David was small in stature. He had only five small stones. By any measure, David stood no chance against the Philistine Goliath. But the Lord was with David. This became an illustrative hope for me. As an adoptive mother I fretted when my twins were young. My son’s legs were twisted, his muscle tone floppy. […]
On a blessed August morning in 2012, I gave birth to our third child, Austin. Our prayers for a healthy and happy little boy, adorned with two unexpected dimples, were answered. He was an immediate treasure. We savored our first few months with him as in no other season in our life. Austin seemed to […]
My first-born son was a late talker. Children much younger than he were speaking in sentences much longer than his while my husband and I were getting excited when he said “Pop!” as the speech therapist brought out the bubble machine. The parenting journey for late-talking children can be tricky, since sometimes it’s autism and […]
My family delights in finding older, out-of-print books on Christian education because I delight in reading them. Written by Christian pedagogues in the 1800s or earlier, such books become a time capsule for all of us interested in passing on the best of classical Christian education. In a recent find called The Discourse of Errors […]
Repetitio Mater Studiorum. “Repetition is the mother of learning.” In our classical tradition we exalt repetition as a valuable tool for learning. But beyond prizing repetition as an aid in memorizing individual goals (Latin grammar forms, multiplication tables, Shakespeare soliloquies), a connected classical curriculum offers valuable repetition about important truths over the long course of […]
When I decided to write a second, expanded edition of Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child’s Moral Imagination, my thoughts went through many iterations of the stories I might discuss in three new chapters. I could not include all the stories that came to mind. But I found room to […]
I remember being flabbergasted twenty-five years ago when my mother-in-law, Cheryl Lowe, casually mentioned that she’d like to start a college one day. At the time—the late 90s—Memoria Press operated out of the Lowe family garage attic. Mrs. Lowe and Martin Cothran worked on their Latin and logic programs on weekdays, and Cheryl’s son, Brian […]
Is a classical education still relevant? Is it worth the time and the effort, or should our students be studying the modern world and modern languages, preparing for modern jobs? Every one of us wants to give our students the best possible education—but what is the best? The latter half of the twentieth century has […]
Prior to a discussion of poems everyone should know, it would be good to ensure that everyone knows the meaning of the word “poem.” It derives from ancient Greek and means “a thing that is made or created.” A poet is one who makes or creates a thing, and poiesis is the act that brings […]
When the call came to contribute a “listicle” to this issue of The Classical Teacher, I did not shrink from the task (despite having never heard the word before). My first thought was: “That should be easy.” It has not been. The first difficulty in compiling a list of top ten compositions stems from the […]