Developing Classical Thinkers

In this webinar, Katie Flaherty presented strategies and classroom resources to bring together History, Art, Archaeology, and Culture into the Foreign Language classroom through a sample Latin curriculum ranging from grades 6-12. Flaherty also discussed additional pedagogical resources for increasing teacher confidence and knowledge on these topics outside the classroom.

Mrs. Flaherty received a B.A. in Classics and a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Tennessee - Knoxville, a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Classical Languages from the University of California - Los Angeles, and a M.A. in Classics from Florida State University. Mrs. Flaherty teaches Latin.

In this webinar, humanities instructor Zach Palmer discussed strategies parents and teachers can implement to address and improve student writing. To help improve student outcomes, teachers can coordinate with one another to prioritize writing effectively rather than overload students with the sheer quantity of papers and compositions.

Mr. Palmer also went over sample writing assignments used in the past that provide students with quality, useful feedback.

Mr. Palmer received a B.A. in History from Hillsdale College and a Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction, with a concentration in History from Liberty University. Mr. Palmer teaches American History, Western Civilization, and Civics.

Rhetoric is the art of public speaking, the ability to give a stirring and persuasive speech. Accordingly, the ancients looked at rhetoric as the one indispensable skill for leadership and public service.

This webinar offered practical tips for successfully navigating public speaking opportunities, including how to get over nervousness, how to project your voice, how to memorize a speech, how (or when) to use your hands, and other practical areas of concern when one is speaking in public. Rubrics and materials are available upon request.

Winston Brady has taught at Thales Academy since 2011 and has served Thales Academy in a variety of ways. Mr. Brady received a B.A. in English from the College of William and Mary, a M.Div. from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and a MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Mr Brady serves as the Director of Curriculum and Thales Press.

Happy Valentine's Day! In this reposted episode, Winston Brady speaks with longtime DCT contributor Will Begley about the life of St. Valentine. St. Valentine is a holiday that many people celebrate but few people know why we do so. When did we start celebrating Valentine's Day? Who was St. Valentine? Why hearts? Was this holiday cooked up to sell cards and chocolate, or was there something real, true, and meaningful at the heart of Valentine's Day?

In this episode, Will Begley makes some guesses about the origins of St. Valentine’s Day, how Valentine’s Day became a day of card-and-rose-giving, and the backstory behind a number of the different St. Valentine figures.

The apostle Paul, author of a series of letters in the New Testament, had a vocation by which he took care of himself through the day: tentmaking. Indeed, as a pharisee, Paul was required to learn such a trade so that he had a meaningful, marketable skill with which to earn his daily bread and bless others. The idea is so popular that individuals in education or in ministry refer to side jobs (or even a full-time job) as "tentmaking"--that is, something outside of their highly-specialized academic that is more technical and hands-on.

In this episode, Winston Brady speaks with Miguel Echevarria, a professor of New Testament at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, NC about the idea of tentmaking and how students can learn from Paul's example.

Dr. Echevarria is the co-author of a new book on Paul entitled, "40 Questions About the Apostle Paul," available here on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/40-Questions-About-Apostle-Paul/dp/0825447526/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3IIHUOPSYNUKN&keywords=miguel+echevarria&qid=1704821075&sprefix=miguel+echev%2Caps%2C98&sr=8-1

In this episode, Winston Brady and Keller Moore discuss classroom management tips and strategies, with Winston sharing three rulers or, better yet, "hypothetical scenarios" to help classroom teachers manage large classrooms between 25 and 35 students, at the Junior High level. Those scenarios are as follows:

Hypothetical Scenario #1: If someone is talking, you should not be talking.
Hypothetical Scenario #2: If we are working, please stay in your seats.
Hypothetical Scenario #3: If you have time to “lean,” you have time to clean.

In this episode, Winston Brady speaks with Hunter Hastings, Vice President of the Kingman Institute. The Kingman Institute is dedicated to integrating the principles of entrepreneurial free-market capitalism into business and education. We teach the morality of merit-based reward and an applicable understanding of value-based entrepreneurship.

Hunter Hastings is an economist by education, a marketer in my professional track, a venture capitalist by vocation, and a passionate supporter of entrepreneurship. He currently serves as the Vice President of the Kingman Institute.

More information about Hunter Hasting and his work can be found at https://hunterhastings.com/

One Thales Rolesville staff member is leaving this quarter, taking a job at a local sandwich shop. While his departure is sad, we not only wish him the best but want to draw out from this new opportunity some valuable lessons for our students.

Chief among those lessons are: the value of hard work, the joy of learning in and of itself, and the need to learn those people skills called "emotional intelligence" needed to flourish.

Take care, Mr. Crownover!

Key among her insights: the need for leaders to "connect" before they "correct", cultivate a sense of empathy and sympathy with their team, and be willing to endure the same sorts of challenges students and teachers go through each school day.In this episode, Winston Brady speaks with Rachael Bradley, administrator of the Thales Academy Franklin campus. In the episode, Rachael shares her insights into being an administrator and how to motivate both students and teachers to give their best each day.



Rachael Bradley has a passion for education that has accompanied her throughout her career. Mrs. Bradley is a strong advocate of the formation cultivated and maintained at Thales Academy. Mrs. Bradley received a B.S. in Family and Child Development and an M.A. in Education from Virginia Tech. She has worked in private, public, and charter schools throughout her career in teaching. She currently serves as the administrator at Thales Academy Franklin campus, located just outside of Nashville, Tennessee.

Interested in teaching at Thales Academy? Please check out our website if you are interested in pursuing a career at Thales Academy and learning about needs across our network. Find out more at https://www.thalesacademy.org/contact/careers.

Our theme music is Vivaldi's "Four Seasons," performed by John Harrison.

Merry Christmas! With Christmas coming up, it's time to revisit our favorite Christmas films and understand the elements that make up a Christmas film. In the episode, Winston Brady and Keller Moore discuss the criteria that make for an essential Christmas film.
The criteria are as follows:

(1) A Christmas film must have a happy ending

(2) A Christmas film must end in a state of good fortune for the protagonist

(3) A Christmas movie must have at least one warm and fuzzy moment

(4) A Christmas film must have at least one scene with snow

Let us know what you think in the comments. Merry Christmas!

In this webinar, just in time for the 2023-Christmas season, Dr. Anthony Esolen walked viewers through four seminal pieces of art including: "The Nativity" by Giotto (1314-1315), "The Presentation of the Holy Family" by Mantegna (1455), "Christ among the Doctors" by Dirck van Baburen (1622), and "The Holy Family" by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1650).

The beauty we see, hear, or touch has the power to enter our minds and memories more powerfully than do philosophical or political abstractions expressed in words. As teachers, we must remember this, especially when we want to introduce our students to ways of life embodied in another culture. A painting -- even the decorated hilt of a sword -- can work wonders. Dr. Anthony Esolen received his A.B. in English Literature from Princeton University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Renaissance English Literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Dr. Esolen has been a professor of literature and humanities for 35 years and is the author or translator of more than 30 books, which include a range of English translations, analyses of culture, literary and Biblical criticisms, meditations on modern education, meditations on the Christian life, and original poetry. Dr. Esolen is a senior editor and regular writer at Touchstone magazine and has published well over 1000 articles in a wide variety of journals. With his wife, Debra, he writes a daily a web magazine, Word & Song, dedicated to language, music, poetry, and classic film.

On this date, at 7:55, December 7, 1941, Imperial Japan launched their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Their goal was to keep the U.S. military from supporting American possessions like the Philippines and Guam or British outposts like Singapore and Hong Kong. Such territories Japan attacked within hours of striking Pearl Harbor, annexing them all as part of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, the name Japan had given to their empire.



Check out reflections on Pearl Harbor from Winston Brady, available in two forms: on our podcast Developing Classical Thinkers and at the American Spectator.

Theme music is from John Harrison and the Wichita State Players.

In this talk, George Leef presented an overview of education policy in the United States, beginning with the Higher Education Act of 1965. Mr. Leef's examined the many unintended consequences that have resulted from federal meddling and government intrusion into higher education and academia, chief amongst these unintended consequences was the transformation of standard curricula away from the liberal arts and towards a series of social goals.

George Leef is director of editorial content for the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. He holds a bachelor of arts degree from Carroll College (Waukesha, WI) and a juris doctor from Duke University School of Law. He is the host of Classical Cafe on radio station WCPE in Wake Forest, NC is the author of two books, "Free Choice for Workers" in 2005 and a novel, "The Awakening of Jennifer Van Arsdale" in 2022.

This lecture was delivered live at the Fall Classical Summit, a regional classical conference held at Thales Academy Rolesville Junior High-High School on October 6, 2023.

Interested in teaching at Thales Academy? Please check out our website if you are interested in pursuing a career at Thales Academy and learning about needs across our network. Find out more at https://www.thalesacademy.org/contact/careers.

The Covid-19 pandemic has radically reshaped our world and almost every level of society. Capitalizing on these changes, the World Economic Forum has been urging a “great reset” for civic and political leaders to reshape the world in light of the pandemic. But what changes are they proposing, and will any of these changes make our world a better place?

Learn about these changes and more in this lecture from Brian Balfour, a Senior Vice President of Research for the John Locke Foundation. Mr. Balfour oversees the organization’s research and analysis on a variety of issues related to economic policy.

If you want to read more of Mr. Balfour's work, check out Brian Balfour's "Economics in Action," a high school economics textbook based on the principles of the Austrian School of Economics. The book is available from Thales Press: https://amzn.to/3W4cmZs This webinar was streamed live on November 16, 2023.

Interested in teaching at Thales Academy? Please check out our website if you are interested in pursuing a career at Thales Academy and learning about needs across our network. Find out more at https://www.thalesacademy.org/contact/careers.

Thanksgiving is today, so it is an appropriate time to look back and reflect on all the things we should be thankful for.

I was reminded of these things watching, then editing a recent webinar from Dr. Anthony Esolen, entitled To Read a Painting, to Enter Another World. While watching, I was reminded of how blessed I was to have gotten an education like this growing up. Dr. Esolen’s walked the audience through four paintings in carefully interpreted explanations of iconography, techniques, the painters used to achieve, vibrant, scintillating colors, and the ways that we could identify an artwork. It was created just by the artist’s use of colors. Dr. Esolen gave a wonderful webinar, and it reminded me of art classes I got to attend while I was in high school and college.

Such an education is a journey filled with many twists and turns and unexpected parties (to use Tolkien’s words). Like Tintoretto’s “Annunciation,” the wider world may be full of debris—broken pieces of wood and ruined stones—but occasionally moments of great beauty burst in.
Likewise with the first Thanksgiving. The Pilgrims were sojourning in a cold, rocky unforgiving wilderness and yet, there were those moments when profound clarity burst through like the angel Gabriel visiting Mary. Like how the Pilgrims found fields already sowed and planted, thus giving them food supplies when they would otherwise run out. A Native American named Squanto who spoke English and could teach them how to survive the bitter New England winter. Or the foresight to compile a founding charter, the Mayflower Compact, which would serve as the first governing document in the United States.

As I examine my own life, I see those moments of beauty and clarity when God burst through and directed my attention to the better things, the sublime things, that inspire the soul and bring joy to life.

I hope that on Thanksgiving, such moments may happen to you as you gather with family and friends and celebrate the things that really matter.

How can you learn about, or teach about, the Renaissance or any great period of human civilization, from dwelling upon the art that the masters produced? If the beauty we see or hear or touch enters our minds and memories more powerfully than do ideas expressed in words, isn't it advisable for the teacher to show how the ideas of a culture are embodied in art? What experience does the student have, for example, when he is taught to "read" two very different paintings of the same subject, one from the early Renaissance and one from the time near its end?

In this lecture, Dr. Anthony Esolen answered these questions and more as he walked through four great works of art: "The Annunciation" by Fra Angelico, "The Annunciation" by Jacopo Tintoretto, "Magdalene Penitent" by Donatello, and "Magdalene Penitent" by Caravaggio.

Originally from northeastern Pennsylvania and the grandson of southern Italian immigrants, Dr. Anthony Esolen received his A.B. in English Literature from Princeton University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Renaissance English Literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Esolen serves as Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Thales College.

It is increasingly difficult to find students at the collegiate level who know how to engage in spirited, rigorous, but amiable debate about important matters. Grandstanding, emotive outbursts calculated to silence opposition, and the recitation of prefabricated talking points mark much of the environment. Rather than seeking to expose the truth, much of what counts for debate is actually aimed at domination and manifests an unhealthy conformance to the reigning ideas of a school of thought or a political activist agenda. A proper training from a younger age in the art of seminar discussion would help contemporary college students navigate the choppy waters of young adulthood.

This talk addressed how those of us who teach secondary students can create environments free, curious, and open for seminar discussions. It will address the goals of a seminar; the necessary habits and tools for a fruitful discussion; and common mistakes that spoil a seminar.

Andrew J. Zwerneman serves as Cana Academy’s President and as Cana Academy's Master Teachers. For 39 years, he has taught and consulted in secondary schools that emphasize classic humanities. For 19 years he headed schools—2 at the public charter school, Tempe Preparatory Academy in Tempe, Arizona, 17 at Trinity School at Meadow View in Falls Church, Virginia.

He is the founder and owner of The Academy Project, LLC, which wrote the curricula and trained faculties for Thomas MacLaren School in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Trinity Academy in Portland, Oregon. Education: B.A., A.B.D., University of Notre Dame; M.A., St. John’s University. He is the author of "History Forgotten and Remembered" (2020) and "The Life We Have Together: A Case for Humane Studies, A Vision for Renewal" (2022).

This lecture was delivered live at the Fall Classical Summit, a regional classical conference held at Thales Academy Rolesville Junior High-High School on October 6, 2023.

Interested in teaching at Thales Academy? Please check out our website if you are interested in pursuing a career at Thales Academy and learning about needs across our network. Find out more at https://www.thalesacademy.org/contact/careers.

In August 2023, Thales Press published The Thales Way by Bob Luddy, founder of Thales Academy. The Thales Way explains the history and mission of Thales Academy, the rationale for our educational approaches, and standards and methods for teachers, students, and families.

In this episode, host Winston Brady speaks with Bob Luddy about the book, his vision for the school, and his heart for students coming through Thales Academy.

Check out The Thales Way on Amazon at https://bit.ly/3rNWC2e and be sure to leave us a review of the work.

Theme music is Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" and the Wichita State University Chamber Players, available here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHUWnB10_4I&list=PLdqEepE4oj9Y277Dn6MBDIn2AktxD2WUo

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), is an economic theory that allows unlimited government spending financed by deficits and debt. However, MMT leads to high taxes, high-interest rates and lower growth. High government debt crowds out private investment, which is critical to production and growth. MMT and related policies of the federal government have also led to bank failures such as the Silicon Valley Bank.

In this lecture, Bob Luddy explained the financial and economic underpinnings of MMT and why this economic theory causes more disastrous consequences the more we act on it.

Bob Luddy is the founder of Thales Academy and the President of CaptiveAire Systems, a leading manufacturer of commercial kitchen ventilation equipment. In 2007, Bob opened Thales Academy, a network of private schools offering a high-quality Pre-K-12 education at affordable tuition. The Luddy Schools are quickly growing, with over 5,000 students enrolled throughout North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.

Bob is an avid supporter of entrepreneurs and the free market system, and published his book, “Entrepreneurial Life: The Path from Startup to Market Leader,” in 2018. This lecture was delivered live at the Fall Classical Summit, a regional classical conference held at Thales Academy Rolesville Junior High-High School on October 6, 2023.

Interested in teaching at Thales Academy? Please check out our website if you are interested in pursuing a career at Thales Academy and learning about needs across our network. Find out more at https://www.thalesacademy.org/contact/careers.

Classical Education is concerned, as a matter of first importance, with the cultivation of the virtues in our students. But we cannot have a reliable grip on what the virtues of a human being are without an accurate philosophical account of the nature of the human person, i.e. without a solid understanding of what it means to be human, a concept known as philosophical anthropology. This subject is especially important now, given the widespread confusion about human nature and personal identity in our contemporary culture, including in our schools. In this workshop, I will seek to do two things.

To support his argument, Dr. Forrest begins with the Natural Law tradition and then outlines a philosophical account of humans as essentially conscious embodied creatures. Then, Dr. Forrest draws out practical implications of this account for classical educators in general and teachers in the classroom in particular.

Peter Forrest, Ph.D., received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Oxford in 2015, after having previously received a B.Phil. in philosophy from Oxford in 2011, a M.A. in philosophical theology from Yale University Divinity School in 2009, and a B.A. in English from Yale University in 2005. Dr. Forrest’s primary area of research has been in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, and he has spent the past five years teaching undergraduates in the philosophy department at Auburn University. He is married and is father to two young children, and in his spare time he enjoys coaching his son’s soccer team. He serves as the Dean of Humanities for Thales College.

This lecture was delivered live at the Fall Classical Summit, a regional classical conference held at Thales Academy Rolesville Junior High-High School on October 6, 2023.


Interested in teaching at Thales Academy? Please check out our website if you are interested in pursuing a career at Thales Academy and learning about needs across our network. Find out more at https://www.thalesacademy.org/contact/careers.

Theme music is Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" and the Wichita State University Chamber Players, available here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHUWnB10_4I&list=PLdqEepE4oj9Y277Dn6MBDIn2AktxD2WUo