Deborah Harris is a graduate of Azusa Pacific University with a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies and has completed post-graduate work in curriculum and instruction at both Boise State University and Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 1993 she began teaching in the public school system before making the transition to Classical Christian Schools, where she has spent the majority of her teaching career. She has taught grades K, 1, 2 and 6th and helped in the startup of three Classical schools including Foundations Academy in Boise, Idaho and Hope Academy in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Since 2001 Deborah has focused on mentoring teachers in classroom governing and instructing them in the vision of classical education and the role of virtue in the classroom. Deborah currently serves as the Dean of Teaching Staff and Curriculum at Hope Academy, a classical Christian school ministering to the inner city, and as an educational consultant for classical schools.
I offer schools a variety of options to meet the needs of their educators with a primary focus on time spent one on one in the classroom. Through workshops combined with classroom time, I focus on training teachers in classroom governing skills, classroom environment, classical vision and instructional methods. My passion is to offer teachers what they desire most, which is advice and example in the classroom itself.
Early in my educational career, I struggled in the classroom to apply the combinations of theory and techniques that I had been taught, and realized I had no idea how to run a classroom and teach well. I have encountered so many teachers in my career that also felt the same, and were basically left on their own to do the best that they could. My own teaching changed dramatically when I spent 6 months as a teacher’s aide in an experienced and talented teacher’s classroom. Having time to work with and observe a teacher, and analyze her techniques was the most momentous thing in my growth as a teacher. My goal is to give this opportunity to other teachers as well, so that they can have someone with them in the classroom, working with their curriculum, their difficult students, and the classroom dynamic that they enter into every day. The best education of a teacher occurs in the classroom.
Classrooms with excellent environments stimulate greater learning, and allow the teacher to be free to explore multiple teaching methods and more one-on-one attention. Well run classrooms use time more efficiently and encourage healthy relationships with those in authority. If a classical teacher is to be able to teach his or her students to love knowledge, order, truth and virtue, the environment must be a living example of these in and of itself.