In this episode, Jesse Hake talks with Sarah Kwilinski about her new ClassicalU course, Restoring Wonder for Every Learner: Universal Design in the Classical Tradition, and how classical education can faithfully serve every learner through what she calls "durable hospitality." Drawing on more than twenty-five years in special education and the influence of Dr. Amy Gilbert Richards, Sarah explains why universal design is not merely an accommodation strategy but a return to time-tested classical practices that benefit all students. She challenges prevailing assumptions about homework, standardized testing, inclusion, and early academic pressure while offering practical alternatives rooted in narration, the common arts, Charlotte Mason's philosophy, and the principle of festina lente. Sarah also shares how Sundial Classical School & Farmstead's small-group instruction, multi-age classrooms, collaborative culture, and emphasis on building the student before emphasizing academic performance have produced remarkable outcomes for learners with and without disabilities. The conversation explores why assessment should cultivate student ownership rather than anxiety, how parents become indispensable partners in education, and what schools can learn from current research on early childhood education. Throughout the discussion, Sarah and Jesse point toward resources including Chris Hall's ClassicalU course, Common Arts Education, Dr. Amy Gilbert Richards' ClassicalU course, Disability and Classical Education: Student Formation in Keeping with Our Common Humanity, Christopher Perrin and Carrie Eben's The Good Teacher, NOVARE Science, and the Templeton Master of Arts in Classical Teaching program while highlighting research from Vanderbilt University's Tennessee Pre-K Study. Whether you're a classroom teacher, school leader, or parent, this conversation offers a hopeful vision for restoring wonder, dignity, and genuine flourishing to every learner.

Listeners may also be interested in related ClassicalU courses, including Jason Barney's Charlotte Mason: A Liberal Education for All and Narration: A Classical Guide, which further explore the educational philosophy and teaching practices that complement many of the ideas discussed in this episode.

Recorded on site at True North Classical Academy, Jesse Hake speaks with Patricio Mendez, philosophy teacher and the Director of EdTech & Analytics, about recovering teaching as a vocation of love rather than a transaction of grades. Mendez describes his philosophy course as an effort not merely to teach the history of philosophy, but to help students philosophize, encounter wisdom, and enter into a living relation with texts, teachers, and one another. He explains why he tells students at the beginning of the year that they already have an "A”, a practice meant to unsettle grade-driven habits and open space for love of the true, good, and beautiful. The conversation turns to concrete classroom patterns: beginning with poetry recitation, using catechism to place students before trusted authorities, moving through Socratic circles toward student-led seminars, and treating writing as a spiritual exercise rather than a mere performance of answers. Mendez also reflects on how Classical U, especially a lesson on Flannery O’Connor, has shaped his sense of Christ, scandal, and the true, good, and beautiful as a real encounter rather than a mere academic exercise. The episode closes by considering how data and analytics can serve a school only when they are understood as partial reflections of the student rather than the student himself. Throughout, Mendez presents education as a communal, contemplative act in which students gradually learn to ask genuine questions, participate in truth, and “know the place for the first time”.

Listeners may also be interested in other ClassicalU courses such as “Awakening the Moral Imagination through Fairy Tales and Stories” and "Teaching the Great Books".

In this episode of the ClassicalU Podcast, Jesse Hake speaks with Jessica Hooten-Wilson about her forthcoming book on Christian women whose lives and work have often been neglected because they are “too Christian for the feminists and too feminist for the Christians.” Hooten-Wilson looks to women at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as models for overcoming false divides between home and work, motherhood and the life of the mind, and Christian faith and women’s public voices. Through figures such as Anna Julia Cooper, Dorothy L. Sayers, Edith Stein, Mother Maria of Paris, Kate Bushnell, and Julian of Norwich, she explores how narrative portraits can illuminate deeper questions of Christian anthropology, virtue, vocation, and formation. The conversation highlights the need for classical Christian educators to recover women’s stories within the living tradition, not as additions for novelty’s sake, but as models of human flourishing worthy of imitation. Hooten-Wilson also reflects on silence as contemplative stillness rather than speechlessness, motherhood as both biological and spiritual, and the way women’s voices strengthen homes, schools, churches, and culture. The episode closes with practical suggestions for introducing students to women in the tradition through texts by Julian of Norwich, Perpetua, Christine de Pizan, and others. You can find more of Jessica Hooten-Wilson work through her substack and her podcast.

Suggested Reading & Resources:

• The Black Intellectual Tradition by Dr. Anika Prather, Dr. Angel Adams Parham, et al.
• The Passion of Perpetua by Mia Donato et al.
• The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pizan
• The Man Born to Be King by Dorothy Sayers
• The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place Complete 6-Book Set by Maryrose Wood
• Flannery O'Connor's Why Do the Heathen Rage?: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Work in Progress by Jessica Hooten-Wilson
• Reading for the Love of God: How to Read as a Spiritual Practice by Jessica Hooten-Wilson
• The Scandal of Holiness: Renewing Your Imagination in the Company of Literary Saints by Jessica Hooten-Wilson

Suggested ClassicalU courses:

• Women in the Liberal Arts Tradition
• The Black Intellectual Tradition and the Great Conversation