Andrew Ellison on What Classical Teaching Actually Requires (Part 1) | The Furrows

Send us Fan MailAndrew Ellison grew up in the suburbs of Indianapolis with a public school teacher mother who read the Chronicles of Narnia at bedtime and ran summer learning programs at home—and had no idea any of it was "classical." In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, host Alex Julian traces Andrew's path from that curiosity-rich childhood through a soul-killing public junior high, into Trinity School at Greenlawn in South Bend, Indiana, and through his early teaching years at Tempe Prep Academy in Phoenix. Andrew now serves as Vice President of Enrollment Management at the University of Dallas.What's in This Episode:How Andrew's mother—a certified public school teacher—cultivated an educationally rich home that planted the seeds of classical formation long before anyone called it thatThe founding story of Trinity School at Greenlawn and why Andrew's parents sent him there without knowing anything about classical educationWhy Andrew's transition into classical schooling felt like continuity rather than rupture and what that reveals about the difference between a school that panders and one that leadsTwo pages in Wheelock's Latin on the Indo-European language family that "blew his mind" and opened the vertical dimension of knowledge for the first timeHow the classical education movement grew from living room conversations in Tempe, Arizona to the President's cabinet and the internal "30 years war" Andrew fears it must avoidChapters:00:00: Introduction01:49: Andrew's Mother as First Teacher16:14: Middle School and the Pandering Culture20:55: Trinity School at Greenlawn23:45: Latin Tutoring with Bill Walker35:42: Lead and They Will Follow49:06: Wheelock's Latin and the Language Revelation57:48: The Path to Teaching and Great Hearts01:04:38: Good Books and Cultural Inputs01:09:09: The Classical Ed Movement: Past and FutureResources Mentioned:University of DallasGreat Hearts AmericaThe Paideia Proposal by Mortimer J. AdlerArcadia EducationClassical Learning TestHosted by Ryan Klopak (Arcadia Education) and Alex Julian (CLT). The Furrows podcast features leaders in classical education who have been transformed by classical education. Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios.