← Hillsdale College K-12 Classical Education Podcast
Loading summary
Transcript8 lines
- [00:01]
A
Great books, great people, great ideas. Learning about these things is critical to being a well educated human being and we can help with the Hillsdale Dialogues. Each week, Hillsdale College President Larry Arne joins radio veteran Hugh Hewitt to discuss topics of enduring relevance. And from time to time they also talk about current events, but always with an eye toward more fundamental truths. And they want you to tune in to a conversation like no other. The Hillsdale Dialogues are posted every Monday on the Hillsdale College podcast network at par podcast hillsdale edu that's podcast hillsdale edu or listen via Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you find your audio.
- [00:49]
B
Welcome to The Hillsdale College K12 classical.
- [00:52]
A
Education podcast, bringing you insight into classical.
- [00:56]
B
Education and its unique emphasis on human virtue and moral character, responsible citizenship, content, rich curricula and teacher led classrooms.
- [01:05]
A
Now your host Scott Bertram.
- [01:08]
C
We continue a series of episodes from presentations delivered at Hoagland center for Teacher Excellence Seminars. The Hoagland center for Teacher Excellence, an outreach of The Hillsdale College K12 education office, offers educators the opportunity to deepen their content knowledge and refine their skills in the classroom. These one day conferences are hosted during the academic year in cities across the nation and feature presentations by Hillsdale College faculty, K12 office staff and leaders in the Hillsdale Network of member schools. There is no cost to attend and attendees may earn professional development credits. Currently, the Hoagland center is hosting a series exploring the art of teaching a variety of subjects. To learn more about upcoming events, Visit our website k12 hillsdale.edu.
- [01:58]
B
Good afternoon everybody. It's an honor to be in front of you speaking to you. I am given 15 minutes to inspire you so I'll see what I can do. As Eric mentioned, I'm semi I'm the founding headmaster. Headmaster is just another term for principal. I would start by asking you to just silently respond to the question of what is the purpose of education? Because that was the question that led me to being where I am now. I must confess that the beginning of my journey in entering the educational world did not start with this question. It started more so with my identity and my own calling, my own personal conviction, just a little bit of background about me, my life story. Because you'll understand why I chose my first path of entering the educational world. I lost my mother to cancer when I was seven years old. I immigrated to America in fourth grade. I was an English learner until eighth grade. I was on the verge of being deported before high school. I was qualified as a low income family and was told that we don't have money for me to go to college. Wanted to go to college so that I could become a dentist. And got into UCSD with a four years of financial aid and scholarship. My second year of completing biochemistry I realized that being a dentist is a nightmare, it's not my calling. And decided to change my path to what I was most passionate about, which was teaching. And so I received a clear conviction to become a teacher. The year that I graduated was 2008 when every other teacher was getting a pink slip in California. So I picked the perfect year to become a teacher. Nonetheless, I decided to pursue my dream and. And when searching for the options, I really didn't have many options. When I went on edjoin, there was literally one posting that I was qualified to apply and it was, that was the beginning of my journey. I did feel that it really matched what I felt like I was personally convicted to enter. It was a charter school organization where I stayed for 11 years. I recognize actually some of you who are from the same organization. So I'm really happy to see you here. Beautiful community, beautiful team of convicted people, beautiful school buildings. We were given a brand new school building for free. Something that I can't imagine happening right now and just really high performing school. I would say that my job was a pretty easy job to manage as a principal. Not because the school itself did not have challenges, but because we had a team of 33 regional office people who would help me with the HR and payroll and credentialing. And you just had so many dedicated people doing the job for you. And so it was a school where it would be self functioning even without me having to be there every day. And so to give up a fairly high paying job that was self functioning to come and start a brand new school in the city of Orange. Not only not just a school, but a classical school where I had never been a classical leader before. And to do that in year 2020 at the very beginning of COVID 19, the same time my husband lost his job because his company shut down because of COVID It was just a crazy, crazy experience through lots of divine interventions. Got a strong conviction to jump into it. Not knowing what I was doing, but just trusting that there's a reason why I'm entering into this new area. But going back to 13 years ago, before OCCA began, I loved our community, I loved our students, I loved the families, I loved the people that I worked with. But once I started, once I stepped into the principal role and I started paying attention to the purpose of education. The more and more I started thinking and reflecting on it, the more I realized that it did not match my purpose of education. I should have checked the mission and vision sooner. I didn't. The mission and vision in California for most of the schools are all about college and career readiness. In one of the charter schools that I taught at, the principal, every morning assembly, he would shout, 8:04. And the hundreds of students would respond, we want more. And they would shout back with such strong conviction. And it was one morning while I was just standing in the back and staring at them that it really hit me, is that really what we're teaching them to do? 8004 was the test score. Back then it was the API score. The principal wanted a better rating, a better evaluation, which was determined by the test scores. And so the student shouting back, I don't know what it was, but one morning I just stared at them. And then I started crying. I realized it was that moment, okay, this is not my definition as a mom. I wouldn't want my boys shouting back, we want more of the test score. I started to go and explore a little bit more around what else do we do? Like, what is our instructional priorities? What do we focus on? How do we determine what defines true success for our students? The organization that I came from was one of the biggest charter school network across the country. We served over 10,000 students total. There were hundreds of great leaders, and unfortunately, where it was heading, headed did not align with my mission and my values. One of the seminars, as you can see, this was an actual worksheet that the principals used to reflect on defining success of our organization. Every month, once a month, we had a principal meeting and I would attend and I would try to argue about making our priority into critical thinking and reading. That was always my argument. And every year I lost. I lost that argument. So much of the organizational priorities were leaning towards stem. And while STEM is awesome and our school has stem, but when you look at stem, science, technology, engineering and math, it's leaving out the most important thinking skills and a child who knows how to read and write, not only functionally, but they believe in it and they find joy in it. They will learn to think critically in all other content areas. And that was my argument, but unfortunately, the leadership did not hear me. Unfortunately, most of the training for principals involved what we called DEI counseling. Here is one of the worksheets that they presented to all the principals. And so I remember sitting in a seat and I was asked to categorize myself, whether I was under the privileged group or the marginalized group. As an Asian American, I was apparently privileged. And as a cisgender, I was privileged. And as a Christian, I was privileged. I did not agree with the statement and my personality. I'm not the person to go along with something that ended up turning into just further discussions of very difficult conversations that involved hr. The more and more I explored, the more I really could not fathom that this was truly what's best for students. I really cared a lot about our community, about my 420 students. Aspire had so much money as a principal, I had at least $7 million in reserve money that I was pressured to use. I wish I had that problem. Now we don't. The $7 million. With the pressure, the organization decided to quickly transition into what they call the blended learning model, where all of our students, starting in kinder, would be in front of a computer for half the day. That really broke my heart. On top of that, we were pressured to adopt a 4D learning program to enhance the experiences for things like science. Parents were starting to get very angry because one of the years when I was a principal, we were given a curriculum to teach to our fifth graders, starting in fifth graders to educate them about sex education. I read the entire curriculum and there were things on there that I would not be okay as a parent, that my own children will be taught by the school. And so this wasn't even about me being a Christian. This was me advocating for just being a parent. So I did speak to the leadership of the organization and was responded with, well, it's okay as long as your school doesn't teach it, or it's okay, but never mention this to parents. And so if this is a curriculum that they're proudly using to educate the hearts and minds of our children, why would they want to hide it from parents? The truth was being revealed more and more the more I started to pay attention to the education policies. And so I just continued to search. And before my own children, I have two boys. Before my own children were ready to go to kindergarten, I visited a few of the top performing schools in California and was also not impressed. The same mission and vision existed with college and career readiness. Kindergarten students would receive one to one laptop only to do their homework also on their computers. So Aristotle talks about the three things that humankind tend to pursue when they are truly seeking pleasure. Money and honor. The problem with pleasure is that it's only temporary. Problem with money is that we all know that it's meant to be used as A tool. It doesn't guarantee happiness. If that were true, then all rich people will be happy. But we know that that's not true. Honor. The problem is that it depends on somebody to give you honor. And not everyone's going to give you honor. So how do we lead our students to pursue happiness? Keep talking. Can you guys hear me? How do we lead our students to truly pursue happiness? Because isn't that the end goal for all of us? Don't we work so hard to make sure that our students are truly pursuing happiness? We don't want them to just become functional human beings where they go to a college, good college. And nowadays defining good college, we can't even define it the same way. And even getting a job, a high paying job, is that what's going to bring them happiness? The answer for me as a principal, as a mom, was that the child has to truly pursue what's good and beautiful and true. And that is one of the primary mission of classical education is that we see them beyond the functional citizenship. We see them as human beings, a soul. And we protect our hearts and minds and souls. The more I started exploring classical education, the more I realized that it really fit the ideal philosophy that I have always dreamed about. We say that we teach moral virtues and intellectual virtues. And in doing so, teaching of the moral virtues will ensure that a child is learning to protect his or her heart. Intellectual virtues is just as important. Gaining wisdom, growing in the content knowledge, those are all necessary. However, it cannot be more important than learning the moral virtues. I would just ask you and urge you to really think about. Does your current organization. Do you know the mission statement? Does it align with your purpose of education? And I would encourage you to join a mission that aligns with your purpose of education. I took the crazy risk. Nothing about it made sense, it was not logical. There were a lot of people saying it's never going to work. And now it's one of the schools that's thriving the most. In California we serve 744 students in grades TK through 9th grade. We have a long wait list that exceeds 1000 students every year. We are doing the best that we can to prudently expand. We will continue to expand by adding 10th grade and 11th and so on until we become a full TK through 12th grade. And the stories of our amazing teachers, our parents and our students. It will bring you to tears. It's not about just raising functional citizens, but it's about raising well rounded virtuous citizens who grow up to not only care about their well being, but who are ready to give back, who are ready to lead this country to a better place. Thank you. Thank you for taking time to listen.
- [17:17]
C
If you enjoyed this lecture, we encourage you to Visit our website, k12hillsdale.edu, for additional information on upcoming Hoagland center events and other free resources for educators.