decades. Despite varied efforts in education reform, there is a growing lack of

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