In 2025, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie celebrated its 90th anniversary. This beloved classic remains central to the Great Hearts elementary school canon alongside Little House in the Big Woods and Farmer Boy. Even as it becomes increasingly harder for our scholars to imagine the life of an American pioneer, we continue to point our students to the civic and moral virtue which shapes our national character, virtues we see in the Ingalls family. In this workshop, we will look at ways the Little House series shapes the moral imagination of our scholars by taking them inside unique struggles faced by this lovable family on the Western frontier of America. As Laura herself said, “the way we live and [our] schools are much different now, so many changes have made living and learning easier. But the real things haven’t changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures and to be cheerful and have courage when things go wrong.”

Session for First Time Attendees
K-5 teachers often wonder how the Socratic Method applies in a K-5 classroom – are kindergartners really supposed to seminar on Aristotle? In this workshop, we will discuss lesson planning with inquiry in mind, unit introductions that inspire wonder, and the questions that follow. For Great Hearts Staff: Please note that this is the same workshop offered at Great Hearts New Faculty Orientation.

The ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence reverberate down the ages and find their echoes in well-known American tales, such as Paul Revere, Johnny Appleseed, Rip Van Winkle, and Paul Bunyan. In this workshop, learn how the legends and folktales native to American soil have helped shape our national identity and values since this nation’s inception, and how they can continue to form your students’ moral imaginations. You will be provided with practical ideas for approaching American folklore in the K-5 classroom, and concrete ways to weave it into the various subjects you teach, in order to expand your students’ knowledge and sensibilities, and to prepare them for lives of virtuous citizenship.

Mathematics is unchanging in its beauty. It’s a discipline that helps us make sense of the world through logic, precision, and truth. Yet throughout the American experiment, math instruction has often been shaped by passing trends rather than enduring principles. In this session, we’ll look to Singapore, a global leader in mathematics education, for four timeless strategies that support deep understanding and lasting success: an upward spiral curriculum, a balance of conceptual and procedural knowledge, research-based teaching practices, and an emphasis on problem-solving. While we cannot fully replicate Singapore’s system, we can apply these core principles to meet the needs of our unique students, guiding them toward truth through the logical beauty of mathematics.

Hadar Jewish Classical Academy is pioneering a rigorous Hebrew immersion program, for mostly students from English-speaking homes that exposes and engages children as young as three in a Hebrew-speaking environment to maximize the language acquisition capacity of young minds. Our Pre-K and K sections offer almost full immersion in Hebrew during the school day with minimal instruction time in English allotted to basic numeracy and literacy. As the students move up the grades, they continue with their Hebrew immersion for Jewish studies, Hebrew literature, and Hebrew conversation and Israeli studies, within a framework that establishes a strong framework at the younger years and tapers off to allow more time for core classical English-speaking instruction in Math, English, History, and Latin. Even within our first two years of the immersion program, we have noted remarkable benefits: in addition to developing their second language proficiency, we have observed that our students show tendencies that suggest bilingual language processing, a stronger ability to navigate academic challenges and ambiguous environments, good linguistic sensitivity in English, and an openness to learning additional languages such as Latin. Finally, the provision of Hebrew allows our students to engage with the most ancient tradition and heritage of the West, and access the scriptures and philosphy at the roots of our American classical education.

Charles Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood is the version of the fairy tale with which most Americans are familiar. His telling of the story is moralistic. The meaning is spelled unambiguously in the moral he attaches to it: Pretty girls/Innocent of life’s dangers,/Shouldn’t stop and chat with strangers. The Brothers Grimm’s telling is a story of salvation symbolized by what the mother gives Little Red Riding Hood to take to her grandmother’s home. In Perrault’s version the mother gives Little Red Riding Hood a loaf and butter to carry to the grandmother’s home. In the Grimms’ version she carries a cake and wine to the grandmother, an allusion to the Christian eucharist. This is enough to get us started. The rest I will leave for when we meet. I hope we can have good conversation.

Long before children decode their first words, they are acquiring the vocabulary, background knowledge, and habits of mind that will make fluent reading possible. This session explores how rich read-alouds and carefully chosen picture books build language proficiency and cultural literacy in the early years. We’ll consider how picture books expand vocabulary, sharpen narrative sense, and cultivate shared knowledge – and how teachers can use them to prepare students for more demanding texts.

Did you know that some studies have found that on average, teachers spend at least 89% of the lesson talking? Have you ever done your best learning while listening to someone talk this much? This session will focus on why students learn best when we transfer the heavy lifting onto the students and how learning is a consequence of thinking. We will cover different strategies that will allow your students to fully engage in the material while simultaneously providing you a window into their thinking, long before you give an assessment!

What can the structure of a sentence tell us about the greater meaning of text? Teaching grammar can be difficult in the lower schools, not only because students are expected to know the categories and functions of words, but also because students often don’t see the purpose behind such knowledge. Understanding that grammar helps students look closer at a text, the study of grammar can open sentences to greater clarity and beauty. In this workshop, participants will work through a pedagogical philosophy of teaching grammar and see how understanding form and structure unlocks the deeper beauty behind great sentences in children’s classic literature.

Are you asking yourself if you are doing enough, getting it right, meeting the needs of all your students and hitting all the classical benchmarks you have set? Midyear, this is where many teachers land and you can find yourself losing the spark with which you began the year. Sometimes, we just get things out of focus. In this session, you are invited to recalibrate the sites through which you see your students and yourselves. Through the lens of wonder and curiosity, we can identify the most important First Things for you to concentrate on. By initiating liturgical rhythms both in your classroom and in your life outside of work, you can get back into the right rhythm. This session will provide you with practical ideas keeping the concepts of renewed energy, real solutions to challenges, and a solid list of things to try on Monday morning. As teachers, you have the best solutions. We’ll hold space for identification and brainstorming enhanced by some tips and tricks I have learned from nearly 30 years in the classroom. Some of this will include ways to incorporate repetitio mater memoriae (repetition is the mother of memory) into your daily transitions, decreasing misbehavior and increasing the minutes you have in a day! Let’s get you re-energized for the rest of your school year and hopefully even for life!

Let’s take a guided tour through the Numbers in Base Ten concepts from Kindergarten through Grade 8, revealing the carefully sequenced development of number sense. Participants will explore how learning trajectories illuminate the conceptual journey students take as they build procedural fluency, deepen understanding, and apply mathematical reasoning. By tracing this arc of content, educators will gain insight into where their instruction fits within the broader progression and how to support students in making meaningful mathematical connections across the grades. This session is ideal for those seeking a clearer picture of how operations are developed and how to meet students who are at varying levels of understanding.

This talk will examine the etymological origins of the Declaration of Independence, providing a lexical analysis of the text as well as a detailed explanation of the Latinate vocabulary and word choice expressed in the document. The session will also include materials on teaching a lesson on this topic (geared toward middle and high school aged students).

Can a free nation survive without patriotic citizens? A proper love of country is essential for a nation’s endurance. Patriotism is often nurtured in institutions such as the family and local community—but what is the appropriate role of American K–12 schools in cultivating patriotism and preparing future generations of patriotic citizens? Moreover, what sources can help us thoughtfully engage this question? This workshop explores the role of education in fostering what Ronald Reagan called an informed patriotism—a virtuous patriotism that exists between both an excessive and deficient love of country. Drawing on original sources from political philosophy, the American Founding, and Abraham Lincoln, this workshop explores specific ways that patriotism can be meaningfully incorporated both within the framework of a school’s daily programming and within secondary course curriculum.

How does constitutional law fit within a classical curriculum? High School Law Review invites students to grapple with Supreme Court cases through close reading, structured debate, and publication in school-based law reviews. This workshop will demonstrate how the program works in a school setting and how it reinforces the classical emphasis on logic, rhetoric, and dialectic. We will also consider the importance of rewarding students’ investment in these values, through network and state-wide reviews that recognize top student work. Together we’ll explore how legal study sharpens critical thinking, nurtures civic literacy, and models respectful disagreement—equipping students to pursue truth with rigor and humility.

The classical vision for education believes actual Truth, Goodness, and Beauty exist outside the desires and formulations of the individual self. It believes this triad is real and timeless and waiting to shape – not be shaped by – the individual and community. This sets up a tension with an American literary tradition with a poet like Walt Whitman at its core – a poet who aptheosizes the individual, poetic voice in an attempt to speak for the people as a whole. American literature (and history and values) wrestles with the competing tensions, eventually producing a character like Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby- the logical end of the unbounded American self. This workshop will spend half the time laying out the tension in American history and literature and the other half discussing what this means for classical educators rooted in a metaphysically realist version of the self instead of a nominalist one. How do we stay faithful to actual Truth, Goodness, and Beauty and the tradition passed on to us by the great thinkers and writers and artists in the midst of a cultural tradition at odds with some of these premises? The discussion should be lively and well worth an occasion celebrating the 250th anniversary of our noble nation’s founding.

As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, it is timely to revisit the intellectual roots of the American experiment, especially the crucial but often misunderstood role of Latin and classical learning in shaping the Founding Fathers’ vision for the nation. This talk will first illuminate how deeply the founders engaged with Latin, not merely as an academic exercise, but as a living tradition that informed their thinking, provided a common vocabulary, and connected them to the virtues and civic ideals of the ancient world. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams mastered Latin and read the great Roman historians, orators, and poets in the original language. For these men, classical education was a wellspring of wisdom, shaping their understanding of liberty, governance, and citizenship. The second part of the talk challenges prevailing justifications for Latin in American classical schools. It is common to hear that Latin sharpens test scores, boosts verbal SAT results, and reinforces English grammar. Yet while these outcomes may be real, they risk reducing Latin study to mere utilitarian benefit. Instead, this presentation draws on the example of the Founders, urging educators and school leaders to seek higher aims: formation in virtue, cultivation of eloquence, and participation in a tradition that binds the American project to enduring questions of justice and human flourishing. By examining both the historical reality and aspirational legacy of the Founders’ classical education, attendees will leave with a deeper understanding of how Latin can inspire purpose in today’s students, i.e. not only as a tool for academic success, but as a key ingredient in nurturing thoughtful, articulate citizens ready to steward the American experiment into its next century.

In honor of the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, eminent Shakespearean editor, author and ASU Regents Professor Sir Jonathan Bate, and renowned theatre director and teacher Nick Hutchison present a dynamic workshop celebrating Shakespeare’s place in the American consciousness in the last 250 years, looking at prominent American Shakespearean actors and commentators from the Revolution onwards, discussing the place of the plays in a newly-independent nation and beyond, and considering the differing approaches to his works on either side of the Atlantic.

Teaching institutions within a classical education setting is important because it connects deep text-based learning to civic literacy, preparing students to become responsible citizens who understand the foundations of society and government. Classical education emphasizes knowledge for its own sake, critical thinking skills, and moral virtue, all of which are essential in guiding young people to appreciate the role of being people of good character so they can lead meaningful, flourishing lives. By studying the traditions that underpin institutions, students not only develop strong analytical abilities but also cultivate ethical perspectives that prepare them for self-governance and thoughtful participation in civic life. This session will engage participants in learning how to implement pedagogy that embeds an understanding of institutions in a text-based approach to learning civics.

The 250th Anniversary of America’s Founding is an especially fitting time to study those writers who influenced the founders. Second only to Montesquieu, John Locke was one of the most cited political thinkers at the American Constitutional Convention, and his thought continues to hold a central place in debates over America’s liberal political tradition and intellectual culture. His Second Treatise of Civil Government is a particularly suitable text for seminar students at the secondary level, and its treatment would mark a significant contribution to their understanding of the founding. This workshop will consist of a brief introduction to how to lead students through the Treatise. Then, for the bulk of our time, we will discuss one or two short selections to give teachers a foundation for leading a seminar on Locke with their students. Participants will experience a discussion under the leadership of a master teacher who has led hundreds of students through Locke’s classic work. Further, each participant will receive a complimentary copy of Cana Academy’s comprehensive guide, Leading a Seminar on Locke’s Second Treatise of Civil Government.

Join poet and teacher Betsy K. Brown in exploring two American sonnets, one classic and one new. Brown will lead several activities that can be replicated in the classroom and will focus on the question, what do these two sonnets teach us about being an American?

Logic is not a boutique class for the precocious; it is the operating system of a life aimed at wisdom. The aim of teaching logic is not partisan victory, religious gatekeeping, or clever one-liners, but the formation of students who can confidently pursue what is true, good, and beautiful — and then live accordingly. Situated within the liberal arts and a life of virtue, this talk places logic inside a rightly ordered love: grammar gives language, logic tests it, and rhetoric carries sound judgment to others. Answers are often arguments in disguise; and information is never benign; it comes with premises, relevance claims, and assumptions. Teachers signal premises every time they respond to a “why;” question with “because,” and students must learn to evaluate those reasons for truth and clarity. We will recover the three acts of the mind — simple apprehension, judgment, and inference — and show how inductive and deductive patterns move learners from words to concepts to things to ideas, and finally toward truth. The session confronts three damaging confusions: first, mistaking a stand-alone logic course for a sufficient cure-all (logic is necessary but not sufficient); second, grading primarily for recall while neglecting reasoning; and third, tolerating curricular silos that sever method from content. The payoff is not merely sharper essays; it is moral and intellectual courage. Students who trust their ability to reason become adults who can weigh evidence, resist manipulation, pursue justice wisely, with disciplined minds. Drawing on the classical witnesses from Hugh of St. Victor and Rhabanus Maurus, this talk offers both mandate and method. Attendees will leave with a shared vocabulary, practical exercises, and a plan to model logical thinking so that students become like their teachers—in this case, thinkers who seek truth with humility and skill.

Science has long figured centrally in American democracy. Indeed, the conception of the American “experiment” was inflected with a scientific sensibility. The incorporation of science education into higher ed in the 19th and 20th centuries was as much about the cultivation of civic virtues as it was about bolstering the practical arts. Yet this thread has been largely lost in science education, even as science — and the public authority of scientific expertise — has become a locus of significant contestation and fracture in contemporary American democracy. This talk will reflect on the relationship between science and American democracy, exploring how contemporary political challenges offer an opportunity — and an imperative — for a better understanding of that relation and how it can inform approaches to both scientific and civic education.

What’s the next number in this sequence: 2, 4, 6, 8, __? Clearly, it’s 17 — and we’ll prove it in this session! As humans, we’re naturally drawn to patterns. They excite us, motivate us, and help us make sense of the world. But should we always trust a pattern? Not until we have an iron-clad, logical explanation to back it up! In this session, we’ll dive into the joy of mathematical patterns. We’ll explore how to find formulas for patterns — if you decide to trust them — and discover creative ways to challenge and subvert them when you don’t. Come prepared for mischief, curiosity, and plenty of mathematical fun!

One of the greatest achievements of the American experiment was the development of a distinctly American fine arts tradition. As Walt Whitman observed in 1855, “The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.” Yet the arts rarely feature in our history, literature, and humane letters courses except to illustrate ideas. This workshop will lead participants to encounter poetry, painting, and classical music not as a thing to be understood but as beauty to be experienced, thereby equipping teachers to facilitate such experiences in their own classrooms. Drawing on the poetry of Whitman, the painting of Eakins, and the music of Copeland, the art encountered will center on a predominant theme of the American arts tradition: the celebration of the common man.

Nick Hutchison teaches Shakespeare in Drama Schools and Colleges across the Globe (and indeed at the Globe in London), and brings new life to what can be a dry and off-putting exercise. In this lively, interactive workshop he will look at ways of teaching the plays which will inspire, enlighten and enthuse students in ways far removed from conventional approaches to Shakespeare, and encourage them to find their own journeys into these wonderful plays.

Students flourish when they are invited to share in the responsibility of their own learning journey. In this session, participants will explore pedagogical practices that support students in carrying the intellectual and emotional weight of learning, while sparking wonder that sustains their effort. Through examples, discussion, and reflection, we will consider how teachers can cultivate classroom cultures where rigor and joy work together to form resilient, curious learners.

Franklin’s Autobiography is multilayered. Franklin was a genius but he did not simply write for geniuses or even potential geniuses. He wrote also for the common man and without condescension. The challenge of reading and teaching Franklin is to do justice to both sides of Franklin’s teaching.

Session for First Time Attendees
While many of the primary drivers of classical pedagogy – the Socratic method, the liberal arts, etc.- trace their roots to more ancient sources, the principles of the American founding – liberty, federalism, equality, etc. – provide an equally compelling ground from which to derive the principles of high-quality teaching. That is, while we may not want to copy-paste the exact educational methods from early American schools, we should feel compelled to teach in light of the ethos of the founding fathers, inheriting, preserving, and passing down the spirit with which our country was born. This session promises to articulate a set of American classical pedagogical principles and then provide teachers practical guidance for how those principles might be enacted in K-12 classrooms across all subjects and grade levels.

History is a liberal discipline within the humanities. Proper to its distinctive scope, history cultivates knowledge of the past and practical wisdom concerning our responsibilities in the present, enables a society to exist across generations, and fosters sympathies that bind a citizenry, even one as diverse as America’s. This workshop explores effective ways to teach American history toward all three objectives unique to history as a field of humane studies.

Those of us who are involved in classical liberal arts education are convinced that this education is essential for sustaining a healthy democratic society. This conviction leads us to consider how we can offer a classical liberal arts education to children who live in remote or rural areas of our nation, where brick and mortar classical schools are unavailable to them. More and more, we are seeing this question answered through online classical schools. The concept of online schools, which often utilize asynchronous education, can create tension with certain aspects of the classical tradition. In this workshop, we will consider how we can evoke and nurture a sense of wonder in our online scholars. We will consider how our online scholars can join into conversation with each other and with the Western Tradition.

Doug Lemov and Robert Pondiscio will lead a workshop addressing the best techniques for whole class reading of (ideally, great) books.

The three main aspects of music are melody, harmony, and rhythm. By the combination and development of each of these, music does its work of shaping the hearts and souls of its listeners. Jazz, a quintessentially American form of music stretches and even transgresses each of these, and in doing so reveals deeper and richer understandings of each. And yet even in transgressing, jazz is deeply grounded in tradition. In this session, we will examine how jazz does its work of transgression while remaining in firm conversation with tradition. This will then be offered as a metaphor for the creative appropriation of the classical tradition that is the task of our contemporary society as we look to the past for inspiration and resources. Additionally, we will explore ways to bring jazz music into the classical classroom.

As one of America’s greatest authors, Mark Twain is known for being many things: a humorist, a social satirist, a teller-of-tall-tales-for-naughty-boys, a metaphysical pessimist, and America’s conscience on race, imperialism, and Gilded Age capitalism, to name just a few. But what all-too-often goes unappreciated about this giant of American literature is the extent to which he intended his fiction to shape our moral and civic imaginations. This was as true when he first burst onto the national scene with “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” as it was with his last complete novel on Joan of Arc, Personal Recollections. It’s also true across his genres. Whether Twain was writing travelogues, medieval romances, political diatribes, or “morality tales” for young men, whether he employed the short story, long essay, or novel, he was always cultivating an imagination that would prepare his audience to adopt the virtues that the American republic required for its defense, virtues which also form the basis of genuine human flourishing. Twain was able to do this because he was himself shaped by an encounter with the great poet-philosophers of Western civilization, especially Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Cervantes. Our workshop will thus look at some of the ways Mark Twain’s outwardly outrageous, patently playful, and sometimes silly fiction performs the serious labor of shaping the imaginations of a citizenry called to preserve ordered liberty under the law. And we will explore ways that Twain can be incorporated into a curriculum whose ultimate goal is to imbue its students with a love of the true, the good, and the beautiful.

From Phillis Wheatley to W.E.B. DuBois to Toni Morrison and beyond, African American literature and intellectual history have been deeply influenced by the classics. This remarkable relationship directly resulted from both intentional and providential formal and informal education in the classics. Additionally, no study of African American intellectual history is complete without attention to the deep relationship between classical education and African American churches and clergy. From minds introduced to the classics at youth to those exposed to church Sabbath Schools and debating societies to those attending famous African American colleges and universities with deeply classical curricula, generations of African Americans gained part of their cultural crafting and sense of humanity from a classical world far removed from the limitations of antebellum and segregated America. We will explore this tradition and consider what it means to the multiple disciplines it touches.

This talk will help high school teachers to help their students access the wisdom of Alexis de Tocqueville. Dr. Wysocki will argue that understanding Tocqueville is crucial for students’ quests for self-knowledge and a great benefit to their future happiness.

Most of us have had at least one good teacher. If we have, we can still remember that teacher, and almost always because that teacher could teach very well and was simply a good and admirable person. In this seminar, we will explore the two ways that good teachers become good: 1) they are models of virtue that inspire students to imitate them, and 2) they are good at the art of teaching or pedagogy. In this seminar, Perrin and Eben will discuss the importance of modeling virtues like zeal for learning, intellectual curiosity, wonder, and humility and how to grow in these virtues; they will also note the key principles of pedagogy contained in their co-authored book, The Good Teacher: Ten Key Pedagogical Principles That Will Transform Your Teaching. And since good teaching has existed throughout history and place, this seminar will note some of the great American teachers from its founding to the present day.

Classical Education should always give due honor to the Trivium, yet its application in modern K–12 schools can vary widely. Is the Trivium best understood as a framework for language instruction alone? Should we, following Dorothy Sayers, see it primarily as a model of child developmental stages? Can we view each academic discipline as having its own grammar, logic, and rhetoric? This session will explore these questions and consider practical ways to integrate the Trivium across subjects and grade levels.