I started a post nearly a year ago called "My Philosophy of Education." That post is still unpublished. It turns out that articulating something as big as a philosophy of education is really hard to do. And it's dynamic. As I learn, and grow, it grows with me. Recently however, I was forced to articulate something like a philosophy of education.

While filling out an application to teach at a new school, I was asked a series of questions that forced me to write down somewhat concretely, my understanding of the purpose & practices of education. Ideas around this have been forming abstractly in my mind over the last year (or 8), but I've struggled to put them down succinctly. They all revolve around paideia, and it turns out that paideia is all-encompassing.

Also, I say it forced me to write it down "somewhat" concretely because, as you will see, some of my answers are meant to show you, rather than tell you what I think. In Classical Christian Education, we believe in the power of story. My answers are meant to help you experience my understanding poetically. Think about the quotes. Think about the song lyrics. Chew on them. Ponder them a while. Then, let's talk.

The Application


Tell us about your family

I’ve been married to Rebekah since 2012, and we have 7 children, ages 9 months to 11 years.

I grew up with one younger brother & three older half brothers. My wife grew up with three siblings. I don't know that either of us had considered family size when we got married, and probably assumed we'd have the average 2.5 children. At some point, we actually took Psalm 127:3-5 to heart and now see children as a heritage, from the Lord, and have decided to let Him determine our family size. It has been a tremendous blessing.

Our family tries to take Deuteronomy 6 & 11 to heart by discipling our kids as we lie down, rise up, and go about our day.

List any interests, hobbies, or clubs of which you are a part

My family's favorite activity is to visit the mountains and go camping & hiking. We have visited Rocky Mountain National Park 2-3 times, and the Smoky Mountains once as a family.

While we spent four and a half years in the DFW metroplex, where our first three children were born, we currently live on 9.5 acres and are raising our own chickens & pigs. I wanted our children to understand hard work, as well as where food comes from, and to not take it for granted. I also wanted them to see the gospel picture of a life being lost so that their own life can be sustained.

For a teaching audition involving one or two subjects, which cohort level and subject(s) would you select to teach and why?

8-10 year olds, Humanities & Science.

My only experience so far is teaching 3rd & 4th grade in a self-contained classroom, and in that role I found myself most comfortable with the Humanities (Literature & Bible specifically).

Growing up, my passion was for Science, but I have a healthy caution towards it today because of our culture's plunge into scientism (as called out by Lewis years ago). I am very interested in learning to teach Science classically, as Natural Philosophy.

Share about your past training, education, and experience that prepares you for this position, including any courses of study, certifications or degrees earned.

I have no teaching degree or certification. I have attended the ACCS conference in 2025 & 2026 and took two Atrium courses through CiRCE those same years: Norms & Nobility with Tonya Rozelle and Becoming a Classical Teacher with Matthew Bianco. I have also watched many courses on Classical U.

For the 2025-2026 school year, I taught in a 3rd & 4th grade classroom, and was in charge of our school's teacher training.

I would have to say that the vast majority of my training was informal, through books & podcasts. I cannot always articulate the ways each has shaped me, but I will list influences that come to mind so you can have an idea of the composite. These are ordered first by type (podcast/conference talks/video courses, then books) and second, roughly in the order I discovered them in:

  • The Consortium Podcast (first 30 episodes or so with Scott Postma & Joffre Swait from Kepler Education)
  • Everlasting Education podcast, also by Scott Postma & Joffre Swait
  • Andrew Kern (via Conference Talks by Andrew and employees of CiRCE & via Classical U videos)
  • Christopher Perrin (via Classical U videos)
  • David Goodwin (via Classical U videos, The Four podcast, Forging the American Mind, The Miseducation of America)
  • Devin O'Donnell (via Conference talks, The Four podcast)
  • Davies Owens (via Conference talks, Basecamp Live podcast)
  • Heather Lloyd (via The Four podcast)
  • Jeff Adams (via Concordis Bootcamp)
  • Bill Stutzman (via Concordis Bootcamp)
  • The Vanishing American Adult by Ben Sasse
    • It has been several years since I've read this. I know it was influential in my journey, but don't remember it well enough to know whether I would recommend it today. From memory I would summarize it as:
      • We allow adults to behave like children (living in parent's basement playing video games), but also adulterize kids (exposing them to content that they shouldn't be exposed to on the TV, internet, etc).
      • We've lost a shared canon in society, and need to work to rebuild one. The Havard Classics are mentioned, but Sasse also builds his own "five foot shelf" of books that contain knowledge that he wants to pass to the next generation, and he suggests parents do the same.
  • The Core by Leigh Bortins
      • It has been several years since I've read this. I know it was influential in my journey, but don't remember it well enough to know whether I would recommend it today. I am a big proponent of homeschool, but from what I remember of the book (and from my children's experience in Classical Conversations, which Leigh is the founder of), there is too much emphasis on the idea of the Trivium as "ages & stages," which came from an insightful observation of the developmental stages of children by Dorothy Sayers, as interpreted by Douglas Wilson, but to my understanding is not a historic application of the Trivium.
  • You Are What You Love & Desiring the Kingdom by James K.A. Smith
    • It has been several years since I've read You Are What You Love. It awakened me to the power of cultural liturgies, and the idea that if you're not intentionally shaping your children's loves (and you're own), they will be shaped passively by the culture they live in. I'm currently reading Desiring the Kingdom, which is the more academic version that came first.
  • Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis
  • Norms & Nobility by David Hicks

I'm also influenced by the following, but have not finished them yet:

This article about the Integrated Humanities Program (IHP) at the University of Kansas has also influenced my passion for classical Christian education.

Provide a brief sketch of your Christian testimony, including how you came to profess Christ as Lord and Savior.

In kindergarten, after telling a Bible story (or giving a gospel presentation), my teacher asked who all was a Christian. I believe I was the only student who didn't raise his hand, and my teacher was shocked (because I was a model student). She asked if I wanted to become a Christian, and I said yes. She took me to another room, and had me pray the "prayer of salvation."

After school, I told my mom that I had become a Christian, and she seemed to question it. My parents had me meet with the children's pastor, but I don't remember anything coming of it after that, other than me doubting whether I had actually become a Christian.

In middle school, I understood enough to know that I didn't want to go to hell when I died, so I went down at the alter call, and again prayed a prayer, and was baptized. My motivation at the time was all wrong though.

Throughout high school and early college, as I grew in my understanding, I constantly doubted my salvation. In college I worked as an assistant to a youth pastor, and I confessed to him one year at camp that I was there as a camp counselor, but didn't know if I was a Christian myself. He encouraged me by telling me all the ways he saw fruit of the Spirit in my life.

I can't point to a specific moment of salvation. For me, it was a process (and still is, viewing salvation as not solely justification, but also sanctification and, at death or Christ's return, glorification). I believe that there was some point between high school and college where my focus stopped being on salvation _from_ the fires of hell, and instead salvation _into_ Christ, and getting to serve him out of an abundance of love & thankfulness.

In college, after talking to the youth pastor I worked with, I was baptized a second time, after a genuine confession of faith and my need for a savior.

What do you believe constitutes a Biblical marriage?

One male and one female in covenant for life.

What is your position on same-sex marriage?

It is not really marriage, because marriage is an institution created by God, which he gets to define. It is completely unbiblical.

Do you affirm that life begins at conception and therefore elective abortion is killing a baby? Explain your position.

Yes, absolutely. All humans are created in the imago Dei, and creation happens at the moment of conception (fertilization).

Would you counsel Christian parents to provide a Christian education for their children (whether that is homeschool, private school, or co-op)?

Absolutely. My view is that getting education as close to the parents as possible is the ideal (Deuteronomy 6 & 11). Based on that (and understanding that different families have different needs), I see the following as the ideal ordering of choices:

  1. Homeschool (and co-op) in the classical Christian tradition
  2. Collaborative model classical Christian school
  3. Non-collaborative model classical Christian school
  4. Private (non-classical) Christian school

Under no circumstances would I suggest public school, and I might go so far as considering it sin to send children to public school, which in my view, is antithetical to raising children in the paideia of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4). That being said, I would show grace to whomever I'm talking to, and try to understand their situation, and see if I could help them in any way.

What is your understanding of Classical Christian Education?

There are so many trails we could follow here. The primary focus is the shaping of a child's paideia, a Greek word for which we have no English equivalent. Enculturation is close. Of first importance is raising children in a paideia of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4). We're also grateful for the "Great Conversation" that has been happening in the western world for the last 2,000 years, and that should be incorporated as well.

We could also discuss methods (narration, nature study, dialectical discussion, integration across "subjects", etc), and while I do believe those are important, we risk slipping into progressive education's conveyer belt mentality if that becomes our focus. We need to know the telos of education, and then choose the best methods to reach that end.

For the first several years, my understanding of CCE was "ages and stages," as observed by Dorothy Sayers and popularized, in part, by Doug Wilson (Logos School), and Classical Conversations. In the past year or two, I feel I've been going "further up, and further in," in my understanding of CCE. As I read "A Short History of Classical Christian Education's Recovery" by David Goodwin in the front of “The Liberal Arts Tradition”, I saw that the movement's progression in understanding that he described largely mapped on to my own:

  1. Trivium-focused;
  2. New focus on Great Books, Greek & Latin, scholé, and aesthetics;
  3. Focus on a Kuyperian (all encompassing) paideia, cultivating arete/virtue and rightly ordered affections (ordo amoris) with an increased focus on the power of story in shaping the soul;
  4. No longer adopting the fragmented framework of subjects common to progressive schools, but instead focused on a "holistic [study], grounded in revealed truth in the Word and the world, beginning in wonder and leading to wisdom—all governed by the 'Mistress-science', theology."

What is the purpose of education?

The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. The chief end of education is the formation & ordering of the affections (Augustine, James K.A. Smith) to that end.

Also...

The bringing up, as of a child, instruction; formation of manners. education comprehends all that series of instruction and discipline which is intended to enlighten the understanding, correct the temper, and form the manners and habits of youth, and fit them for usefulness in their future stations. To give children a good education in manners, arts and science, is important; to give them a religious education is indispensable; and an immense responsibility rests on parents and guardians who neglect these duties.
(Webster, 1828)

and

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. Whatever the soul is like, it will have to be passed on somehow, consciously or unconsciously, and that transition may be called education...What we need is to have a culture before we hand it down. In other words, it is a truth, however sad and strange, that we cannot give what we have not got, and cannot teach to other people what we do not know ourselves.

Everything comes back, therefore, to the question of what is our tradition, our religion, our philosophy...
(Chesterton, 1924)

Also, to coin a verb, it is the paideiaing of a child and paideia is all-encompassing.

What most excites you about teaching?

I used to say that motherhood is under-appreciated, because mother's have the unique privilege of bringing more of God's image (not to mention immortal souls) into the world. What has more eternal impact than that?!

While I still believe that to be true, I think the greater privilege & responsibility is the raising of those immortal souls in the paideia of the Lord. It excites me to be able to take part in that.

What is a Christian world and life view, and how would you communicate to a student the idea of "all of Christ for all of life"?

There is a worship song by Psallos called "The Lord is a Mighty King." It begins:

The Lord is a mighty king.
The king of all nations.
The maker of everything.
Let his handiwork say:
I am his, I am his.
Creator owns creation.
See what power there is in the sovereign who reigns.

Also, see "All People That on Earth Do Dwell" (“Old Hundredth,” based on Psalm 100):

All people that on Earth do dwell,
Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice;
Him serve with fear, his praise forthtell;
Come ye before him and rejoice.

The Lord, ye know, is God indeed;
Without our aid he did us make;
We are his folk, he doth us feed,
And for his sheep he doth us take.

O enter then his gates with praise,
Approach with joy his courts unto;
Praise, laud, and bless his name always,
For it is seemly so to do.

For why? The Lord our God is good;
His mercy is forever sure;
His truth at all times firmly stood,
And shall from age to age endure.
Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
(Philippians 2:9-11)
There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human life of which Christ, Who is Sovereign of all, does not cry: "Mine!"
(Abraham Kuyper, 1880)
Our aim is to open the Bible, study it with the fear of God and serious effort, believe everything we find there, and then aim to see every area of our lives conformed to it by grace and through faith. [We want] to know how to obey all that Christ commands in his Word. ...the Scriptures [apply] to every part of what it means to be human—[our] emotional, mental, spiritual, social, political, relational, and physical self.
(Paraphrase from a Statement of Faith at a classical Christian school. I'm omitting the reference because the church associated with it seems to have gone off the rails.)

When communicating "all of Christ, for all of life" to students, start young and start poetically (memorizing the songs & verse above are a good start) to hide the truths in their heart.

As students get older, we can talk about both how God (as creator) has a full claim to our lives, but also about Christ's humiliation: humbling himself & becoming part of his own creation, living a perfect life, and giving himself over to death for our sins; paying the price that we could not pay by dying the death that we deserved. It should be our joy to serve him out of an abundance of thankfulness.

Who was your most influential teacher and why?

That's is a tough question. I can think of 7-8 influential teachers between elementary & high school, and they fall into roughly two categories:

  1. Those who encouraged me in my abilities.
  2. Those who had a passion & excitement for their subjects.

What is the last book you read? What is one of your favorite books, and why?

I am currently working through Forging the American Mind by David Goodwin. One of my favorite books is You Are What You Love by James K.A. Smith. It opened my eyes to the power of liturgies, even those that are unintentional.

Also, Narnia. There is always more to mine from the depths of Lewis.