CLT Launches Elite Classical Teaching Corps | Office Hours with Jeremy Tate

On this special episode of Office Hours with Jeremy Tate, Jeremy and Soren announce the launch of the CLT Classical Teaching Corps. Tune in to hear about how CLT is responding to the movement’s biggest obstacle — finding well-vetted teachers — with the new CLT Classical Teaching Corps for college seniors. They also dive into the application, which opens today, and the guaranteed job security that comes with being chosen for the initiative. 

Apply for the CLT Classical Teaching Corps: https://www.cltexam.com/classical-teaching-corps/

Transcript

Jeremy Tate (00:01.314)
CLT is responding to the biggest need in classical education, the teacher and school leader shortage. How are we addressing this? Well, you'll want to keep listening. My name is Sorin Schwab, and this is Office Hours with Jeremy Tate.

Welcome back to the CLT headquarters in Annapolis, Maryland for a special episode of Office Hours with Jeremy Tate. I'm of course, joined by the man, the legend, the one and only founder and CEO of Classic Learning Test, Mr. Jeremy Tate. Jeremy, how are I love these office hours. It's fun to just chat and to just be excited together about this movie. Absolutely. this is, mean, I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it. I mean, you've, you and I, we've been doing it for a few years. We've been traveling to a lot of schools. We've been talking to hundreds of heads of school.

There's probably one kind of pain point more than any other that has been brought up and that's the classical school leader and teacher shortage. mean, the movement is growing, enrollment at these schools is increasing, new schools are being founded. So what do we do about it? And I'm so excited for you to share with our audience this new initiative that CLT is launching.

Yeah, so today feels like Christmas morning. Today's a big day. Today's launch day. And this is born out of conversations with you, with so many who have spent time in these classical schools, amazing schools. mean, it's amazing to walk these halls, to see the artwork, to talk to the heads, to talk to the teachers, the students. It's an incredible movement. But like any movement, has its growing pains in kind of scaling. And one of these is getting great teachers into the classroom. This is a major challenge and

One of the opportunities that we're seeing here is that CLT for years now has been having great homeschooled students, classical educated students take the CLT. Many of these students are now juniors and seniors in college or maybe they just graduated. And so we are reaching out to these students and any other college seniors as well saying, hey, if you love your academic discipline, if you love this vision for education as human formation,

Jeremy Tate (02:09.088)
And if you want to get a taste of teaching in a top classical school, the CLT Classical Teaching Corps could be for you. So the CLT Classical Teaching Corps. Now, give us a framework, as you were mulling on that idea. Is it anything it's modeled after? Is this completely a brand new model?

My wife did Teach for America. It's a joke between the two of us that I got to start the standardized test because she's the brains in the relationship. High school class president, University of Virginia, on and on. Teach for America is a very selective program. So she applied her senior year at the University of Virginia. I got accepted into TFA, spent two years teaching in inner city New York, and it really shaped her heart and her love for students, for teaching, for education as

transformation. think there's so much noble that I think we can affirm and commend in the TFA concept. But I think a lot of people would say it's gotten increasingly ideological over the years as well. So the idea here is in many ways modeled after Teach for America of saying we want to reach out to the amazing students that maybe, you know, were homeschooled or classically educated or maybe just students who are beginning to hear about this movement.

And there may be a bit disillusioned seeing what's going on in the public school system. And they're seeing something that's better in the classical education movement. So this is a program soaring. This is what I love about it, is that we're guaranteeing these young people placement in a great K -12 classical school. Wow. So an absolute guaranteed placement, job security, so to speak, after going through this. year. That's a stressful number that time my goodness.

Yes, yes, I do. And I remember when I got that first offer. It is a weight is lifted off your shoulders. So someone might ask, well, aren't you a testing company? Why are you now a staffing company? Can you share with our audience that might not know what the mission of the full mission of usually you ask that in the the in the meetings? I'm to put you on the spot, Jamie. What's the mission of? Yeah, we start off every Monday morning, you know, company wide with a meeting that we call Mission Monday. We go back.

Jeremy Tate (04:28.746)
Why are we doing this in the first place? Why are we taking on the college board and the ACT? What's the point of this? It's just this good way to remember, but the full mission statement, CLT exists to reconnect knowledge and virtue through meaningful assessments and connections to seekers of truth, goodness, and beauty. And so anyway, CLT has been in this work for many years, working with our high school.

juniors and seniors to point them to the great colleges. know, so we're near a Hillsdale graduate. If a senior goes into their account, they're taking their tests. They may see, hey, check out Hillsdale College as a featured college of the month. So we want to make these connections. And I think this connection is a crucial one of saying you benefited from this kind of education, K -12. Now commit to two years. I love the hearts of young people. They want to do heroic work. This is why they

do the Peace Corps and teach for America and to go and give two years of their life to pour into the next generation so they can also have this great classical education is really beautiful. And even pre -lunch, it's so fun to just hear the excitement from heads of school and from the young people we're talking to. it is so needed. So you mentioned two years. Talk to us a little bit about kind of the practical. And so

you're currently a student, you want to go into teaching and maybe public school teaching is not what you want to pursue. You want to go into classical school teaching, but maybe you're not entirely sure. Am I ready yet? What do I need to do? You can apply for this classical teaching corps through CLT. What does it look like? What is kind of the commitment if you do get accepted? Yeah, that's a great question. So there are three distinctive tracks in the CLT classical teaching corps. So we're going to have the classical charter track.

We've got Lindsay Hoyt from Jacksonville Classical Cornerstone serving as the chair for that. We've got a classical Christian school track and Keith Nix. I don't keep, we mentioned him every podcast. Pretty much. So this is like the Keith Nix podcast instead of Anchor. So Keith is going to be the chair of the classical Christian school track.

Jeremy Tate (06:36.034)
And then we've also got Sean Maltby who's serving in the Catholic track. And what we've also done, Sorin, is we've partnered with some great, great colleges, Benedictine Templeton Honors College to provide training this three weeks on campus formation in the summer of 2025. Now, this is going to launch small. We're going to be only looking for a total of about a hundred corps members. We're hoping for 500 or a thousand applications. And then we're going to really

look for that top talent. And we want to, we don't just want to place them in a school. And I think, Soren, this is worth mentioning. This is where we're different than Teach for America. Teach for America, it's a noble vision, but they want to put these Harvard and Princeton grads in a failing school. And that's a noble mission, but they might not be the best people to go into a failing school, right? You might need a seasoned veteran, maybe a former Navy SEAL to go to some of these failing schools.

What we want to do is we wanted these teachers to go and to have this life shaping experience by being a part of the community at Regents of Austin or at Sacred Heart Academy or at the Veritas School of Richmond, at the Logos School in Moscow, Idaho, these kinds of schools where you've got to be part of it, part of the community to really understand. And then they will be equipped to go into start schools and to help schools that are in need of help.

Jeremy, and you're saying we're starting small. But yes, everything starts small at some point. But what I love about this vision is that you're starting to form and shape and train teachers. And they're getting trained by the absolute best in the industry, right? Folks that have been doing this for so long. Well, the end goal then is, of course, multiplication of those teachers. But those teachers will go on to train teachers in the future, right? And so what is kind of your longer term vision for

for this teaching corps. Yeah, love that. So this first year again, hopefully we have about 100 corps members. One of the things I'm most excited for, Dr. Brian Williams, one of the best teachers in the classical education movement. He's thrilled about this at Templeton. And so the students will be going, they'll be getting this formation. And this is the key, no matter what they do, if they stay in the classroom, if they go to become administrators,

Jeremy Tate (08:56.786)
Or maybe they serve on a board of a classical school. Or maybe they don't, maybe they go into banking, but they're going to be more excellent at whatever they're doing by having had this experience. And we think that they're going to have a heart for this kind of education to be donors, to be supporters in any way they can. Absolutely. So there's an application that is going to be required, of course. And if the application is, if you feel like it's too much, it's too much writing,

We are probably not the right person for this anyways, but most of our students that want to go into these schools, love thinking about big ideas. They love writing. So talk to us. What is required for this application? Yeah, really short application. So you can probably do the whole thing in maybe half an hour. There's three short answer, but it's really going to come down to the interview and really wanting to make sure that we can be confident that they've got a heart for classical education.

Hopefully, but not necessarily, they've been impacted by it themselves. You've toured these schools more than I have, Zorn. The students are qualitatively different at so many of these classical schools. But it may be the case that they just discovered this tradition as an English major.

and now they've got a heart for it. Those are also going to be great, great applicants. But that's the main thing in the interviews, conveying excitement about this kind of application and a love for the young people that you're going to be shaping. I love this so, much. Talk to us a little bit, kind of timeline. then, yeah, let's maybe do timeline first. So is it mostly for current seniors that are in college right now? Can it be someone that's out of college already and wants to go back to

Yeah, so the CLT Classical Teaching Corps is only for college seniors. Okay. And we want to again recommend our friends over at Classical Commons, Dr. Rob Jackson doing great work, helping teachers transition from the public school setting to a great classical. This is going to be just focused on college seniors in creating kind of this selective corps.

Jeremy Tate (10:53.886)
as young people to go in with all that energy and to change. So application is live today. It will close on December 1st. We may shut it down if it's just too hammered with applications. That would be a lot of fun. we'll see if that happens. You will be notified by February 1st if you've been accepted into the Classical Teaching Corps.

Students will then need to commit by the middle of February. And then in June, in the case of Templeton, July in the case of Benedictine, you will be on campus receiving that training, receiving that formation. And so you're gonna be ready to go into the classroom come August. Absolutely incredible, incredible. Maybe one more question that I have for you, Jeremy, if our listeners, and I'm sure there are some seniors in college that listen to the Anchored Podcast, but they're also really busy doing.

know, writing papers and studying. If maybe some of our listeners are like, hey, how can, what can I do to help? Maybe I know some people, what are some good ways, obviously forward the podcast. What are some other ways that our listeners can get involved? Yeah, I think to just spread the word, maybe you just have a friend, a neighbor who kind of fits the profile that we're talking about.

Again, they don't have to have a classical formation K -12, but if they like this vision for education over the silly progressive nonsense that has now gone mainstream, introduce them, recommend this as well. As I was asked just today, why is CLT doing this? And the reason is that we love this movement. We love that we get to be a part of this movement going mainstream and scaling. As you say all the time, as long as we're deferring to the college board,

You know, it's gonna be really really hard to be authentically genuinely classical, right? And so this is another pain point of the great talent that I think we can be really helpful in solving and I appreciate you Jeremy I think there's a lot of folks that just complain about the status quo and then there's folks that listen to the pain points and say let's let's do something about it even if it's starting small with a hundred of course a hundred teachers are not gonna solve the shortage just yet

Jeremy Tate (12:57.452)
but it's gonna start a movement that I think will carry on for many, years. Yeah, and again, Soren, I think born out of our conversations and if you haven't yet had Soren Schwab visit your school, you need to. Invite me, The kids love seeing that six foot five German walking down the hallway. But I think that's where you've developed such a heart for, yeah, how can we be helpful to these schools? And it should not be the case that every head of school.

has to feel like he's running his own staffing company or she's running her own staffing company to get the great talent in. So if we can have these pre -vetted and trained people coming in. is, mean, talk about a low risk hire. Yeah. A low risk hire. That's right. Someone who's gone through that program. And that's oftentimes the difficulty, right? These schools are growing and scaling. And then ultimately oftentimes school leaders have to go to the public universities. They have to go to the public schools.

Don't get me wrong, there are many talented people right there, but there's a risk, right? And this really takes that risk away. And young people, if you're hearing this and if this podcast starts to circulate, this is a challenge to you as well. The way you change the culture, the way you went back to culture is through education. And so if you've been shaped by this, if you wanna give back, we wanna challenge you to apply for the Classical Teaching Corps.

and give back to the next generation. Amen, brother. Amen. Again, the CLT Classical Teaching Corps applications are live today. Share this podcast. There's a blog post about it. Share it with everyone you know, social media. We want to create a lot of excitement and demand for this and really, again, change education one new classical teacher at a time.

Jeremy, thanks for all you do. Thank you. If you've never been with Sorin at a conference, a number of people will say, is Sorin always this enthusiastic? Yes. Is he always this pumped up? I'm like, yeah, he's amped all the time. And yes, for CLT, but really amped for what CLT wants to champion, which is classical education. So Sorin, thank you for your constant enthusiasm. And I'm excited to see how today goes. It'll be amazing. Amazing. See these apps keep pouring in. It's a great day. It's a great day. Thank you, sir.