Aug 14, 2025
Leaders in Catholic Education: Michael Ortner’s Three-Part Model by Dr. Melissa Mitchell at Word on Fire. Continuing our Leaders in Catholic Education series highlighting Catholic leaders around the country playing significant roles in the Catholic renewal movement, I would like to introduce Michael Ortner, founder of the Ortner Family Foundation. Michael coauthored The Catholic School Playbook (Word on Fire)…Ortner was inspired to write the Catholic School Playbook because “much of the spiritual, intellectual, and cultural phenomena of the Catholic education renewal movement is not getting enough publicity. These three pillars of formation distinguish Catholic schools from their secular peers.” Read
What Kids Told Us About How to Get Them Off Their Phones by Lenore Skenazy, Zach Rausch, and Jonathan Haidt at The Atlantic. One common explanation for why children spend so much of their free time on screens goes like this: Smartphones and social-media platforms are addicting them. Kids stare at their devices and socialize online instead of in person because that’s what tech has trained them to want. But this misses a key part of the story. The three of us collaborated with the Harris Poll to survey a group of Americans whose perspectives don’t often show up in national data: children. Read
With New Cell Phone Ban, Texas Students Will Have To Start Talking To Each Other by Auguste Meyrat at The Federalist. With August upon us, the month most kids dread after summer vacation, Texas public school teachers like myself are singing a different tune. The Texas legislature has banned cellphone use on all school campuses during school hours. Thanks to this new policy, Texas students will no longer scroll on TikTok during lessons, Google answers during assessments, and violently clash with teachers who ask them to put away their phones. Read
A Classical Revival: How a New Jersey Catholic School Went From Almost Closed to Thriving by Mark Di Ionno at National Catholic Register. “We teach about what is true, good and beautiful. In the classroom, the animating principles are courage and charity, taught through Christ’s life and the Gospel, and Greek, Roman and Catholic intellectualism.” There is emphasis on great books and great thinkers, from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle to Jesus Christ, St. Paul the Apostle, St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. High schoolers read Homer’s The Odyssey, De Officiis (“On Duties”) by Cicero and The Aeneid by Virgil. Latin lessons begin in grade school. Read
Three Schools Point the Way to Making Good Men by Jeff Minick at Intellectual Takeout. Three years ago, Ben Strong and others founded St. Andrew’s Academy in Verona, Ky. It’s a Catholic boarding school and farm for high school boys which “aims to cultivate a genuine and masculine love for the true, good, and beautiful in the hearts of her students.” Students who attend St. Andrews receive a classical education, reading and discussing great literature and delving into history and the other liberal arts…Strong is an alumnus of Gregory the Great Academy in Pennsylvania, which offers a similar mission and program for young men. A third school, St. Martin’s Academy in Kansas, tracks this same regimen of study, work, and play with its students. Read
Socratic Dialectic in the Classroom by Scott Crider at The Imaginative Conservative. Although it may seem obvious, even trite, to call up Socrates from the old underworld to think about classroom discussions, I will be doing just that…After defining the “what” of Socratic dialectic (as extracted from one episode of Plato’s Euthyphro), I will explore the why, when, and how. Read
Bishop Barron Gets Catholic Ed Right by Thomas Griffin at National Catholic Register. Those who lead and work at Catholic schools spend ample time reflecting on mission: Is the main mission of the school to proclaim Jesus Christ? Such a question was at the heart of a recent interview that Bishop Robert Barron had on his platform, The Word on Fire Show. Read
Faith in Action: Inside a California Academy Preparing Students for a Life of Service by Susan Klemond at National Catholic Register. St. Joseph Academy, founded by two Catholic mothers in 1995, seeks to prepare students for heaven, which is preparation to love and will the good of others, and giving students opportunities to serve others in concrete actions is a way to incarnate the Gospel and all they learn in class about love and the virtues, said Mark Kalpakgian, who begins his first full term as SJA president this fall. Read
Kids Need the Classics by Mark Bauerlein at First Things. The latest installment of an ongoing interview series with contributing editor Mark Bauerlein. Nathan Antiel joins in to discuss Classical Education and Classical Academic Press and Humanitas. Listen
Homer's Odyssey? Why Not Shackleton's? by Jeannette DeCelles-Zwerneman at Cana Academy. In their eagerness to introduce young students to classical literature, some schools are giving their charges editions of Homer’s Odyssey, or something like it. What the students are usually given is plot summaries and retellings of the action of the Odyssey in prose. Often, the students are studying synopses and sampled reductions from episodes in the Odyssey that oversimplify the language and content in order to make the story more accessible and sanitized for the students. These editions rob the poem of its distinctive poetic character, which lies at the heart of its meaning, and reduce the reading to an exercise in cultural literacy. Read
The Washington Post’s Crusade Against School Choice by Brittany Bernstein at National Review. The Washington Post reported last week that “Public schools are closing as Arizona’s school voucher program soars.” But as the Goldwater Institute first pointed out, the Post’s decision to link the school closures to the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA) program is disingenuous. Read
3 Ways Praying The Rosary Will Help Your Kids by Shaun McAfee at Catholic Link. As a dad of seven and a lifelong devotee of Our Lady, I’ve always had a soft spot for the Rosary. But something changed when I became a father. The Rosary stopped being just my prayer—it became our prayer. I began to see it not only as a lifeline for my own spiritual health, but as one of the most powerful gifts I could hand down to my kids. That’s why I wrote Saint Dominic and the Rosary, the first in a new children’s book series I’ve dreamed of for years. Read
Throwback Thursday
On Discipline: Giving Room for Good Things featuring Colin Gleason at The Heights Cast on November 13, 2021. This week we feature a rebroadcast of a 2021 talk from our lower school head, Colin Gleason. Mr. Gleason addressed the topic of discipline using decades of experience in the Valley, converting the lessons he shares with his homeroom teachers into ideas for parents at home. Ultimately, his guidance is all about bringing a long-term vision and great love into our attitudes of discipline, willing the good for our boys with all earnest humility. Whether you’re thinking the kitchen or the classroom, Mr. Gleason encourages us to foster a culture of respectful dominion. Listen