Well over half of high school students have not read a single book in the last year. A good chunk of them have never read a book in their entire life.

Andrew Pudewa has spent thirty years fighting to reverse that trend. He is the founder of the Institute for Excellence in Writing and has taught tens of thousands of teachers and parents how to cultivate language in children.

The problem is simple. You cannot get something out of a brain that is not in there. And the linguistic input of children has collapsed because media is dumbed down and screens have fractured attention spans. Technology atrophies the skill it replaces.

Key Takeaways:

• The more screens in a classroom, the lower the reading, writing, and math skills

• Technology amplifies character so disorganized children become more disorganized

• Memory has been abandoned though it is essential for forming the mind

• Read to children at a level above their decoding skills to pull up vocabulary

• Follow CS Lewis's rule and read one old book for every new book

• Book recommendation: The Restoration of Christian Culture by John Senior

Andrew Pudewa

Founder & Director, Institute for Excellence in Writing

Dr. Johann D'Souza

Clinical Psychologist & Host 🔗 https://www.valuesfirsttherapy.com/ 🔗 https://www.valuesfirsttherapy.com/ 🔗 https://www.valuesfirstcollective.com/ 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/johanndsouza/ 🔗 https://x.com/drjohanndsouza 🔗 https://drjohanndsouza.substack.com/

#AndrewPudewa #IEW #ClassicalEducation #Homeschooling #VirtuousLeaders #ScreenFree #ReadingMatters

👇 When was the last time you finished a book?

MSNBC called him the second worst person in the world. Matt Kibbe took it as a compliment.Matt is president of Free the People and one of the leaders of the Tea Party movement. He just produced a docu-series called The Cover-Up about Anthony Fauci and gain of function research.

He believes Fauci will go to jail because Rand Paul now has subpoena power and Biden's pardon may be illegitimate.But Fauci was not the architect. Kibbe believes Fauci's real boss may be at the CIA, Homeland Security, or DOD. This was never about public health. It was a military intelligence style mad science experiment.

Key Takeaways:

• Fauci has two choices when subpoenaed: tell the truth or commit perjury

• Trump is not delivering on spending and is attacking Rand Paul instead of Lindsey Graham

• Politics is downstream of culture so storytelling matters more than statistics

• The Five Eyes countries locked down hardest, suggesting globalist coordination • To resist government oppression you do not need a majority, just brave people willing to speak

• Forever wars must end to defund the deep state and eliminate the debt

Matt Kibbe

President, Free the People

Dr. Johann D'Souza Clinical Psychologist & Host

🔗 https://www.valuesfirsttherapy.com/

🔗 https://www.valuesfirsttherapy.com/

🔗 https://www.valuesfirstcollective.com/

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/johanndsouza/

🔗 https://x.com/drjohanndsouza

🔗 https://drjohanndsouza.substack.com/

#MattKibbe #FreeThePeople #DeepState #Fauci #VirtuousLeaders #ForeverWars #RandPaul

👇 Do you think Fauci will actually face justice?

Bible Man had a lightsaber and fought off theological doubts with canned answers you would find on a Hobby Lobby plaque.

Ryan Klopack sat in that performance as a fourth grader rolling his eyes thinking, I do not know if God is in this.

Then the Twin Towers fell. And he was exposed to inexplicable evil that could not be explained away with canned answers. He needed something with extraordinary gravity. Something real.

That same year, missionaries told their story of being kidnapped by Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, thrown into prison, and walking out free after a miraculous intervention.

Ryan had a mystical encounter with God that day. He felt the weight and the presence and the glory in a way he cannot explain. It was like encountering the sun.

That encounter set him on a path of stripping away the artificial and replacing it with the real. Classical education became his bridge to Catholicism. The Latin Mass became his home.

Key Takeaways:

• Arcadia Education helps Christian and classical schools flourish by handling the processes that burn leaders out

• 92% of people who left homelessness in Scottsdale came through their relationship-based ministry

• The core of their homeless outreach was seeing people as made in the image of God with no strings attached

• Bible Man and canned Christian answers cannot stand up to real evil

• The Latin Mass preserves the weight and holiness that a God that big demands

• We need to conform to reality, not construct our own values

Ryan Klopack

Director of Executive Search, Arcadia Education

Dr. Johann D'Souza

Clinical Psychologist & Host

🔗 https://www.valuesfirsttherapy.com/

🔗 https://www.valuesfirsttherapy.com/

🔗 https://www.valuesfirstcollective.com/

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/johanndsouza/

🔗 https://x.com/drjohanndsouza

🔗 https://drjohanndsouza.substack.com/

#RyanKlopack #ArcadiaEducation #ClassicalEducation #LatinMass #VirtuousLeaders #Homelessness #CatholicFaith

👇 What stripped away the artificial and led you to encounter the real?

Two-thirds of Catholic school students gone in sixty years. But the real loss is not the numbers. It is the mission.Patrick Reilly founded the Cardinal Newman Society in 1993 after witnessing scandal after scandal at a Jesuit university. Abortion referrals. Student groups contrary to Catholic teaching. He decided someone had to defend faithful Catholic education. Thirty years later, he is still doing it.Key Takeaways:

• The Newman Guide recognizes 97 institutions and is expanding to 300 • Notre Dame is troubled. CUA under Peter Kilpatrick is thriving. • Once compromise enters, it cascades toward less Catholic identity • Parents are primarily responsible for education, not distant bureaucrats • Faith and reason must both be restored in Catholic formation • Graduates of Newman Guide schools can change the culturePatrick Reilly

Founder and President of The Cardinal Newman Society.

Dr. Johann D'Souza Clinical Psychologist & Host 🔗 https://www.valuesfirsttherapy.com/🔗 https://www.valuesfirsttherapy.com/ 🔗 https://www.valuesfirstcollective.com/ 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/johanndsouza/ 🔗 https://x.com/drjohanndsouza 🔗 https://drjohanndsouza.substack.com/

👇 Did your Catholic education actually form you in the faith?#PatrickReilly #CardinalNewmanSociety #NewmanGuide #VirtuousLeaders #CatholicEducation #FaithfulFormation

They stopped talking to each other.

Nikki Sweeney had been in education for 30 years. But after COVID, she saw something new. Kids sitting at the same table in total silence, glued to their phones.

Mental health emergencies everywhere. So she banned the phones. And the blowback was brutal. But she held the line.

In year one, mental health emergencies dropped 94%.

What You'll Learn:

• The shift happened after COVID when kids learned to communicate through devices

• There is no better way to hurt a child than to isolate them

• Kids who belong to something perform better academically and emotionally

• Your happiness is based on the quality of your relationships

• If you harness what you love and pay it forward, it never feels like work

Nikki Sweeney

Author, The Virtue Code

Founder, Pay It Forward Enterprises

Dr. Johann D'Souza Clinical Psychologist & Host 🔗 https://www.valuesfirsttherapy.com/🔗 https://www.valuesfirsttherapy.com/ 🔗 https://www.valuesfirstcollective.com/ 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/johanndsouza/ 🔗 https://x.com/drjohanndsouza 🔗 https://drjohanndsouza.substack.com/

👇 What changed when you put your phone down?

#TheVirtueCode #VirtuousLeaders #PhoneFreeSchools #MentalHealth #ConnectionNotScreens

What gets tested gets taught.That one sentence explains why College Board has shaped American education for 125 years. They own the SAT, the PSAT, and the AP courses.

And if you're a Catholic school or classical Christian school, you've been playing by rules that push students away from Augustine, Dante, and Aristotle.Jeremy Tate saw the problem and built an alternative. The Classical Learning Test launched in 2015. Ten years later, it's been adopted by West Point, the Naval Academy, and tied to state scholarships in Florida, Texas, Louisiana, and more.What You'll Learn:• College Board has driven curriculum for over a century and it's not neutral• The SAT and ACT aligned with Common Core in 2015 and that changed everything • CLT evaluates students on the Western intellectual tradition • Education is not job training because we don't know what jobs will exist in 10 years • CLT gave their investor a 20% chance of success and kept going anywayJeremy Tate Founder & CEO, Classical Learning Test Dr. Johann D'Souza Clinical Psychologist & Host 🔗 https://www.valuesfirsttherapy.com/🔗 https://www.valuesfirsttherapy.com/ 🔗 https://www.valuesfirstcollective.com/ 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/johanndsouza/ 🔗 https://x.com/drjohanndsouza 🔗 https://drjohanndsouza.substack.com/👇 What would change if your school stopped teaching to the SAT?#CLT #ClassicalLearningTest #VirtuousLeaders #ClassicalEducation #EducationReform

They stopped reading.That's what Anthony Schratz discovered after 40 years of mentoring young people. A whole generation has lost the intellectual tools to defend their faith.

So he wrote Paradise Cancelled because the paradise that radical individualism keeps promising is actually a nightmare.What You'll Learn:• The biggest challenge for young people is that they don't read and they lack depth • Individualism inflates one truth until it blocks out everything else • Selfishness always ends in loneliness because we're made for relationships • You need a mentor or coach if you want to break free from the culture • Virtue is built like physiotherapy because it hurts but it healsThe Ernescliff ModelNo phones at meals. Weekly one-on-one mentoring. Family supper every night. Three to four years of intentional formation. It's strict. It works.Anthony Schratz Director, Ernescliff University Residence Author, Paradise Cancelled Dr. Johann D'Souza Clinical Psychologist & Host 🔗 https://www.valuesfirsttherapy.com/🔗 https://www.valuesfirsttherapy.com/ 🔗 https://www.valuesfirstcollective.com/ 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/johanndsouza/ 🔗 https://x.com/drjohanndsouza 🔗 https://drjohanndsouza.substack.com/👇 What's the one virtue you're working on right now?#ParadiseCancelled #Earnscliffe #VirtuousLeaders #CatholicMentoring #VirtueFormation

Atomic Habits told you how. Aquinas told you which.Dr. Andrew Abela connected the two. The founding dean of the Busch School of Business at Catholic University of America spent years translating Thomas Aquinas for modern professionals, and discovered that the virtues are the super habits behind every meaningful success.What You'll Learn:

• The virtues are the prime habits, everything else is secondary

• Prudence has eight sub-virtues; pick one, practice daily

• Alertness (solertia) is situational awareness, and it's trainable

• Make it easy, make it obvious, make it rewarding

• Chesterton's answer to "What's wrong with the world?"—I amThe Busch School Difference 12 years. $100 million raised. High 90% placement. Graduates making $300K, one making $3 million. Employers keep coming back because virtue-formed students deliver.Andrew Abela Founding Dean, Busch School of Business, Catholic University of America Author, Super Habits Dr. Johann D'Souza Clinical Psychologist & Host 🔗 https://www.valuesfirsttherapy.com/🔗 https://www.valuesfirsttherapy.com/ 🔗 https://www.valuesfirstcollective.com/ 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/johanndsouza/ 🔗 https://x.com/drjohanndsouza 🔗 https://drjohanndsouza.substack.com/👇 Which virtue are you weakest in?#BuschSchool #Aquinas #SuperHabits #VirtuousLeaders #CatholicBusiness