Author: Kolby Atchison

To Save a Civilization, Part 1: Conditions for a Decline

Why did Rome fall? In our present age, this question may yield insights that extend beyond historical inquiry. Rome, in the ancient world, was not simply another European city. It represented the pinnacle of western civilization and the magnetic core of order. Rome embodied itself as both the trustee of culture and the key to its future. When plagues spread and the economy struggled, no serious matter. One could count on the longevity of Rome to endure. You can imagine the horror, then, on that cold winter day when, Alaric, King of the Visigoths, crossed the Rhine and sacked “the

Continue reading

Growth in the Craft: Fresh Techniques for Your Teaching Tool Belt

The sole true end of education is to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain. Dorothy Sayers, “The Lost Tools of Learning” As educators, we get excited when classrooms come alive: Hands shoot up. Eyes brighten. And body language across the room broadcasts that discovery is underway.  The other day I stepped in to sub for our science teacher and experienced a fresh taste of these kinds of moments. The class had been studying insects all semester and the topic of the day was beetles. Now, my background is

Continue reading

On Deep Reading

In an age of misleading news articles, vicious discourse, and exponential ignorance, it is a curious fact that the skill of reading continues to take the backseat to other “practical” areas of study. Society, it seems, would rather have students master Microsoft Excel or how to program computers than they would become lectiophiles. Reading is discarded as an antiquated art, a skill for a bygone area, whose value is akin to a penny: sentimentalized yet basically obsolete. At the same time, no one explicitly endorses the excision of reading from the curriculum as they would the penny from U.S. currency.

Continue reading

Good to Great: Helping Schools Find Their Hedgehog Concept

In a world of seemingly endless opportunities for educational innovation, it can be difficult for school leaders to know where to focus. Should they prioritize the building of a successful sports program? How about offering generous packages of financial assistance? Will the school be known for its impressive musical productions, rigorous curriculum, or exceptional classroom teachers? And how about the school’s marketplace focus– financial accessibility, academic superiority, or programmatic breadth?1 In Good to Great, author Jim Collins argues from longitudinal research that one reason organizations fail to make the jump from good to great is that they never land on

Continue reading

Irrigating Deserts in Schools: The Redemption of Emotion in an Age of Feeling

In a world of sensationalistic news, propaganda, and emotions running in overdrive, our students need specialized training in how to navigate life’s challenges with wisdom. Dorothy Sayers and C.S. Lewis, two favorites in the classical education renewal movement, offered different, but related, educational solutions to respond to emotive and misleading propaganda. Dorothy Sayers, known for her essay The Lost Tools of Learning (1947), advocated for a return to liberal arts education. With a special emphasis on the language arts of the Trivium, Sayers believed that the best remedy against sensationalistic news headlines was to equip the intellect with the right

Continue reading

Good to Great: Attracting the Right Teachers

In my previous article, I introduced a new series on how insights from Jim Collins’ Good to Great (New York: Harper Business, 2001) might apply to schools. In his book, Collins and his team of researchers study eleven companies that achieved exceptional results over a long period of time in relation to their comparison peers. Through his research, Collins and his team distilled seven characteristics of these great companies, each of which he claims are implementable across industry lines. A few years later, Collins wrote Good to Great and the Social Sectors (2005). In this companion monograph, Collins draws out

Continue reading

Good to Great: Measuring the “Greatness” of a School

Like many educational leaders who are familiar with books on leadership and management, I am greatly indebted to Jim Collins’ Good to Great (New York: Harper Business, 2001) for my understanding of how to take an organization to the next level. In this #1 bestseller, Collins identifies through longitudinal research the seven characteristics of business outliers who jumped from good to great while their comparison peers did not. A few years later, Collins wrote a short sequel, this time targeting a nonprofit audience, entitled Good to Great and the Social Sectors (2005). In this monograph, Collins thinks through how the

Continue reading

Building a Strong Faculty Culture

Schools are interesting organizations, to say the least. They may vary in leadership structures and governance policies, but they all contain the same core groups of constituents: students, parents, faculty and staff members, administrators, board members, and donors. Of these groups, which is most critical for the success of the school? While a compelling case could be made for each one of them, I have come to believe that the answer is faculty. Faculty are the front line workers and first responders of the school. They are not only expected to interface with school customers (parents) on a regular basis.

Continue reading

Educating in Desire for the Kingdom

In the Christian, classical renewal movement we often draw the distinction between an education focused on information and an education focused on formation. Education in information focuses on the dissemination of facts, critical thinking skills, and beefing up the intellect, while education for formation prioritizes the process of developing a certain type of person. Both information and formation are important, of course, so which is right?  Well, that depends on what humans essentially are. If humans are, at core, cognitive creatures, then it makes sense to focus exclusively on the intellect. This was the predominant view of modernism. Influenced by

Continue reading

Fostering Grit Through Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Habit Training

We write and speak often at Educational Renaissance about the importance of cultivating good habits (you can listen to our podcast on habit training here). Habits are, as Charlotte Mason put it, the railways of the good life (Home Education, p. 101). A person with good habits experiences a life of ease, while a person missing such habits often finds life burdensome and difficult.  By “ease” I don’t mean easy, of course. I mean smooth, orderly, peaceful, and effective.  For example, the habit of timeliness is indispensable for a life of ease. Imagine how difficult life is for the person

Continue reading