Alumni Come Home to Teach at Great Hearts

Before the start of every school year, Great Hearts welcomes new teachers at the annual New Faculty Orientation. Some have come to us from other countries, and others are familiar faces at our academies. These alumni, former students shaped by Great Hearts’ classical education, are now returning to their alma mater as faculty. Their stories demonstrate the impact of a Great Hearts education and the desire to give back to the communities that helped form them.

Great Hearts Arizona Superintendent Brandon Crowe explained the purpose behind NFO for the new faculty who may be familiar with “what” Great Hearts does but are now learning the “why’s” behind it. “We try to do a lot in terms of telling them about why Great Hearts exists and how we do things,” he said. “I really hope that they’re inspired. That they see the work we’re doing is meaningful and that it comes alive with their colleagues and network leaders.”

For Ely Sannes, a 2019 graduate of Chandler Prep, his passion for civic engagement and a love of teaching brought him back. Now entering his second-year teaching seventh-grade history at Arete Prep, Sannes said, “I wanted to be able to give back to the next generation of students because I benefited so much from this. I know all the benefits and how it helps you academically, but really it was the community at Chandler Prep that drew me back to Great Hearts.”

That sense of belonging and intellectual richness also led Millicent Keuper home. A member of the founding student body at Great Hearts Monte Vista in San Antonio, Texas, Keuper graduated in 2019 and is now teaching sixth-grade Latin at Great Hearts Forest Heights. After finding her college experience lacking in depth, Keuper said she was thrilled when a teaching opportunity at Great Hearts came her way. “Great Hearts felt like home, intellectually and culturally,” she said. “It provides something deeper that I could not find in my own college experience.”

Hunter Hahn, who graduated from Veritas Prep in 2012, echoed that same longing for the ideals that shaped his education: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. After years away, teaching in a public district school, Hahn returns this fall to teach Humane Letters and Latin at Glendale Prep. “Veritas really inculcated that love of the classics – that passion,” he said. After a friend encouraged him to apply, Hahn simply introduced himself to the school’s leadership, saying, “Here I am. Here’s why I love classical education. Please hire me.” The rest, he said, “Snowballed from there.”

Hahn’s return is a full circle moment, recalling being a student in Superintendent Crowe’s class back when Crowe was a teacher at Veritas Prep. Crowe inspired him to expand his perspective and to think outside of his own viewpoints and opinions when approaching literature. A lesson that has stuck with him to this day, shaping the way he teaches his own students.

They will soon return this fall to classrooms familiarly set up with tables and chairs in Socratic circles, and they will walk halls filled with the classical paintings they fondly remember. They are returning to the places that shaped them as young scholars, returning the favor in the classical tradition to the next generations.

In Crowe’s words, the goal is for every new faculty member is to inspire them, alumnus or not, to feel they’ve “Joined up with something that’s doing a lot of good and that really cares deeply about young people.” For these alumni-turned-educators, that mission is more than a job. It’s a personal homecoming.

Do you have a story or know of one that you would like to see featured at Great Hearts? Please contact jmoore@greatheartsamerica.org.

Submit a student application to a Great Hearts Academy by visiting: https://www.greatheartsamerica.org/enroll/.