A glimpse inside Hillsdale College's network of classical schools across the country.
As teachers, our main goal is to help our students learn something new every day. But how do we know if the words we are saying are actually being understood by our students? I remember my first year of teaching, I planned out these, in my opinion, beautiful lectures filled with information I found to be fascinating. I left most of these lessons feeling like I had inculcated my students’ minds with great stories that they would remember forever.…
Yesterday in my science class, we were conducting an experiment about magnets. At the beginning of class I put this question on the board: How does the strength of attraction between two magnets change as the distance between them changes? This is a complicated question. There are a number of big words and it was hard for students to understand precisely what I was asking.…
The end of the school year is a challenging time, both for students and teachers. This time of year has more requirements and deadlines than any other, from writing report card comments to entering final grades to beginning to detail plans for the following school year. A few weeks ago, I felt like I was in a cloud with my mind racing through this long to-do list. That…
“Robin Hood is sometimes hot-tempered just like Henry II!” “Gaheris in our King Arthur book is a squire, just like we talked about in history class!” These are just a few examples of a typical observation made in my literature class on a weekly basis. One of my favorite aspects of our classical curriculum is how well the subjects we learn about intertwine with our literature stories. …
I have wanted to be a teacher since I was in kindergarten. I remember countless times as a child forcing my little sister to be my student as I played school in our family room. I have always loved working with children and am excited whenever I get to share some new insight with them. The night before my first day of real teaching, I could hardly get any sleep I was so excited and nervous.…
In my first year of teaching, I thought images were pointless. For most history and science lessons, my co-teacher would hand me a map of a battle or an image of light being split by a prism and tell me that I should pass them out and use them in my lesson. That first year, I greatly disliked each handout I had to pass out.…
The day before a long break is often one of the hardest days as a teacher. It is these sorts of days where teachers make the joke of “just put on a movie” since it seems like the students are incapable of being taught anything. With everyone’s minds on the family gatherings, vacation trips, or general time of relaxation so near at hand, it is especially hard to keep students’ attention and interest in class materials.…
One of my favorite features of the Hillsdale College-affliated schools is that there is an equal focus on teachers educating both the minds and the hearts of their students. The curriculum we teach is ripe with opportunities to discuss virtue and how the choices of different people affect their lives and the lives of those around them. But my most meaningful discussion of our curriculum didn’t happen in the classroom.…