State-based Teacher Training vs Classical Scholarship

Teacher Training

Conventional schools have teachers who spend much of their time during college, or even while earning their masters in education, learning classroom and teaching practices outside the subject they teach. Teachers often view themselves as professional teachers, not professional learners. Most Christian schools are accredited by private organizations that also accredit state schools, or have agreements with those that do, that require they enforce the state standards. Nearly every Christian accrediting body enforces state standards for teachers. Why? Today, nearly all schools, public and Christian, borrow their core system from the progressive tradition of education. This typically requires that the school conform to a slate of state standards.

What You Might See:

• Many teachers who have a state-issued teaching license
• Teacher training programs which foster a particular, “cutting-edge,” teacher method.

Emphasis: Teaching environments that focus on teacher-based methods rather than learner-based methods undercut the traditional model of the first universities and schools. Teachers who distance themselves from students as learners form a disconnect with their students, failing to inspire a curiosity in students that will lead them to pursue learning beyond their immediate test scores.

Classical Scholarship

CCE faculty are often hired without teaching degrees, but rather with academic or professional background in the area they teach. Likely, this means they love what they teach and can be creative in the way they teach. And they often know their subject well because many were trained to practice in it and pursue it, not just to teach it. Students pick up on this and develop a more natural love of every subject. ACCS member schools access teacher training resources specific to classical education.

What you might see:

• Teachers who have received their master’s degree in the subject they love teaching—humanities teachers with degrees in the liberal arts, as well as math teachers who have a degree mathematics.
• Teachers are encouraged to master the content and the texts they aspire to teach, and attend trainings and conferences which hone a more robust understanding of the Classical world.

Emphasis: CCE schools emphasize John Milton Gregory’s Seven Laws of Teaching. These laws emphasize a thorough knowledge of the subject matter at hand in the teacher (not just how to teach it), maintain the constant attention and curiosity of a student, and require students to reproduce the concepts that are being taught until they can express them well in their own words.

Gregory’s seven laws are integrated deeply into our accreditation and certification practices; they require teachers who know and love the subjects they teach, and students who are able to glean concepts from their teachers in ways they will remember and actuate.