by Brian G. Daigle

Right now we are all at home more, and that means our bad habits, and our good habits, are in sharp relief. Do our children obey our voice? Do our children get along? Do we like our children? Do they like us? Are we a balanced family of activity and quiet? Are we patient parents? All of this is being answered experientially for all of our families right now. And one of the areas it is seen most clearly is how messy our living space has gotten and how good we are at getting that in order throughout the day or at planned intervals of the day. How well are our children learning to clean, keep things clean, and how well are we at making orderliness and cleanliness an enjoyable thing for our family? Here are ten principles to do better what all of us right now are having to do.

1. Start with order. When things are unclean, it all begins with disorder; things are not in order. This is why parents must begin with order. Instruct the children to sit on the couch, orderly, and gain their attention. Turn off the television. Turn off the music. Stand before them. Put your phone away. And communicate clearly the path ahead. As they sit, they should be QRS: Quiet, Reverent, and Still.  
2. Have a goal. “Get everything clean!” is not a goal, and neither is, “This place needs to not look like a crap hole!” even if it is your desire. You goal should be SPAM (specific, practical, achievable, and measurable). Your goal should be to get this room cleaned and back in order. If you want the living room cleaned up, make a quick inventory of what’s out of place, categorize that, and then have a plan on how to communicate that. Have a goal for what getting things clean means. How clean? Big stuff? Little stuff? If your goal seems overwhelming, then break it into three or four smaller goals. In accomplishing those smaller goals, they will accomplish the main goal.
3. Be concrete. Give clear and concrete directions. This does not mean tell them everything that has to be done, micromanaging and prescribing their work. This means if you want their room clean, you realize that means three things: clothes, toys, and books. They need to put all their clothes properly away, and they need to come get you when that is done. Then, check it. If finished, next is toys. All toys and all clothes have a home. Put all toys in their home. Done? They can come get you. Then, books. Books have a home. All books have a home. Put each book in its place. When that is done, their room is clean. If you want to go beyond that then, great. Saying “Get everything picked up,” is overwhelming for a concrete thinker, like a child. And so you must give clear and concrete and attainable directions. You could even give them three categories and let them choose the order to clean those.
4. Have helpful phrases. “Everything has a home,” and “Work diligently,” and “Be joyful workers,” and “Focus on the task at hand,” are all phrases you will hear in our home when we have our children focus on organizing and cleaning. “Do your job,” is another when we find one has drifted over to another room to help or boss or distract a sibling. Have helpful phrases, use them, and expect quick and joyful obedience in them.
5. Clean with them. This does not mean clean for them. It means clean with them, model what you want from them. If you are on the couch on your phone, or if you are reading a book, or if you are walking around fussing at everything, that energy and effort and direction will be followed. More is caught then taught, so have them catch “good cleaning habits” by showing it to them. My children work so much more efficiently and much better when I help them pick up the blocks as opposed to me simply directing them to do it. I do not lead in picking up the blocks, and I will not continue picking them up if they stop or get distracted, but I will help them with their work.
6. Praise them as they go about their work. Children need to know and hear they are going in the right direction. Don’t let the distracted and disobedient child keep you from giving praise to the one following directions. Encourage them in the moment by a simple, “You’re doing well. Keep it up,” or “Thank you for working diligently, “ or “You’re doing a great job,” or “You’re getting so close to being finished!”
7. Turn on music. Make it an enjoyable time by turning on music. I can remember my mom playing music almost every Saturday when she was cleaning and asking us to clean. That music made it much more enjoyable, almost as a dance. It lifted the mood and even allowed fun moments of dancing or singing amidst the cleaning.
8. Close with order. When everyone is done, have them reconvene back where you started, back where you gave directions. Sit them back down and give final words on how they did, how well that went, what to improve upon, and expectations moving forward. Don’t fuss. Don’t lecture. The battle is over and now is a time to encourage and teach the troops. Turn the music down or off. Sing with them. Pray with them. Read a book. Having some fun and creative closing ceremonies to close cleaning time. Remind them of #8 and #9 below if you must.     
9. Make some basic rules for keep things orderly. Perhaps they may not move furniture the rest of the day to make a fort. Perhaps “When you use something, you must put it back, or pay the Pater Pollution Tax,” or “There are three things that should never be left on the ground: ABCD! Art and Books and Clothes and Dishes!” This means that their art—musical instruments or coloring books or letters or crayons or blocks or puzzles—should never be left on the ground. If they are left on the ground, they will pay the Pater Pollution Tax. The same goes for books, clothes, or dishes.
10. Get in a rhythm of orderliness. In our home, we do not start another big thing, even lunch or going outside or a movie, until the thing we were just doing is put back in order. This provides incentive to the children to get to work so we can move to the next thing they want to do. This also allows us to keep things clean as we go throughout the day and not have it all an overwhelming wreck at once. You could make a simple rule like that, or you could make certain times of the day cleaning times. When 11PM hits, ring the bell. Have everyone sit down, and give directions. Do it again at 5PM. Do it again before bath time, which is before dinner. If you don’t like a bell, get a French horn, a harmonica, a pleasant sound, something other than the shrill whine of a mom or dad griping about how it’s time to clean up this crap hole.

 
(I’d like to end this essay as I’ve never ended an essay, with the word ‘crap hole.’ Copyright pending.) 

There are times in a family when chaos or crisis hits. These can be big times or small times. I can remember being at the grocery store once with my family, and there was a particularly concerning situation arise in the parking lot. I was loading the groceries, and suddenly we needed to switch to safe mode. I instructed everyone to get in the van and lock the doors. I would finish putting up the groceries, put up the basket, and come back to the car. Imagine if, in that moment, my children all decided they had other jobs to do, and they didn’t want to do what I was asking or needing them to do. Emery had a sudden and special burden for the carts that were left in the parking lot. Charlotte decided to grab a plastic toy, jump on top of the van and help defend the family. Benjamin chose to grab my cell phone, call a few friends and complain loudly about how I was handling the situation. In that moment, everyone had a job to do, and to try and do someone else’s job, or to try and do a job that wasn’t at all helpful for the moment, would have caused more chaos, more difficulty. It would have brought on a host of other problems. This is why both practically and philosophically, on any given day in our home, we will say to our children, "What's your job? Do your job, and then let's discuss others." 
       Each of us in this Covid-19 crisis has a job to do. Educators. Politicians. Mothers. Children. Engineers. Clergy. Artists. Journalists. Doctors. Nurses. Bankers. Sanitation workers. Chefs. Lawyers. And it’s not our job to try and do someone else’s job right now. My friend Ed Lang, in his own update to his school, recently said, “There is no situation so bad that you can’t make it worse.” This is precisely correct. There is no situation so bad that it couldn’t get worse, especially if we decided to do things in that situation that are not ours to do.  
       I suspect one of the things that will irritate and inflame the moment more than anything is the apparent need for people to do someone else’s job. Grandmothers become overnight journalists on social media. Engineers become political commentators and economists. Teachers become (worse) grumblers. Clergy try and become political reformers. Students become monks.  
       This is the kind of moment in our history when the house is in particular crisis mode, and while you may not like or agree with what the leaders of the house are doing, they are doing it, and they are the leaders, and so long as it is not obviously and clearly unethical, then each of us ought to do our jobs, we ought to do the work God has called us to do in order to maintain good health and order amidst a disorderly and unhealthy time. Do not begrudge the moment that you cannot do enough because you are not a healthcare worker. The moment does not call for everyone to be a healthcare worker. The moment calls for everyone to love their neighbor, in the way God has called you to love them. Melchizedek didn't become a soldier. For some, loving your neighbor will be going to your banking job and pushing out those small business loans. For others it will be sitting in front of a computer with a class full of third graders and reciting a poem.
       If you are a revolutionary and a critic by nature, calm your revolt and don’t look for little things to critique, even if you are right, and especially if they are not in your realm of work. Stay in your realm of work and do that well. Put your energy there.  
       If are a pacifist or tend to clam up in times like these, realize you are needed somewhere and by someone. What work has God given you to do outside of a crisis? Go there, and see how you can be of assistance during a crisis.
       Lincoln said that a house divided cannot stand. It is also true that a house disordered cannot stand. Don’t despise your father or mother during a time of crisis, even if you don’t really like how well they’re handling it. Do your job, and be ready to provide a clear and appropriate evaluation later, even if that includes evaluating by your wallet and vote.  
       I am an educator, so I offer this brief word of advice to each of us, and now I go off to read, write, answer emails, and teach online classes. 

by Brian G. Daigle

 
Healthcare professionals and common sense tell us that health is a comprehensive issue. Mental health relates to physical health. Spiritual health influences emotional health. Intellectual health cannot avoid its relationship with familial health. The health of a person pertains to the whole person, even if we can make distinctions and differences as to what needs attention. The coming weeks will be an opportunity for parents to get creative in maturing the health of their families and the individuals therein. Families that dig their heels in, who fuss about the opportunity, who complain about the circumstances, who do not find joy in the suffering, will indeed spread a virus among the family’s members, a virus worse than what any child could physically contract. The family who sees this as an opportunity for growth, for maturation, for creative parenting, will reap the benefits for years to come. Here are a few suggestions on how to keep a home-bound healthy family.
 
10. Keep a good routine. This does not mean running a make-shift military academy. This simply means not being aimless, not allowing long stretches of idleness, keeping good structure, in which we know humans, and especially children, flourish. Create a family calendar. Be balanced about it. Plan time blocks of various activities. Plan down time. Plan time outdoors. Plan movie times. Keeping a good routine is the first step to balanced activities and balanced emotions in the home. Going along with keeping a good routine is setting aside physical space for certain reasons. It is likely mom and dad may have to work from home, and so there should be space set aside for that to happen, space the children know is reserved for that activity. Set up a temporary curtain, set up a folding table in the corner of a room, make a temporary work space that can allow activities in the home to be separated, along with the routine of those activities. 

9. Go for a family walk. This is a simple and enjoyable way to get outside, in the sun, with a bit of exercise. This is important for every member of the family, especially children, whose energy must find a purposeful and periodic outlet. This also gives movement to a neighborhood and allows those in the neighborhood to see the continuation of life. As you go on the walk, set some basic rules: 1) we keep a healthy distance from neighbors, 2) we do not run our hands on large surfaces, 3) play a game or enjoy nature, 4) when we return, wash our hands well. 

8. Clean and organize some things you’ve neglected. When the Lord confines us to something, it is an opportunity to focus on something we’ve neglected, to look around our physical space and consider something we’ve left “unloved.” Humans must work within confines, always, and being more confined now does not mean we cannot still ask ourselves, “What around me needs to be better cared for?” This time of focus will show there are ares which need our attention, both physical and non-physical. 

7. Pray and sing. Our homes and neighborhoods, though now more isolated, should have all the treasures of humanity therein. And this is most especially true for those human activities which lift the spirit, care for the soul, and further bind the members of the family in basic friendship. If your family is looking for something to guide its time in family prayer, you can find a helpful guide here. As for singing, play music around the house. Learn the doxology. Search Youtube or other platforms for recordings to sing along with. 

6. Don’t be a boring person. Boring people get bored. N.D. Wilson once said that “If you are bored it’s because you are boring.” Make a house rule that no one can say “I’m bored!” Have a list of things for “bored children” to do, and you may quickly find they aren’t all that bored: clean the baseboards, clean out the refrigerator, draw a picture for a friend, dust the fans, memorize a passage of literature, do ten push-ups and ten sit-ups every time you say you are bored, sing a song a capella in front of the whole family, write a one-man-play to perform in front of the family. This can be your “Remedies to Boredom” list, drawn from a cup at random. 

​5. Learn to have good conversations. Conversations are not just a lost art, but a lost human activity, a lost political necessity, a lost fertilizer for the soul. Set aside time each day to learn to have good conversations with your family, to teach them to not interrupt, to listen, to be still and focus on a single train of thought, to visit and share stories of your childhood. The “down time” afforded us in the coming weeks can truly be a time to rest, and they can also be a time to recover many of those basic human activities we often neglect in our bustling modern lives.

4. Serve your neighbor. Love will have to become more localized in this time, more immediate. While we sometimes think we are loving our neighbor by flurrying throughout the city and going serve our neighbors way over there, we now have to serve the neighbor that is on the roadside, or next door, or in the room right next to us. I encourage each healthy man in the family to put a note in each mailbox on their street. In that note, let your neighbors know you are there if they need help. Be prepared to go pick up groceries for an elderly neighbor, or simply call them and visit, or check on them if they are feeling ill. Leave the family at home, and go out and help, in your health and strength. Keep healthy boundaries, of course, and do what you can to stay well, but go serve. Your family will see you do this, and it will stimulate not just ongoing health in them, it may even foster virtues in your children you otherwise may have missed. Bring the family to do some landscaping for a neighbor. Let the neighbor know you will not be coming in the home or getting close to them, only coming over to beautify their yard. Perhaps the service some of us will be required to provide will be even more sacrificial than these suggestions, and for that we ought to be ready. 

3. Limit screen time. It will be a temptation of many to ramp up screen time, to put the raucous children in front of a movie so they stay out of our hair and off of each other’s nerves. But this will make for an unhealthy family, and an unhealthy child, even if there feels to be short-term reprieve. Limit screen time to a small portion per day, or isolate it to only certain days of the week. In our home, Friday and Saturday are movie days. Our children can choose from a group of movies we allow. And we allow them to watch one or two movies that day, depending on what else we have going on, if they are sick, etc. Other than that, the television is off. They can play games, sing, read, go outside, build, create, argue with each other and learn from it, bug us so we can grow as parents, make a mess they will have to learn to clean up, etc. Limiting screen time also goes for adults. Get off social media. Stop reading your emails. Stop scrolling the endless hole of the internet. Put the screen down and attend to your family. Be creative. Don’t be boring. 

2. Be good soil. Your children are seeds, and your home has always been the soil. You may now realize that more than ever. Be purposeful in creating the soil your children need to be great adults. "[A child's] character is forming under a principle, not of choice, but of nurture. The spirit of the house is breathed into his nature, day by day. The anger and gentleness, the fretfulness and patience - the appetites, passions, and manners - all the variant moods of feeling exhibited around him, pass into him as impressions, and become seeds of character in him; not because the parents will, but because it must be so, whether they will or not. They propagate their own evil in the child, not by design, but under a law of moral infection...The spirit of the house is in the members of the children by nurture, not by teaching, not by any attempt to communicate the same, but because it is the air the children breathe...Understand that it is the family spirit, the organic life of the house, the silent power of a domestic godliness, working as it does, unconsciously and with sovereign effect - this it is which forms your children to God." (Christian Nurture by Horace Bushnell)  
 
1. Be who you want your children to be. If you are grumpy, and bored, and anxious, and annoyed, and short-tempered, and ungrateful, and fussy with your child or spouse, or depressed, or idle, your children will be the same. However, if are thoughtful, content, creative, patient, forgiving, purposeful, and pleasant, you can expect your children will mirror that. When they do not mirror you in that, or at least when that one child does not, you will be in a healthy place personally to respond and parent properly.   
 
Unless the reader gets confused by the title, it must be stated that there is no healthy family without a home. That is, the healthy family is always, in a sense, home-bound. However, I have refrained here from the important argument to prove that the family is, in its essence, home-bound and that the modern family would do well to recover that tether. I have also refrained here from too many lengthy and important quotes, from speaking of the home as Homer did, as Augustine did, as Chesterton did. I have refrained from that so that this post could put our feet on the ground, where we will have to be the next few months. But it ought to be stated that what those men said of the home, and the centrality of the home for all humanity, will be built into our children if the above counsel is heeded, and the modern man may once again realize that there is no such thing as a healthy family without a healthy home. In all this, the aim is simple: treat even dark providence, unexpected turns in our lives, as gifts from God, opportunities to teach our children the great privilege of being fully human. The world has given us a crowned virus; let us fashion the time to give our children crowns of righteousness. 

 
As K-12 schools make plans to inevitably move their classes online in the coming weeks, below are some things admin, parents, and teachers should consider:
 
What to teach?
School admin should cut approximately a third of its classes, minimize another third, and keep a strong pace with the most important third. The first third should be those courses which can either be combined with another or altogether cut. The second third should slow its pace and expect to do less, while still offering development and maturity in those courses. The final third should be courses, like reading and mathematics, that must stay strong and sharp.
 
How to teach it?

• A reliable and simple online platform should be utilized (Google Hangouts, Zoom, Teachable, FreeConferenceCall, etc.) to provide online classes.  
• Classes should be staggered to account for limited home computers. If siblings all have classes at the same time, the family will likely not have enough computers for each student.
• Video lectures will come in very handy at this time. This is also another way of avoiding scheduling conflict. Teachers should upload lectures as often as possible, for students to watch as they are able, or watch multiple times, or watch with parents so parents can learn how to help their student. 
• Students will need to be provided further instruction and tips on how to become independent learners: reading a passage or chapter twice, learning how to ask good questions of the text, choosing a wise and good place to study or watch lectures in the house, researching further aid, etc.
• Teachers will need to improve in their ability to provide strong, clear, and efficient academic lectures, according to their subject and their students’ frames. I will be providing some helpful “lessons on lectures” in the coming weeks, giving examples and principles in how to provide good lectures and avoid bad lectures.  
• Teachers can set up small discussion groups, or have students work together via phone or small online groups, to complete assignments, continue to build peer relationships, and work independently from the instructor.
• Teachers can pair students together, in a kind of "Academic Ally" partnership, to hold one another accountable during this peculiar time, to ensure pace is kept as well as greater understanding pursued in each course. 
• Utilize online platforms which already have material uploaded: Youtube is the most apparent one.
• Classical Christian schools should do all they can to keep their classical Christian distinctions during this time.    
• Teachers should schedule a meeting once a week or once every two weeks with parents, or upload additional lectures just for parents, to assist further in the execution of the curriculum at home. 

 
What should parents do?

• Parents will need to be most involved in creating a healthy and steady home environment and schedule. Regarding academic success, this will be the most important role of parents in the coming months. Families will be “stuck together” at home, and so there will need to be a healthy variation of activity, structure, leisure, and social stimulation. Parents should keep a clear and consistent family schedule so classes are not missed.
• Parents will need to be more closely involved in the execution and understanding of the material, ensuring the student is reaching out to the instructor as needed and the parent is offering some further instruction at home as needed.
• Parents should plan healthy amounts of outside time, where children can play in the backyard, perhaps isolated and within their own family. 
• Parents should plan game nights, popcorn nights, and creative ways to continue to foster family bonds, friendship, and virtue in the home. 
• Parents should sing with and pray with their children, taking this opportunity to mature the whole family in disciplines perhaps they have neglected. 

 
How much more creative can we get?
The next few months will provide wonderful opportunities to be educational entrepreneurs once more, to have our assumptions about education questioned, and to see how much we can do with less than we thought. This means there will be some creative ideas come forth on how best to form and education students within these constraints.
 
The Classical College will be starting up anew its classical read-along so that Sequitur’s families and students can join together in a communal activity of hearing great literature read aloud, something we cannot do enough of. This will be open to all families and students around the United States. This will provide the parents a break and also be a leisurely learning activity to continue a student’s academic development. It is also a free and enjoyable way to participate in the wider network of classical education. We will likely divide this by age groups.

Similarly, The Classical College and Sequitur are equipped to provide homeschool families with coaching, curriculum, and resources. For more information, email us at BDaigle@ClassicalCollege.com 
 
What else are we missing?
As a final note, it is clear that students will be on computers a lot during this season of their education. Both schools and parents should boost their parental controls and limit computer time severely, outside of academic work. Schools and parents should buttress their policy on online ethics and behavior to ensure students are protected from all the many things that may grab their attention while online. If necessary, families should create a single and public space in the house where students can use the computer in front of parents but still have the quiet they need to learn.
 
As I have more to provide here, either from my own experience or hearing from others, I’ll add more. 

by Brian G. Daigle

It is a noble task to determine as parents those virtues which we ought to be instilling in our children day in and day out. It is even more difficult to decide the best and most efficient way to do that. From manners to technology, from school work to chores, from intelligence to virtue, there are often many areas all at once in which we try to mature our children. But there are some activities, some virtues, so pervasive, so far-reaching, that we must focus our attention there, we must get those right if we expect to get the others right. Far too often parents and educators chop at the leaves, work to fix symptoms, rather than cutting at the roots, working to fix the illness. If we fix the root, the fruit will change; if we cure the illness, the symptoms will subside. Work ethic issues are root issues. Here are five ways to teach your kids to love work.
 
5. Give them work to do. Before our children can love to work, they have to be given some of it. We must, as parents and educators, not shy away from the important task we have of giving our children the gift of work, and we must see it that way. Good work is a gift, and good work given to our children is a gift we bestow upon them. Indeed, it is a burden, but all good gifts are burdens. They are weighty. They require effort.  They make us uncomfortable. They cause us to be conformed to something outside of ourselves. If we want our children to love work, we must be purposeful in giving it to them, at every age and in every area of their lives. A two-year old can grow in their work ethic, and they have work to do. A five year old can grow in their work ethic, and they have work to do. This is true all the way up, and we must identify and be ready to hand the plow to the children if we intend for them to love plowing.
 
4. Give them task-oriented tasks. A task-oriented task is one where the completion of work is not based on time but amount and quality of work. One contrast to this would be “time-oriented tasks.” A time oriented task is where you tell a child to do something for a certain amount of time, and when that time is up, their work is complete. A task-oriented task is where a child’s work is complete when they’ve complete their work with a certain quantity and quality. For example, it is better to ask a child to make sure all their toys are neatly on their shelf, rather than instruct them they have ten minutes to pick up their room. In an interview with Plough Publishing, Joel Salatin says, “Never say ‘go pick beans for thirty minutes,’ because there is no incentive to do it efficiently, to do it well, just you’ve got to pick beans for thirty minutes. But if you say ‘pick from here to here,’ so you give a task instead of time, ‘here to here, and when you get done I’ll read you a story, we’ll go for a walk,’ whatever the reward is, when it’s task oriented, then you teach efficiency and faithfulness.”
 
3. Teach that sloppiness and laziness have consequences. If we give our children work, and they do it sloppily or lazily, it is important they learn that these have consequences. Sometimes these consequences could be imposed by the parent: “The kitchen was not properly cleaned as we asked, and so you may not go to the movies tomorrow with your friends.” Sometimes these consequences can be natural consequences, like a young man not washing his athletic clothes and now having to wear smelly and dirty athletic clothes to practice. One of my favorite childhood stories to tell my students, and my children, is the time when my mother (a single mom with four children), took the kind and rare step of folding my clothes for me. My room was in the basement, and she had placed three stacks of clothes at the bottom of the stairs, for me to bring to my room and put in my drawers. Day after day passed. I would pick out the clothes I wanted from the pile and keep the pile at the bottom of the stairs. Day after day she reminded me to bring the clothes to my room. About the fourth day I returned from school in the afternoon. I needed a shirt. I went to the pile. The piles were gone. “No…she put them up for me?!” I said with a surprised, but hesitant, grin. I went to my drawers. The clothes were not there. I walked upstairs from the basement, into the kitchen. My mom was making spaghetti. She was stirring and looking pleasant. “Hey, mom, do you know where those clothes went? I’m looking for a shirt.” She looked up from the pot. She grinned. She was at peace. She was too much at peace. “You should go look in the back yard.” I walked to the back porch, which overlooked a steep and wooded back yard. I opened the door and walked on the deck. There were my clothes, strewn through the woods, in trees, on limbs, tossed. I turned around, shocked and somewhat impressed. My mom was standing behind me in the doorway. “Brian,” she began, with a nurturing voice, “it was just so freeing to pick up that pile of clothes and toss them off the porch. Next time you should put your clothes away. You can go get them if you'd like.” I laughed, because the poetic justice was loud. And my mom’s loving intention and warmth coated the whole thing. She wasn’t angry. She wasn’t crazy. She didn’t lose her mind. I was seventeen at the time, and that was exactly what needed to happen to a young man. Our children must know and feel—in their school work, their chores, at church, with their cars—that a sloppy and lazy laborer will know and feel the consequences of a poor work ethic. And we should be most loving in ensuring they learn those lessons early and often in their childhood. When they learn that bad work is not pleasant, they will learn to love its opposite: good work. They will then delight in good work, for with it comes blessings, and they will be happy to have avoided the curses, however small, of being a bad laborer.
 
2. Reward work ethic virtues, even when they are not working. One piece of advice I have heard time and again in recent years is that when you compliment your child in something, they will want to do or be more of whatever that compliment was. If you compliment and reward your child (even with a laugh or slight word of affirmation) for being pretty or smart or witty, they will seek ways to look pretty or smart or witty. And if you compliment your child for persevering, being thoughtful, efficient, focused, diligent, they will likewise seek to be that more often, to earn your approval and affirmation. Affirm those things in your child that correspond with being a virtuous laborer. This must happen when they work and when they are not working. If your child colors a picture, and they show you, instead of saying “That is such a pretty picture!” it is better to say, “Well done staying focused and choosing good colors!” When your child cleans up their toys in the living room and comes to let you know, instead of saying “Okay, it’s done, great job getting it all done,” you should rather say, “I appreciate how faithfully you worked.” When a child decides to not just pick up their plate from the table but also take their sibling’s plate and mom and dad’s plates, then don’t say, “Thank you for picking up the plates and helping clean,” rather say, “Thank you for being considerate of others and working hard at a task without us asking you.” When your child struggles well through their schoolwork or a difficult math problem, say to them, “I am proud of you for persevering and diligently working to be a good problem solver.” These kinds of virtues will stick in their imagination, and it will create a mosaic for what a hard working person looks like.
 
1. You must love work. The golden rule of raising a child is that children learn by imitation. Period. Children learn first and most fully by imitation, in everything: language, facial expressions, emotions, tone, posture, intellectual insight, piety, technology, art, virtue. If we want our children to love work, we must be people who exude in our homes and churches and city and schools a love for work. We cannot malign our country and expect our children to be patriots. We cannot blaspheme our God and expect our children to be pious. Likewise, we cannot be bitter about our work or grumble about our work or be sloppy in our work and expect to raise diligent, joyful, and creative laborers. Joel Salatin is again helpful, “First of all, you have to like to work. And when the children are around mom and dad who are complaining like, ‘Oh, I’ve got to go out and, you know, sweep the porch' or whatever, when we’re complaining about our chores and our jobs, when we have no sacredness to the things that we do, well the kids are going to pick that up. So part of that for us as parents, we have to appreciate that all that we’re doing, from cleaning the toilet to planting the tomato plant; that is all sacred. It is sacred stuff. It is an extension of God’s participatory hand in life.”
 
There is a handful of things that are so central to our children’s humanity that we must take the utmost care in ensuring those core human virtues are as healthy as we as parents can make them, by God’s faithfulness and own love toward our children. Raising our children to have a biblical and contagious work ethic is one of those. Though we were not wealthy and had plenty of difficulties to endure in our family, my parents gave me a lot of things, a lot of good and immaterial things. One of those, for which I will ever be grateful, is that they were and are hard workers.

I returned home this afternoon from sitting through the initial court hearing on the Mayor's lawsuit against the St. George Incorporation. When I got home, I explained to Emery (6yo) and Charlotte (4yo) that I was watching a judge and some lawyers discuss an important topic. They wanted to know more. And so I explained a bit more, but still in grown-up language about a new city, and those who opposed, and those who wanted it, etc. Still, the girls wanted more. They wanted to understand. And so I decided to tell them in a story. Here is the story I told them:
​

by Brian G. Daigle

“Ed Choice” is one of those words that means a lot in certain circles. In others, it is hardly known. In brief, “ed choice” (educational choice) is the familial ability, legal latitude, and available opportunities for parents to choose how to educate their child. Ed choice is the fruit of a free society, one which has a healthy view of subsidiary roles, government reach, parental responsibility, and the entrepreneurial spirit. Politically, ed choice is a healthy thing to see. Some families can homeschool. Private and religious schools can start and thrive. Private corporations can enter the education sphere and offer technical training. Government schools are available. Generally, America is a nation of educational choice. The ability and opportunity for a family to choose may have different restraints in various states and in various locales, for a variety of reasons, but the principle holds that America is still a nation that values freedom, even when it comes to education.
        One expression of “ed choice” in Louisiana, and in other states, has been the influx of charter schools over the past two decades. In the 50s and 60s, there was a push toward private and religious schools. In the 80s there was a substantial growth in home education. In the first decade of this millennium, the new kids on the block are charter schools and magnet schools. This does not mean the others have gone away. Quite the contrary: more families than ever before in Louisiana are homeschooling, more private and religious schools are being created, and more online opportunities are available. However, the newest and shiniest gem in the ed choice chest is charter education. Charter schools use a few things to attract parents:

• Free tuition
• Conventional class schedule
• The context of failing government schools
• A promise of high-quality education
• A commitment to character formation 
• Student-centered learning plans

 
There is much to be said for each of these, but I’d like to briefly address each point from the least important to the most. And I’d like to address them, not as they relate to political freedom but to the religious and doctrinal restraints placed upon Christian parents, or perhaps we could say the freedom and requirement Christian parents have in Christ to educate our children Christianly.
 
Conventional Class Schedule
While some charter schools operate on a hybrid model, the vast majority utilize the conventional class schedule we have come to know as “school.” This is five days a week, seven hours a day. The majority of that time is spent indoors, in classrooms, now inundated with technology. But a quick survey of child development, human intelligence, civic health, and educational history prove that this model was birthed in an era which put little thought into the civic, intellectual, familial, and spiritual formation of a child. Because the “conventional model” is “school as we know it,” and because the vast majority of parents and even educators have neglected to study the history and philosophy of education, especially in the west, and especially in Christian circles, new schools appear overnight and don’t take the time or effort in getting creative with class structure and a weekly schedule. A model is assumed, and pieces are plugged in. Parents and educators alike do not bother asking whether we can do things better. The conventional class schedule fails to account for the importance of familial, ecclesial, and civic involvement in our child’s formation. On this, charter schools fail. 
 
Free Tuition
One of the tag lines on nearly every charter school website is “tuition-free.” While this is true regarding distribution of money directly from parent to institution, it is not true in essence. I often say that there is no such thing as a free education, and the only free education is the one not worth having. While charter schools do not operate on parent-given tuition, they do operate on tuition. The source of that tuition is government-funding. This means tax dollars. And that means compulsory giving to education which someone may not agree with or like or even utilize. South Baton Rouge Charter Academy (SOBA) takes over $7.3M in “state capitation/student” for the 2019/2020 school year. Their revenue total is $8.1M.  BASIS Baton Rouge is similar. You can see SOBA’s full budget here.
        How do charter schools get state funding? Charter schools must be approved by state-level BESE and parish school boards, and their funding must happen within a state-wide context of legal allowance, voucher redistribution, academic oversight, state standard equivalence, modern assessments and standards, and teacher union power-plays. In essence, charter schools are “free-tuition” because they are government-run schools, even if that infrastructure has slight modifications and has greater initial influence by nation-wide “education companies” operating outside our state. This means that with “free-tuition” comes all the government oversight that has caused conventional “public schools” to fail. As was once said, if you want to deny the world’s trappings, you must first deny the world’s perks, and the shiniest of those perks, in a capitalistic society, always has a dollar sign before it.
       A charter school may be “free” to a family, but it is not “free” for a city, for a state, for tax payers, for social, cultural, and theological capital. There is a high cost to allowing and running charter schools, and Christians must think beyond their own family budget when making educational decisions. The “free tuition” fails to account for the real cost of ongoing government-education. On this, charter schools fail. 
 
The Context of Failing Government Schools
Charter schools thrive where conventional government-run school districts do not. The reason charter schools have overtaken the government-run education in New Orleans is because the schools were dead, and there was no better answer after Katrina. It is the same in Baton Rouge. There is an influx of charter school applications to Baton Rouge because public schools are failing. St. George is still vigorously pursuing incorporation, even through litigation, because government-run schools in the parish are failing.
       Charter schools, like most ed choice institutions, leverage failing public schools in order to gain their support and base. They tout better facilities, more qualified instructors, the latest educational methods and research, better order, out-of-state and innovative ideas, and higher output, all against a bleak and blistering backdrop of failing government schools. Parents then, out of necessity at times, must move to the charter academy in order to provide their children with what they think is the best education. But, as we will see in a moment, a face lift doesn’t change the essence of a person; a distinction without an essential difference puts us on the same track for educational failure. Imagine a city with thriving, affordable, and world-class academics, far beyond what most charter schools offer, and there would be a much smaller demand for charter schools, if there is a demand at all. As nice of an illusion as it may appear, the context of failing government schools does not mask the real theological, academic, and philosophical problems still within charter education. On this, charter schools fail. 
 
A Commitment to Character Formation
One of the many expressed and obvious failures of contemporary public education is a hyper-focus on college and career readiness (though it doesn’t even do this well). It fails at teaching the whole person, teaching the soul as well as the mind, preparing to be a good human before we try to prepare for standardized testing. But if a school sought to remedy this, to teach the whole child and not just a narrow sliver of them, by what standard does a non-Christian, non-religious institution create lessons and opportunities and requirements for something like character formation? By what ethical standard does an educational institution—which does not teach logic, rhetoric, ethics, politics, philosophy, and religion—come to teach “character formation?” Christian Smith, sociologist and researcher, once recognized that the fastest growing and strongest sentiment among American Christians is something he calls “moralistic therapeutic deism” (MTD). MTD says something like this, “I’m supposed to be good, because God exists, and God is there to help me feel better.” Smith recognizes that this is a strong sentiment among American Youth in the Church, and he also recognizes that it’s prevalent among our adults. But by what standard is a non-religious institution teaching character formation?
       As it turns out, the standard is lower than MTD. It is lower than even the Ancient Greek philosophers would have recognized. The standard for character formation in charter schools is something we may call secular civic humanism. This says that man is the center of the world, we must try to get along, and we must do so without reference to divine authority. But perhaps this is being too generous. “Secular civic humanism” assumes that these schools are not placing the student, the individual child, at the center of the education. But that is precisely the pitch, as will be explained in the next section. So, the real moral baseline for character formation at charter schools is actually secular tolerant individualism: the child then learns “I am the center of the world, we must avoid offense, and we must do so without reference to divine authority.” There is no compatibility between this and the Christian worldview. There is no consistency between raising a child in this ethical framework and also expecting him to love and know the cross of Christ. As the cross teaches us, there is no horizontal formation without vertical formation: all character formation apart from God ends in moral confusion. The character formation in charter schools lacks substance, a lasting standard. On this, charter schools fail. 
 
Student-Centered Learning Plans
Another prized feature of charter schools is student-centered learning. This is no different than what is happening in every modern educational movement of the past fifty years. One recent promo video of one of the largest charter companies in the US ended with “It’s about the children!” and the preceding shots highlighted how student-centered their schools are. However, this is antithetical to a Christian worldview, a Christian philosophy of education, and even a good philosophy of education. The school which says “It’s about the children,” is the least equipped to teach children. At its core, education cannot be about the children, because education must always be about something much larger than the child, longer lasting than the child, something to which not just the child but all of society must conform. The school which says “It’s about the children” will not only fail at fulfilling that promise, they will fail at truly educating the child. Add to this the apparent value and present confusion charter schools have about critical thinking, and we see that a Christian child who enters a charter school will be entering a land that is incompatible with Christian doctrine and practice, and they will be deeply formed in and by that land.
       If Christ is not the center of the universe, than the individual is. The individual controls their destiny. The individual determines something’s value and worth. The individual is the measure of all things. But this is not how we learned Christ, and it does not set a young man or young woman up for submitting to things larger than themselves, to conforming to an image that is beyond their own subjectivity. If the child is the center of the classroom, then education is merely an echo chamber, an alley of affirmations the adults must construct day after day, ensuring the child’s tastes are satiated, tastes which change according to every wind of doctrine that may flash on the screen of their smartphones. There is plenty to be said here, but all that needs to be said for our purposes is that a child who spends the majority of their waking hours in these waters will struggle mightily to think, believe, and act otherwise as adults. As C.S. Lewis once said, “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
       In 1963, Flannery O’Connor addressed the claim that “students do not like to read the fusty works of the nineteenth century, that their attention can best be held by novels dealing with their realities of our own time.” Her response:
 
       “English teachers come in Good, Bad, and Indifferent, but too frequently in high schools anyone who can speak English is allowed to teach it. Since several novels can't easily be gathered into one textbook, the fiction that students are assigned depends upon their teacher’s knowledge, ability, and taste: variable factors at best. More often than not, the teacher assigns what he thinks will hold the attention and interest of the students. Modern fiction will certainly hold it.
       “Ours is the first age in history which has asked the child what he would tolerate learning, but that is a part of the problem with which I am not equipped to deal. The devil of Educationism that possesses us is the kind that can be ‘cast out only by prayer and fasting.’ No one has yet come along strong enough to do it. In other ages the attention of children was held by Homer and Virgil, among others, but, by the reverse evolutionary process, that is no longer possible; our children are too stupid now to enter the past imaginatively. No one asks the student if algebra pleases him or if he finds it satisfactory that some French verbs are irregular but if he prefers [John] Hersey to Hawthorne, his taste must prevail.
       “I would like to put forward the proposition, repugnant to most English teachers, that fiction, if it is going to be taught in high schools, should be taught as a subject and as a subject with a history. The total effect of a novel depends not only on its innate impact, but upon the experience, literary and otherwise, with which it is approached. No child needs to be assigned Hersey or Steinbeck until he is familiar with a certain amount of the best work of Cooper, Hawthorne, Melville, the early James, and Crane, and he does not need to be assigned these until he has been introduced to some of the better English novelists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
       “The fact that these works do not present him with the realities of his own time is all to the good. He is surrounded by the realities of his own time, and he has no perspective whatever from which to view them. Like the college student who wrote in her paper on Lincoln that he went to the movies and got shot, many students go to college unaware that the world was not made yesterday; their studies began with the present and dipped backward occasionally when it seemed necessary or unavoidable. . . . ”
       “The high school English teacher will be fulfilling his responsibility if he furnishes the student a guided opportunity, through the best writing of the past, to come, in time, to an understanding of the best writing of the present. He will teach literature, not social studies or little lessons in democracy or the customs of many lands.
       “And if the student finds that this is not to his taste? Well, that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed.” [from Flannery O’Connor’s “Total Effect and the Eighth Grade,” published in The Georgia Bulletin in 1963, reprinted in Mystery and Manners (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1961)]
 
The student-centered learning plan lacks merit and does more harm than good to the student. On this, charter schools fail. 
 
A Promise of High-Quality Education
What goes into a good education? The ancients and the medievals—Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, Alcuin, Hugh of St. Victor, Petrarch, Boethius, Bruni, de Pizan, Rabelais, Erasmus, Aquinas, at alii—did not leave us in the dark on the blueprint or purpose or aim or methods or principles of a great education. They handed it down to us, and we don’t even know it was once there. Our education departments, our schools, the majority of our seminaries, fail to give these authorities and sources to students, parents, and future educators. And so we are left to feel about in the dark, in a room which has been stripped of its furniture, in a home which has had its décor, architecture, and very foundation stolen. If we want to test whether a charter school is indeed going to keep its promise for a high education, let us test it by the five academic competencies,

1. Thinking. Will students take core classes in logic, the art and science of reasoning well? Formal logic? Informal logic? Symbolic logic? Will the architecture of their mind be formed by basic courses in linguistics, like Latin? Will they be acquainted with core philosophical writings and enduring questions on humanity, knowledge, goodness, happiness, truth, beauty, love, faith, courage, and civility? Will the student learn to order and discern their thoughts or simply learn to identify and speak them?
2. Speaking. Will the students take courses in classical rhetoric, the art and science of speaking well? Will the students be required to present and defend controversial topics? Will the students be required to memorize Scripture, poetry, and great speeches, and to present them for assessment along with and in front of their peers? Will the students study the works of great orators, and consider a biblical conception of speech?
3. Writing. Will students read the best writers of our tradition? Will the students read the classics? Will students write argumentative prose in the great rhetorical tradition? Will the students learn and write poetry each year? Will students memorize and recite prose and poetry, so they can emulate in their writing? Will students learn how to distinguish grammar, eloquence, and content of their own writing? Will they be accountable for their writing beyond mere affirmation of personal expression?
4. Listening. Will students learn to listen to lectures? Will they be required to listen carefully and with discernment to classmates during in-class debates? Will students be required to sit long enough to listen and take notes? Will students be required to obey quickly and joyfully to authorities figures who love them and want the best for them? Will students have technological distractions minimized in the classroom to facilitate better listening habits?
5. Reading. Will students read a lot and read often? Will students read great literature or only familiar literature? Will students read across a wide range of literary genres? Will students learn about the Bible as literature? Will students compare all their literature to Biblical literary features and teaching? Will students be read to? Will students be required to read aloud? Will students be in homes which care much for reading?

 
A charter school may promise high-quality education, but if it not pursuing excellence in these five academic competencies, it will not deliver on its promise. When charter schools enter the context of failing public schools, of course they look promising. But when we compare them with a great education, with an education worthy of Christian children, of Christian families, charter schools fail. And they fail fully. They don’t just fail to teach the Bible as holy and sacred literature. They fail to disciple our children in the Lord; they fail to buttress the discipleship, catechesis, and formation our Christian children should be getting at home and at church. The promise of high-quality education in charter schools is not met with the curriculum, pedagogy, staff, or purpose which make a high-quality education a reality. On this, charter schools fail. 
 
Martin Luther once said, “I advise no one to place his child where the Scriptures do not reign paramount. Every institution in which men are not increasingly occupied with the Word of God must become corrupt…..I am much afraid that schools will prove to be the great gates of hell unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures, engraving them in the hearts of youth.”
 
Gordon H. Clark once said, “The school system that ignores God teaches its pupils to ignore God; and this is not neutrality. It is the worst form of antagonism, for it judges God to be unimportant and irrelevant in human affairs. This is atheism.”
 
Harvard’s Rules and Precepts, to our great surprise, once said, “Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life, John 17:3, and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.”
 
J. Gresham Machen states, “A truly Christian education is possible only when Christian education underlies not a part, but all, of the curriculum of the school. True learning and true piety go hand in hand, and Christianity embraces the whole of life – those are great central convictions that underlie the Christian school.”
 
Charter schools are not neutral. They are not classical, and they are not Christian. Charter schools may be a shining win to the alternative: government-coerced and government-run schools. But charter schools are far from the kinds of schools Christians should be supporting, building, and sending our children to. Douglas Wilson once said, “Education is a religious endeavor for every student. ‘Make that godless, and his life is made godless.’ In the nineteenth century, secular education was established because many Christians were fatally persuaded of the myth of neutrality. They were told that there were many areas of life that could be studied apart from any reference to the authority of Scripture…Christian education cannot be sustained apart from the exclusive worship of the Triune God.” (The Case for Classical Christian Education by Douglas Wilson). Christians ought to re-think charter schools in their city. We ought to re-examine what it means to educate our children, and we had better, if we want to take education seriously, be courageous in building the kinds of schools which are worthy of fulfilling the great responsibility we have as Christian parents to “raise our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”  
 
Further Suggested Reading
“It’s Not Classical and Christian” by Patch Blakey
The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis
Excused Absence: Should Christian Kids Leave Public School? by Douglas Wilson
The Lost Tools of Learning by Dorothy Sayers
None Dare Call It Education: What’s Happening to Our Schools and Our Children? by John Stormer
The Story-Killers: A Common Sense Case against the Common Core by Terrence O’ Moore

by Brian G. Daigle

One of the questions I get asked often by communities starting a classical school, and even by prospective parents at Sequitur, is, “Where do you find your teachers?!” The question is asked with a bit of exasperation, as if they understand the standard set on classical Christian education (cCe) and they know that it is hard to find teachers in their community who fit that standard or who were educated in it themselves or who even know how to articulate that standard. Here is my advice:
 
Don’t look for certifications. A state certification is not a clear indicator that someone is a great teacher, a master teacher, a teacher worthy of forming a Christian child in thought, word, and deed. I learned this many years ago, and so it has never been a part of how we hire instructors at Sequitur or how I counsel others to hire instructors. In fact, it has proven to be otherwise. If someone is state certified, it is likely the case that we will have to undo a lot of things in order to teach them how to be a great instructor in a classical Christian setting. To pass the state tests they had to fill their heads and hearts with all kinds of confusion. This is not to say that someone state certified is necessarily too far gone. It is only to say that state certification does not tell me one way or another whether I should hire that person. It may actually give me pause, especially if that person leads with that in their application, flaunts it in the interview, and bets their position on it, which is too often the case.
       Some schools argue that parents look for certifications, that accreditation companies look for certifications. First, accreditation companies make up weird standards too, standards that more boards and administrators ought to question. Accreditation often becomes nothing more than mutual back-scratching. If an accreditation company is requiring you to have a certain number of state certified teachers in your school, you should accreditation elsewhere or save your money and don’t worry about accreditation. Second, parents mostly think certifications matter because someone once told them that, not because they’ve studied the history, philosophy, or contemporary issues in education. If parents hung around more certified teachers, they would realize having a state certification says nothing whatsoever about a person’s teaching ability, mastery of a subject, and strength of virtue. Some of the worst teachers I’ve ever taught with or observed were those who were “blue-star” or “blue-ribbon” certified, who jumped through the hoops and therefore didn’t actually need to become a good teacher to stay in the classroom. They played the game; they got the stamp. Because they were approved, they didn’t have a higher standard than the superficial requirements put forth by education departments and the state. In contrast, some of the best teachers I’ve been around have not been “certified teachers,” and I think, “What a loss if they had not been given this opportunity because of some modern and fabricated teaching standard.” Don’t look for certifications. Look for something greater.
 
Don’t look for degrees. College degrees work much the same way as certifications. Many a great scholars have had to settle for “lesser” positions, positions running cultural centers rather than occupying department chairs at top-tier colleges and universities, because they don’t have the paperwork to prove otherwise. Regarding hiring credentials, academic degrees fail at the same place as state certifications: having one is not a sure indicator that someone is a good teacher in that field, and not having one is not an indicator to the contrary. Therefore, having a college degree as a standard for hiring and teaching is to set up a barrier which either lets in the wrong people or keeps out the right people. One of the best instructors I’ve hired was reluctant to apply for an open position because she lacked a few credits for an undergraduate degree. We said, “We don’t care. Come interview and we will go from there.” She turned out to be an excellent classroom instructor, a great learner, a wonderful employee. And before she was all of that, she was an academy mom. If on our website we had put, “Must have a college degree…” We would have lost the opportunity to hire, train, and bless an excellent instructor. And we would have lost an opportunity to fill our classroom with a wonderful teacher.         
 
So, those are the two major standards most often utilized in hiring good instructors, and I’ve just counseled you to either not use them, or take them with a grain of salt way down in the hiring process. So, then, how does a school with a strong academic standard create hiring standards which are clear, fair, appropriate, and give parents and students confidence that the academy will be filled with high quality instructors?
 
First, have a clear and strong website. A website acts like a net, a large net in which all kinds of things get caught. When you post a teaching position, all kinds of people will come look at it. If you post it on a general employment site like Indeed, the pool from which applicants swim will be even broader. A clear and strong website will act as a way for applicants to self-filter. This means applicants will come to your site, read about your academy, read about the curriculum, watch the promo videos, and say, “Um, yeah. That’s not for me.” This is good. Classical Christian schools need to hire instructors whose top response is, “This is for me!” A clear and strong website will not filter out everything that ought not to enter, all the applicants who are not a good fit, but it will filter a lot, and it will act as a barrier to those who should not cross and a stimulus to those who should.
 
Invite applicants. Once your website communicates clearly and courageously what your academy is all about, invite applicants to apply. Have a healthy online application which asks the kinds of questions that will act as a second filter. A good job application will further communicate the teacher’s values, personal qualities, and professional goals. It will communicate the same about the academy and what it expects of its instructors. I have heard many times from applicants that they were surprised at some of the questions we ask on our online application at Sequitur. I often ask which questions were most surprising. The applicant shares and then says that they don’t ever see those kinds of questions on teaching applications. These are questions like “List five books you read in the past year. Which one did you most enjoy and why?” and “Are you a Christina and what does that mean for how and what you teach?” They say it with wholesome surprise, not with concern. This means that before applicants ever make it to us for one-on-one interviews, we are communicating what we expect of our instructors. Again, I have seen this be a deterrent and a catalyst, for the good.
 
Have them come in and teach. Once instructors apply, those applications and accompanying resumes should be seen by multiple administrators. Good administrators will have a good intuition when it comes to hiring. They, like a great art teacher, will be able to read the student’s art better than the student. Applications should be put in order from strongest to weakest, and a discussion among admin should ensue. There should be a third stack of “not interested.” The strongest candidates should be contacted first, perhaps the top two or three. And here is the kicker! Here it is: they need to come in and teach. They must come in and teach a lesson as the first step in their one-on-one interview. We have done this from the beginning, and nearly every candidate says something like, “I’m rarely, if ever, asked to do this.” And I think, “How is that possible?!” But it is.
            When we invite the top candidates in to teach, it is simple. If they apply for the open fourth grade position, they come in and teach fourth grade for one hour. I only give them a few directions: the subject they are teaching, how many kids are in the class, and they will have a whiteboard, markers, and sixty minutes. I tell them nothing else. Part of our assessment is what they choose to teach and how they choose to teach it. That is important. Don’t miss it. We want to see how the instructor makes curricular, pedagogical, and classroom decisions with just a few minimum requirements on the lesson. This allows for good dialogue during the in-person interview after they teach their lesson, and it allows us to better understand the instructor as a scholar and person.
          During the lesson I will be taking copious notes on professional introduction, professional dress, cleanliness of the room, articulation of speech, legibility of handwriting, eye contact, clarity of instructions, classroom discipline, classroom protocol, confidence, age-appropriate lesson, student attention, timeliness, humor, sarcasm, frustration, impatience, gentleness, speaking vs. questioning, nerves, visuals and handouts, authoritative tone, gracious posture, joy of teaching, ad infinitum. I then bring those notes with me into the post-lesson interview.
 
Interview them. After the instructor teaches, I sit down with them for a 90-120 minute interview. I usually have five to eight personal questions I ask and five to eight professional questions I ask. I almost always have another admin in the room with me, the admin who will be their direct superior (Grammar School, Logic School, or Rhetoric School). I usually begin the interview with asking about the lesson they chose and how they think it went. This makes for good and open-ended discussion. I take notes. I consider if they were seeing what I saw; if they saw the weaknesses. Were the weaknesses natural because they don’t teach this class daily or were they substantive? Were the successes on purpose and caught or on accident? If the teacher could do it over, what would they do differently? I then move into alternating the professional and personal questions. This is usually pretty organic and gives us a strong picture, along with everything else we’ve taken in, of the applicant and their readiness to be hired as an instructor at this academy. We also get to see how enjoyable the person is in one-on-one dialogue and what kind of colleague this applicant will be.
 
Look for teachers who are mature Christians. One of the more important things to look for when hiring an instructor at a classical Christian school is whether the instructor is indeed a mature and maturing Christian. This does not mean perfect Christian. It simply means likely not a new convert, not confused about basic Christian doctrine, not floundering to pursue holiness and mature in loving God, loving their neighbor, and loving Scripture. This means they should exhibit mature Christian virtues inside and outside the classroom, and they should have a general track record in the community of being a mature Christian. They should be a member in good standing at a local Christian church, and they should exhibit, as best as you can tell, the fruits of the Spirit. They should also be able to affirm the academy’s Statement of Faith and provide basic explanation of each point.  
       Too many Christian schools compromise personal piety for academic competency in their instructors. They will hire a Chemistry wiz who lacks maturity, because by doing so they can convince the tuition-payers their students will get the best AP Chemistry class in town. But this will ruin a school. It will ruin a school culture. It will ruin the students. And it will ruin Chemistry. It will also ruin the instructor. Education is whole-child formation. So look for great academic instructors who are first and foremost mature Christians.
 
Look for teachers who love their subjects. The second thing to look for in the hiring process is teachers who love their subject. Do they read about it for leisure? Do they look to publish about it? Do they talk about it and deal with its inner core? Do they want to protect it, purify it, mature in it, and pass its great tradition to their students? If so, then that’s a great start. Lots of Christian schools will hire nice Christian teachers who have a mediocre care for and understanding in their subject. And then they sit and settle into a teaching position that makes for a tepid course, a tepid study of an important subject. Teachers ought to have tenacity for their subject; they ought to be swimming in it. If they do not possess and exhibit those traits, they have no business teaching that subject to others; it will only ruin the students who otherwise could have fallen in love with that class.
 
Look for teachers who love their students. I interviewed a man once who stood at the front of the room and read from his computer. It was a 10th grade Humanities class. He read a lecture he wrote on politics and Church history. The lecture was quite good. He was a good speaker. By all accounts he was a mature Christian. But he didn’t love the students. And for that reason, and a few other minor ones, we didn’t hire him. He looked up, I remember, only three times from his computer, making quick eye contact and going back. I watched the students. They were not engaged. He did not engage them. The lesson was sterile, though philosophically intriguing. Students can feel whether they are loved. Students know whether the instructor is there to check a box and get a paycheck or whether he simply needs an audience for his academic musings or whether he is really invested in their personal apprehension of knowledge and wisdom. I have been a student; I have had each kind of professor. I still remember the best ones. They were mature Christians; they mastered their subject, and by golly they loved the students, and that was felt. It was felt in their tone, their patience, their posture, their pace, and their authority. It was felt in their compassion and their conviction and their craft. I love those professors who loved me, and I’m not surprised that some of my favorite subjects even now happened to be taught by the professors who exhibited the greatest and most mature love toward me as a student.

Look for teachers who are teachable. Classical Christian education has a wider pool to draw from than ever before in the United States, but that pool is relatively tiny in comparison. Indeed, because of the work done by the generation before us, headmasters in my generation have more to work with. We have applicants who have gone through K-12 classical schools. We have applicants who have studied classical Christian education in graduate school. We have applicants whose homes and churches were steeped in the merits and memories woven through classical and Christian education. And even still, it may be difficult to fill a staff with those who are articulate, proficient, and masterful in what cCe is all about. This means another quality we ought to look for in applicants is their teachability. Are they willing to learn? Are they willing to read more? Are they willing to be observed and change their ways? Are they willing to think differently about the subject they love? Are they willing to teach other subjects than their academic corner? Or are they here to collect a paycheck? Classical Christian schools, good education in general, will always require teachers who are teachable, for that is merely the fruit of humility, of professed-ignorance, of wonder, of gratitude, and of living an examined life. 
 
Give one year contracts. So you have done due diligence. You have put up a great website. You have gone through the hiring process. You have watched them teach and have interviewed them. You have had other administrators affirm your comfort with this hiring decision. You are convinced this instructor is a mature Christian, loves their subject, and loves their students. Now what? Hire them. Give them a one year contract, and that’s all. Commit a year to seeing them grow and prove that all you saw in the interview is indeed real. In that year, don’t get complacent, especially in the first year. In that year, work with them on their weaknesses and needs. Have a plan for that year regarding development and accountability. After the first semester is over, conduct a mid-year evaluation. After the year is over, conduct an end-of-year evaluation. Be kind by helping that instructor see their strengths and weaknesses; help them continue on in the former and mature in the ladder. After that, give them another one-year contract. A one-year contract is what everybody gets, even the administrators.  If in that year, or any year, the person is not keeping up, not growing, not doing their work with excellence, then help them, even formally. Provide the structure necessary for their growth and see if they are willing to grow. If not, communicate clearly that it is time to part ways, and do so with humility, grace, and confidence.
 
Have a plan for accountability and evaluations. A one-year contract means they are to do a job in that one year, clearly presented in their contract. That contract should specify what evaluations and accountability will look like. Points of accountability and evaluations are important for ensuring quality control in an instructor and in a classroom. That plan should include the following:

• Full Evaluations: An administrator should observe a full class once or twice a semester, preferably two or three times a semester for new teachers. That full observation should go from the beginning of the class to the very end and include order, decorum, professionalism, speech, classroom management, protocol, lesson assessment, handwriting, student engagement, et cetera. The full evaluation should be sent to the instructor, and, if necessary, the admin should schedule a follow-up meeting to discuss pros, cons, and questions. Full class observations should not be scheduled but should occur when the administrator is prepared to fully observe and evaluate an instructor in their genuine and natural work as an instructor on any given day.
• Pop-In Evaluations: These are less than full evaluations and can last five minutes or thirty minutes. They may be accompanied by notes or not. Pop-in evaluations allow the admin to be present, to simply observe, and to do shorter stents of quality control, ensuring the classroom, the students, the instructor, and the lesson are up to the academy’s standards. These should not be scheduled but should happen whenever the admin feels it’s the right time to pop into a classroom and observe. These should be happening weekly throughout the school. These not only keep instructors on their toes. It does the same for the student body.
• Monthly Meetings: These are usually all-faculty meetings and allow the administrator to bring the instructors through some incremental teacher development throughout the year. This could also happen with a single instructor or a department. This is important for accountability and evaluation because it can act as a platform for reminders, for new lessons, for teacher questions, for teacher concerns, and for building the general culture of the faculty, which is the glue of the academy. Monthly meetings allow admin to get to know teachers more informally and consider their depth and degree of buy-in to the school’s mission and vision, and perhaps even the teachers’ difficulties in expressing that mission and vision in their classroom.
• Mid-Year Evaluations: Mid-year evaluations are formal evaluations where the administrator provides points of self-evaluation to the instructor. The instructor self-evaluates on a variety of topics and questions, then the administrator walks the instructor through their answers and the administrator’s own observations from the semester. What trends are there? What strengths are clearly there? What weaknesses need to be shored up in the coming semester? These are important half-way points to ensure changes can be made in the second half of the year and questions are answered so the instructor has a clear understanding of the quality of their work and how their work is being perceived.
• End-of-Year Evaluations: This is similar to the mid-year evaluation in that it is a self-evaluation that the administrator reviews with the instructor. However, this happens at the end of the year. It is an opportunity for the instructor to see how their full year went, what the ebbs and flows were, and what adjustments need to be made over the summer to ensure the following year is even better than before. If the instructor has received no major marks of discipline or concern, and they have proven themselves to be worthy of a contractual renewal, then the end-of-year evaluation is an opportunity for the administrator to strongly praise the strengths of the instructor and what they bring to the academy, their subject, and the classroom. It is also an opportunity for the administrator to recommend summer reading, summer conferences, or summer coursework so the teacher can focus on a few points of improvement before the school year begins.  

All of this taken together will never ensure a perfect faculty, but it will ensure one that is consistently healthy: administrators who have their eyes open, teachers who teach on their toes, and students who know that the adults around them are working hard at their jobs just as the teachers ask the students to do the same. This also ensures parents that favoritism is being avoided, quality instructors are being retained, and weak instructors are being strengthened or released. This will also ensure that the right standards for a great teacher are being upheld, as opposed to some distant and superficial certification which nearly anyone can pass.
 
The Golden Rule. There is a golden rule in hiring, and that is this: don’t hire someone you wouldn’t want teaching your own children. I have made that my mantra from the beginning, and it has never failed me. And don’t keep someone on staff you wouldn’t want teaching your own children. While for the longest time this rule was merely theoretical for me, it is now practical. My children are now school age, and so my hiring decisions really do directly affect them. At first, this rule was a way for me to ensure parents that we were making the best hiring decisions we possibly could. During prospective parent interviews, parents would often times ask, “So, what is your criteria for hiring?” I would explain all I’ve explained above, with greater brevity, and then I would say, “But the greatest rule is this: I will not hire someone I wouldn’t want teaching my own children. I love no one’s child more than I love my own, and so if I want them teaching my child, if I want my child to learn science or math or literature or art from them, then I want them in a Sequitur classroom. If not, then I will not hire them or keep them.” Parents understood this, even more than the other standards and arguments. And this is why it is the golden rule.
            This rule is based on the great Christian principles of loving one’s neighbor, of treating others better than we treat ourselves, of loving others first, of humbly taking the lesser seat. It is easy to look after my professional career and make hiring decisions based on political or social or selfish reasons. But if I am truly loving my neighbor, then I will give them what is best, even if it does not most benefit me. It just so happens, paradoxically, that when I give my neighbor the best, I also get the best. When I hire the best instructors for my students and not just the best ones for my career, my career ends up being quite strong. Love others first. Love your children more than you love yourself. Love your neighbor as yourself, and you will find that the fruits are heaped upon your lap, stack upon stack.
 
Conventional standards are not good enough, and when we pick our heads above the smoke of modernity, we see decades, generations, of wisdom upon which we can make good hiring decisions. Ours is not the first generation to seek good instructors for its children. And we won’t be the last. The production-line nature of modern education has made us blind to Biblical wisdom, common sense, and easy solutions to what otherwise become expensive and over-complicated problems. We need not devise a new machine to fix the broken one; we simply need to walk out of the factory and back into the rich garden of history. There we find a standard that is worthy to put in front of our children.

by Brian G. Daigle

I recently had the opportunity to present and join a panel at the 2020 ISCRC (International School Choice and Reform Conference). While I was happy to join the discussion, this isn’t the kind of conference I normally seek to attend. It was not a distinctly Christian conference; it was not about classical education; it was mostly professors, researchers, and policy-makers discussing the national and international bits concerning independent schools and school choice. These are typically the kind of folks in Baton Rouge and Louisiana I leave to their own devices, allowing them to work within a deeply flawed system to do even more deeply flawed things. My portion of the conference was on hybrid schooling, presenting more specifically on Sequitur, our model, curriculum, and features. I met some great people there and made some good professional connections. Initially I didn’t plan on attending many of the segments, but I found myself wanting more and more to hear, meet, and discuss with the presenters.
       I have lots of takeaways for myself and my general understanding of the national and international educational landscape. I also have specific takeaways for our own academy in Baton Rouge. And I have general takeaways for classical educators. I share the latter in this brief piece so you are encouraged, so you can sit with me at this table, and so I can share what I've been given this past weekend. 
 
5) Attend non-Christian education conferences. There are indeed enemies of the cross, even systematically, but enemies of the cross come by degrees. For those willing to read the pagan classics as a core part of our and our own children’s academic formation, we are well aware of this. I was encouraged to hear a presentation on religion and school choice, what Robert Fox called “the best segment ever offered and presented at the conference.” Much of the presentation and discussion from the panel centering around case law concerning a Jewish school in New York who was legally and practically battling the overreach of NYC officials in their schools. I was similarly interested to learn of the dialectical fashion of this school’s pedagogy in how it instructs its students in Jewish law and literature. I was encouraged to meet many Catholics and even a high-ranking educator in Canada who was Dutch Reformed. The benefit of attending a non-Christian conference goes both ways. I suspect my own contributions to the discussions during talks or dinners, while I did not hide my Christian faith, was encouraging to those working on national and international policy and research. There was even a presentation on the research some professors did concerning the non-neutrality of values in public schools and how those values are expressed and seen and disingenuously pushed through various means by government-funded schooling. It reminded me of a philosophy class I took in grade school at the University of Dallas on the philosophy and metaphysics of values. While I know much of the assumptions and driving motivations of this conference, and perhaps many of the participants there, were not distinctly Christian, I was nonetheless appreciative of the honest and clear dialogue happening among researchers and professors who have increasingly more influence on school choice at the state and federal level.
 
4) Attend non-classical education conferences. I have a concern that CCE scholars are becoming too insular, that we create our schools and journals and curricula and audience and we speak into an echo chamber. This does not mean we abandon the beauty of CCE or do some weird capitulation because of tolerance-clamoring. Most of the presentations and speakers at the conference were against such foolishness happening in government schools. This simply means that what we are doing is young and small and we forget that, when it is the only thing in which we swim. And because it is young and small, there are many who have heard about it, who are intrigued about it, who are interested to learn much more, but whose professional and personal paths have required them to stay out of it. The blessings then go both ways. I was encouraged to see that CCE is having a wider and wider reach, even outside CCE circles. And I was encouraged that classical schools have a real purpose in moving the dialogue in education reform from pragmatism to more philosophical and political considerations. Likewise, I have a great respect for those battling on the policy and legal level to allow schools like Sequitur to operate, even if that individual has no idea of the quality of education we offer, and their motivations for fighting the existing power structures is different than mine. Many non-classical educators are making serious headway and room for the CCE movement to have a higher ceiling, and they don’t even know they are doing it, and we don’t either, until we meet in person at a conference breakfast table and visit.  
 
3) Get to know other educators in your city. What has been said above is not a matter of national and international relations; it starts in our cities. It starts by loving and knowing your immediate neighbor, the one by the way, on the road.
 
2) Be thankful for what you've found. Classical Christian education is a gift, and those who have found it, by whatever degree, have found a great gift. There are many many educators out there spinning their wheels, lost in the modern jargon, who have only had a passing glance at CCE, but who genuinely want to know more. When they hear about it, I see envy in their eyes. I hear intrigue in their voice. For those of us in the structure, it can become so nuanced that we forget how beautiful this cathedral is. Don't take it for granted. Be thankful. Go out. Walk in the city. Turn back. Look at her from a distance. Be thankful. 
 
1) Keep up the good work. Sequitur is not well-funded. We are not busting at the seams or blistering our fingers to manage waiting lists. But we are healthy. And we are faithful. And we are part of a shining community much bigger than our little academy in South Louisiana. Do not take your light for granted, however dim you may think it is, compared to the other classical school across the country or the bustling college prep academy across the country or the diocesan school that has lost its way but continues to raise over $20 Million in charitable donations each year. Do the work God has called you to do, where you are. And keep up that good work. What you think is a crumb is another man's loaf. 
 
       I was hesitant about this conference because it wasn't "my people." I was a bit hesitant to present and join the panel because I knew there would be a thousand differing assumptions between me and my audience, assumptions that are not merely preferential. But, while much of that was still true, the apprehension was dispelled when I met with the individuals who were actually attending the conference, when I saw that I could significantly contribute to the comradery, even if the conclusions aren't the ones Sequitur or any other faithful CCE academy would pursue. 
       To encourage my CCE colleagues to “step outside” is not to say we ought to waver on a consistent, solid, and clear educational philosophy, like the one to which we have committed. It is only to say that though we have the privilege to be curators of the best education in America, we are not perfect, and some of our blinders may very well be remedied if we interacted more with those who know little to nothing about CCE or who have themselves been swimming in a completely different educational pond.
       One of the best words I could think of to describe my time at the conference was “neighboring.” I was recently reading that all-too-hidden Calvin Seerveld who said, “Neighbourhooding is a glorious gift to human nature: the opening to give to and receive from one’s fellow human what is needed….Any seasoned teacher knows that teaching means you wash the feet of your students. In line with the texts before us you could also understand and describe teaching, or Christian leadership of any sort, as a kind of neighbouring, where you bind up the wounds, the traumata, of the younger generation who come to you, having been damaged at home or in earlier schools. Blessed are those who neighbor the poor people who have lost their way and become captives or have been damaged in the arts, or in the marketplace, or in the minefield of politics. And it is a wonderful occupation to be anointed by the Spirit of the Lord to bring healing and comfort to those with need, to give good direction and to announce the coming jubilee and judgement for music, commerce, family relations, philosophy—you name it.” (Calvin Seerveld, On Being Human, p. 63-67) At times I could sense I was the one “neighboring,” at other times I was thankful others were “neighboring” to me. There is a need for those in CCE to consider what neighboring looks like, beyond our own immediate circles, however true, good, and beautiful those circles are.