A Charlotte Mason Approach to Education | Leslie Voorhees

On this episode of Anchored, Soren is joined by Leslie Voorhees, director of member schools at Ambleside Schools International, an organization that offers a Charlotte Mason educational approach to schools around the world. They discuss Charlotte Mason’s educational philosophy and the way it translates into principles at the Ambleside schools. They explore the benefits of an education that centers and values the potential of every child. They conclude by discussing the differences and similarities between Charlotte Mason and classical education. 

Transcript

Soren Schwab - CLT (00:01.122)
Welcome back to the Anchored Podcast, the official podcast of the Classic Learning Test. My name is Soren Schwab, VP of Partnerships here at CLT, and today we're joined by Leslie Vorhis. Leslie serves as a director of member schools at Ambleside Schools International, an organization that offers a Charlotte Mason educational approach to member schools around the world. Leslie graduated from University of Richmond with a degree in biology and health, intending to pursue a career in the medical field.

After a few years as an electron microscopy technician at the Medical College of Virginia, she left the field of science and medicine to work for several years as a regional executive for a Fortune 500 company. Leslie's vocational calling solidified as she found the writings of Charlotte Mason while in pursuit of providing a life-giving education for her own children and for her community. Joined by several other founding couples and supported by a host of interested parents,

She opened Ambleside School of McLean, in 1999. There, she served as chairman of the board, as well as receptionist, nurse, and custodian. In 2003, she began teaching in the classroom, enjoying firsthand what Mason called, quote, a living education, end quote. She joined Ambleside Schools International in 2013 as their director of member schools, where she supports school leadership, onboards new schools,

and trains teachers throughout the network. Her greatest delight is in spending time with her three grown children and their families spread between Virginia, Colorado, and what currently is her home, Arizona. Leslie, so excited to have this conversation. Welcome.

Leslie Voorhees (01:42.066)
Well, thank you. I'm excited as well.

Soren Schwab - CLT (01:45.058)
Yeah. Well, as we always do in the Anchor podcast, we talk about our guests own educational journey and information. So talk to our listeners a little bit about your own K-12 experience.

Leslie Voorhees (01:56.234)
You know, it's interesting. I gave it a little bit of thought, but I'm a fifth generation Washingtonian, which is hard to come by. And I grew up in a family. My parents went to private schools for their K through 12, but nobody went to college. So I don't think they really thought too much about where I was going to go to school. They bought a house that was four doors down from the local elementary school.

And that's where I went every day, walking across my neighbor's front yards. And I was not thriving in elementary school and even junior high. And I do remember being in the orange reading group and I knew for sure that the purple was the highest group and things like that. But my competitive streak came out in high school. So I really got in the game of

passing the test and getting good grades. And I remember my really delightful lessons were in biology. And then I had a course in Greek and Latin roots taught by Lou Kassaris himself. And it was really pivotal in my own education in that I...

got deeper beyond just trying to pass tests, but really was interested in the content. And so then I went on to university.

Soren Schwab - CLT (03:31.982)
So you go to University of Richmond and at that point kind of your career goal is to go on the medical field, which then you did and you did that for a while and then you actually went to business. At any point during that time, did you ever think of yourself as, I'm gonna at some point become an educator or was that really this moment that I mentioned in the introduction where you came across Charlotte Mason, that kind of changed everything or was it kind of a...

over time that was a realization or was it an overnight?

Leslie Voorhees (04:03.062)
It was certainly over time when I was working in the business field medicine, I realized, oh, I want to be around people. And so then I got into the business field and really enjoyed that. It was very competitive and rigorous. And I had a lot of fun doing that. Um, but the education just came. I think later in life when my own children were approaching school age.

And I began to think deeply about what it would be to raise up Christian leaders for the next generation. living in the DC area, there's a lot of what they would say top notch prep schools, all these kinds of things, but they were all secular. And so I began thinking, what is it to educate my children in a way that they can think

that they can lead, that they can inspire others and be a part of the community and a part of our country.

Soren Schwab - CLT (05:13.194)
Wow, and it's such a, I think, a common story now of leaders, of educators that they look back at their own time, their own K-12 education. was for many of them, it was fine. But then when they're at their own children, right, you start thinking a little bit more deeply and a bit more truly about it. And yes, living in Annapolis and being close to DC, I can attest there's certainly some of that, you know, we're

or college prep or all these things. But I think there's oftentimes a little bit of a substance that's maybe missing on the formational piece. And so I want to kind of focus on that. You came across Charlotte Mason. And really, I think the last few years being part of CLT and in this movement, that's a name that's come up more and more. But it's not like Charlotte Mason.

Delives or just recently passed right and so talk to our listeners a little bit and I know that's kind of a broad question here But but but about Charlotte Mason's philosophy of education maybe in kind of broader terms

Leslie Voorhees (06:21.074)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, so she approached this by considering the coal miners' children in England. And at that time, they were sort of separated out as being uneducable or whatever it was. And she saw that, those children had every bit as much potential, every bit as much capacity.

as the children of the aristocracy. her philosophy begins with the child as a person. Who is this child before us? They have unlimited capacity. She says that before the child, we stand on holy ground. And so how dare we...

look at a child, especially a four-year-old, a five-year-old, you know, they're not reading yet or whatever, oh, they're just not going to be academic. She would say, no, let's see what the child can do. Let's give it more time. Let's come alongside. So the child as a person, not a label, not a container to be filled, but actually a creation.

of God that has unlimited potential. So that begins it. And then she says, if we're going to respect the child as a person, we are limited in how we can approach them in life and in particularly in the field of education. And so she went on to describe an optimal atmosphere for educating children that has to do not just with the physical surroundings, but

What is in the air? What are we breathing in? Is it an atmosphere of competition and stress or is it an atmosphere of delight and joy and support? Whether you're succeeding or not. And then the second is discipline. And by that she means habit formation or character formation.

Leslie Voorhees (08:35.216)
And then life, she describes as living ideas, that it's food for the mind and the child has to dig. They have to do that digging themselves in order to form relationships with a variety of subjects. At Ambleside Schools, we have 17 subjects over the course of the week. And so the child who

eases through math instruction, might struggle through poetry, and yet we're coming alongside in this supportive atmosphere, sowing ideas and encouraging them to grow.

Soren Schwab - CLT (09:22.03)
That's fascinating. was she kind of pushing back on some of the, I mean, that we even see today, kind of this, you know, model of like utilitarian education, kind of the industrial, you know, you're a cog in the machine, you know, like if you're getting this job, you just need these three, four things, these skills to learn and, and, and not really well, but as a human being, right, and the dignity that you have as a human being, right, there's like,

There's a formation that we want to see. I grew up in Germany and it's so interesting because certainly there's a lot of the utilitarianism in Germany, but the word for education is Bildung, which literally translates to formation. And so even in the word itself, there's something more. You mentioned the character and the development and the formation there. Was that kind of...

a push back on some of kind of that maybe the Dewey and, you know, model of education, utilitarian model.

Leslie Voorhees (10:28.032)
think so because she has this quote that people often misunderstand. She says, all education is self-education. And to really come to what she doesn't mean there is child directed, I like this, so I'm going to do this, but I'm not going to do that because I don't really like that. What she means is that when we're truly

Soren Schwab - CLT (10:45.282)
Yeah.

Leslie Voorhees (10:55.952)
educated. It's a coming to know. And she describes it as striking a nugget out, you know, in the gold mine, I guess. It's like that spark of, I understand. And so with that, there's a depth. It begins a relationship. And so if you think about even mathematics, there's mastery of, there's certainly mastery of data there.

But when the child, I remember being in a classroom and a child began to understand that there's a relationship between addends that equal 10. And so as we add two, there's eight and that's 10. But then if we say three, this side is getting greater in value and this side is getting lesser in value. That's an idea.

right, that you start with this whole and if you break it into parts and you change the parts, there's a relationship between that. And I remember this little boy, his eyes just got so bright and he's like, I get it. And so that's where she said, we need to go deeper than just the facts. We need to get at the ideas. And when a child encounters

that sort of understanding, there's a delight in mathematics all of a sudden. And we would say they come to know a bit of the mind of God because he created mathematics and he created. And so then they see this idea in other places like, if I'm baking and I want something to be salty, the salty ingredients have to be more than the sweet ingredients.

Soren Schwab - CLT (12:35.096)
Yes. Right.

Leslie Voorhees (12:53.466)
So there's a relationship, ideas travel, you know, between subjects and that's, she argues and I agree, that's where real learning takes place. That's where real coming to know God, creation, man, history, all of the things. There's a real delight in learning.

Soren Schwab - CLT (13:18.508)
I love that. I love that. So I mentioned the introduction, your starting Ambleside School in McLean, Virginia. Talk to our listeners a little bit about Ambleside's mission and their vision. And I looked at the different websites of the schools and there's a lot of mention of core principles. So speak to us a little bit about that.

Leslie Voorhees (13:44.074)
Yeah, so the core principles, we're a international organization that supports member schools. We've got, I think it's somewhere approaching 30 schools internationally with a little bit more than half in the US. And her principles go back to her philosophy, right? That we treat the child as a person.

that we honor the dignity of who they are and everything has to go through that kind of filter. So some principles that dovetail with her philosophy is a growth mindset. We do have an admissions process at our schools, but we're looking for the child and we're

trying to determine where their strengths are and where their weaknesses are. And can we support their weaknesses in our school? Excuse me. We've had children come with many different kinds of diagnoses and we say, well, let's see what we can do and let's put them on a growth plan. So growth mindset is a core principle.

Character formation is a core principle. We are more concerned with the kind of student, friend, disciple, follower of Jesus, citizen, that this child is becoming over their mastery of data. Because if the character's rightly formed, they master the data. They work hard. They have a...

work ethic. So there's a distinct sense of authority and obedience in our schools. Charlotte Mason wrote about the meaning of must. Must is a word that's not often used in her world today, but she talks about there is a must, that we must go beyond what I want or what I feel to what I ought to do. And that's real freedom.

Leslie Voorhees (16:09.162)
she would argue and I agree. We believe in grit at Ambleside schools. We've got schools that have t-shirts. At Ambleside, we do hard things. So we are really coming alongside, supporting, challenging, holding children accountable for what they ought to do. We say it's okay to be weak. It's not okay to not be working on it.

Okay, so everybody's gotta be working on it and alongside of a peaceful, joyful, attuned adult.

Soren Schwab - CLT (16:50.03)
I love that at Ampleside, we do hard things. And you can do that and still delight, right? And have joy and have excitement. Yeah, yeah. But it's, as you know, right? In our cultural time, that's not always something that we talk about in those terms.

Leslie Voorhees (16:52.598)
Yep.

Leslie Voorhees (17:00.31)
Sure.

Leslie Voorhees (17:10.134)
Well, if I can just say that in athletics, parents are all about doing hard things. You know, if the child comes home from their practice and they're like, oh yeah, it was an easy practice. The coach didn't make us do X, Y, and Z. Parents will get very concerned about that. And yet in the field of education, when

Children are pushed and I'm not saying trauma. There's a difference between struggle and trauma, but academically we need to be struggling in order to grow and so we deal with some of the you know pushback a little bit of my child just feels like you're really calling on them a lot and we're like, well, yeah, we are because He needs to get in the game. He needs to participate

sorry, I forgot to turn that off. And so, yeah, so he needs to participate, he needs to grow. We're not gonna push him to the side as one who can't learn or can't participate or what have you.

Soren Schwab - CLT (18:27.628)
Yeah, I love that. Yeah, we talked a lot about at my school about, you know, kind of growth happens at the edge of struggle, not not past that, right? You don't want to go too far, but at that edge of struggle. And I think you're absolutely right. In terms of athletics, we always kind of we always kind of know if you're lifting and you want to get to a certain number, but you know, all your practices, you know, you want to get to 100 pounds and all your practices with 20 pounds, you're probably not going to get there. We know that. Don't always translate that in in academic terms.

Leslie Voorhees (18:39.286)
That's great.

Soren Schwab - CLT (18:57.55)
So talk to us a little bit about teaching, right? Because you help with the formation of teachers and with coaching teachers. What would you say, what are some of the characteristics of an effective teacher at an Ambleside school? And on the converse, maybe what are some tendencies that you are saying that you have to redirect or refine?

Leslie Voorhees (19:23.348)
Yeah, yeah. Gosh, we have teachers that have been with us for many, many years. And so when I think about the people who have really been there, when they've come across this philosophy, I think their response to it has been a little bit similar to me in that it's like, wow, this is amazing.

I want to be a part of this. So on our Ambleside Schools website, we have a series of 21 videos and it features our founders, Bill and Mary Ellen St. Cyr, talking about various aspects of the philosophy. And so people will watch those videos and they'll have tears and they just think, this is what I've been looking for. This is what I want for my children.

I've been in education for 30 years. I knew it was broken. I just didn't know there was a way to fix it. So people who resonate with the philosophy, certainly people who are spiritually, emotionally, relationally mature. So we do, you know, some vetting of that because so much of this education is relating to the students and to see

the look on the child's face and are they distressed? Are they bored? Are they not understanding whatever it is? And so a teacher really has to have those kinds of giftings or be willing to develop those. We're looking for people who are willing to grow and learn and also for people who will submit to this method. If you get

too caught up in the child has to understand this passage of history and what the dynamics are between these two groups. You'll get stressed, then the child gets stressed and the learning just shuts down. mean, an anxious brain operates at about 30 % capacity. So they have to be willing to...

Leslie Voorhees (21:48.36)
submit to the method and understand that the method will come back to what's important in lessons and things like that, but not to get too much in it at the moment.

Soren Schwab - CLT (22:01.422)
Mm-hmm are there there Maybe in the last few years with with a younger generation are there things that you're seeing that that where you feel like we have to redirect a little bit or or or or or correct Are there any patterns that you're seeing or is it really just teacher by teacher? They're different

Leslie Voorhees (22:22.644)
Yeah, I wouldn't say we see a pattern so much, but when a person is hired at an Ambleside school, the very first thing we do is we say, hear your books, read them to know for yourself. Take the thought of teaching this content out of your mind, read the Scarlet Pimpernel, and underline things that stand out to you.

Right? And you can come back and lesson plan later. But the first thing you need to do is read it to know and delight and enjoy yourself. So that's the first step. Then the second step is 60 hours of training at one of our Ambleside schools. We call it the Summer Institute. And in that time, we really are in, you know,

instructing them in this method. They experience the method as students themselves. That's about two or three days of instruction. And it's really funny because they come and they just tell me how to teach, tell me how to teach. And our posture is we're going to start by letting you experience what it is to come to know deeply.

Soren Schwab - CLT (23:40.066)
Love that.

Leslie Voorhees (23:42.442)
this content and they're all these days on their phones, know, on their Amazon shopping cart, you know, adding the books that we're teaching at the Institute training. And then the last part of the training is for them to apply the method, apply the philosophy and teach lessons themselves. So what we find is that they come away, the majority of them,

really understanding how to do this well. We do still have some teachers who say, I want lesson plans. I want written lesson plans. And we have examples of lesson plans. We have scope and sequence and some things like that for some of our subjects. But because this is a relational work, there's not a script. It's as if...

you're having a dinner party and we give you a list of questions to ask your guests. It becomes very rote, very quickly. Students quickly transition into, I'm gonna say what the teacher wants me to say, rather than thinking for myself. That's how I grew up, is my own thoughts, my own questions, my own curiosities, I dare not share.

Soren Schwab - CLT (24:53.283)
Yeah.

Soren Schwab - CLT (24:57.464)
Same.

Leslie Voorhees (25:05.694)
because I wanted a good grade. So the ones that want the lesson plans or want the, how long do I wait for a student to respond? We're like, we don't know. You have to be watching their face and seeing, are they trying or are they distressing? So there's not a script for.

marriage, there's not a script for parenting, and there's not a script for teaching in an Ambleside classroom. There's principles and training, but yeah.

Soren Schwab - CLT (25:42.414)
I love that. I love that. Well, I'm going to guess that a lot of our listeners that maybe have their kids at a classical Christian school or a teacher at a classical Christian school or maybe classical homeschooling, they might listen to you and say, wow, that actually sounds kind of like what we're doing. It doesn't sound all too different, right? Maybe the principals are named differently or maybe the emphasis is a little bit different.

Classical education is not a monolith and there's different flavors and different kinds. Ambleside schools don't use the term classical, but can you maybe speak a little bit from your understanding of the classical, maybe particularly the classical Christian schools and what you're doing? There seem to be a lot of similarities and maybe also are there some kind key distinctives where you would say no, Charlotte Mason really

focused on something that is different from.

Leslie Voorhees (26:43.188)
Yeah, that's a great question. We get that question all the time. So I'll do my best to respond to that. I would say this, that I think the hope, the vision of what our graduates will kind of

Soren Schwab - CLT (26:48.212)
I bet you do.

Leslie Voorhees (27:08.086)
people, our graduates are, is very much in alignment. You know, as you said, this sounds very much like what the people in the classical world would want. And so I think there's certainly alignment in that. And we want to be developing persons of virtue and character. But the means by which, or maybe the definition of that, is a little bit

So I can't speak specifically about Classical. I know you said it's not a monolith, so it definitely depends on which school you're talking about. But if I go back to her philosophy and think about a child as a person, at our schools, we, and I think a classical would say this too, we see the child as a holy being and

We don't know what to expect, but we don't divide children in our classrooms. So we don't have reading groups. We don't send children off to a more advanced math lesson or what have you. We don't define them by ability or capacity.

in some classical schools, they would graduate through the trivium, right, of a grammar stage and a logic stage and a rhetoric stage. We apply all of those at every grade level. So the little children, the kindergartners, are getting at ideas. Now, their logic is immature, but they're growing in it.

And we see, I mean, it's really interesting to hear these little children trying to get at certain ideas and their own heart and mind is revealed to the teacher through those kinds of conversations. So we don't do ability groupings. Our atmosphere is one of high joy and not one of competition. So...

Leslie Voorhees (29:33.45)
We don't, we assess children, we track their growth, but we're not assigning grades. We say this a lot, what you draw them with, you draw them to. And so if we're drawing children to getting an A on a test, their focus is to get an A. And...

they would probably say to succeed is to get the A. But if we say we're taking the grades out of it, what do you know about tree growth? And everything comes back in an essay format and these middle schoolers will write 10 pages on tree growth and they really know that's our focus. So we're not...

Soren Schwab - CLT (30:13.624)
Yeah.

Leslie Voorhees (30:30.602)
We're not luring them, we're not threatening them with, know, if you don't pay attention, this is gonna be on the test or things like that because it's always directing them toward to pass the test is to succeed rather than to know is to be a blessing and to come to know the mind of God. We really talk to our teachers a lot about pushing into weakness. So in our classrooms,

Soren Schwab - CLT (30:44.492)
Mm-hmm, right.

Leslie Voorhees (31:00.872)
We counsel them not to raise hands, not to have hands raised. So everybody expects I could be called on at any moment and my participation is valued. those are, you know, some of the things. And then with discipline, again, it's not through threats, rewards. If everybody passes the test, we're going to have a pizza party. I'm not saying classical schools do this, but I'm just saying.

We don't do any of that. So it's the formation of habit through character formation, not classroom management. So there's a relational piece to that. We have a lot of little talks with students in the hallway or at the break time or whatever. I've noticed that you are stopping pretty quickly as you're writing.

what's going on there? I know you can do more. So that's that relational alliance. Then we sow an idea. Then we're giving them proactive support, coming alongside and natural consequences, which always relates to what we're trying to facilitate. So natural consequences, you're going to sit down for 10 minutes and write some more because I know you know more.

Tell me what you want to say, now go ahead and write it. So it's a different approach to if you don't write more, you're gonna get a C. Don't you want to be? Go write more. You know, we're trying to really speak to their heart and their mind.

Soren Schwab - CLT (32:46.286)
I absolutely love that and like you said right we can we can sit here we can well here are the exact different From my perspective, right? I'm just so excited that that families have options now when it comes to the education of their children and that there are so many schools now that focus on

Leslie Voorhees (33:00.352)
Sure, yeah.

Soren Schwab - CLT (33:07.916)
the students' virtues and their formation and their growth and their potential as a child of God versus let's get them into the Ivy Leagues, right? And so there's such a stark contrast between what you're doing, between what the classical Christian school and kind of our, you know, maybe more secular progressive approach to education. And so kudos to you and everyone at Ambleside for providing such a profound education and making such an impact on the lives of students.

I do have one more question that we always ask, but before we get there, I do want to ask you if maybe there's a teacher that would be interested in teaching at one of your schools or family that might be interested in sending their kids, where could they find more information? there a website that you would direct them to?

Leslie Voorhees (33:52.658)
sure. Yeah, I'm so glad you asked that. You go to Ambleside Schools, that's plural.org. on our, that's our corporate website. On that corporate website, you can click on member schools and that will give you information on the local schools. And that's where most of the employment opportunities are. We also have an employment page that's listing, I think we've got about 10.

openings for next year in various locations. And so we'd love to hear from you. We're always looking to grow the tribe.

Soren Schwab - CLT (34:29.506)
That is wonderful. And I will here soon. I got to visit one of your schools. I'm probably the one McLean. That's the closest. But I think that's always, you know, if you're not sure what's the school like, schedule a visit. And unlike some of the some of the public schools, I know that our classical schools are Ampleside schools. They welcome visitors. They're very transparent in what they're teaching, how they're teaching. And so go visit an Ampleside school and see for yourself.

Leslie Voorhees (34:34.964)
Yes, you do. Yes. Sure.

Soren Schwab - CLT (34:57.934)
Leslie, this has been so delightful, but I got to ask you that last question that I always ask our guests. If there's one text or one book that you can point to throughout your life that really has had the most impact on your life. I know that's a difficult question to narrow it down to one, but what text could you share with us and why has that had such an impact on you?

Leslie Voorhees (34:58.3)
Absolutely.

Leslie Voorhees (35:19.536)
Yeah, so I, I did see that question and I thought, well, that's pretty, that's pretty challenging for me, but I'm going to share a book I'm reading right now and really enjoying and it's called The Sabbath. And it's by a man named Abraham Heschel. He was a Jewish scholar and writer and spiritual person. And right now I'm really

contemplating what it is and Charlotte Mason would say this too, but to live a balanced life and to take the time. Heschel says get out of the profanity of clamoring commerce, which is what we're in the midst of all week long, right? We're yoked to toil. We have a fury of acquisition. I can relate to.

all of that in different ways. And so he's saying that we have six days to take dominion over the world, but that seventh day we need to be taking dominion over ourselves and over our spiritual life. And so that's a book I'm enjoying right now. And I'm hoping, you know, that it's going to settle on me deeply as I influence my own children, my own grandchildren, things like that.

Soren Schwab - CLT (36:42.158)
Yeah, we're called to rest and we're not very good at it. Even we Christians are not very good at it. Well, thank you so much again. We're here with Leslie Voorhees who serves as the director of member schools at Ambleside Schools International, an organization that offers a Charlotte Mason educational approach to member schools around the world. Leslie, thanks for all you do in education and thanks for joining the Anchor podcast today.

Leslie Voorhees (36:47.168)
Mm-hmm. I'm not very good at it. That's right.

Leslie Voorhees (37:09.83)
Absolutely, thank you so much for having me and we look forward to knowing more about each other.