NFO Welcomes New Faculty

Before the school year resumes in August for Great Hearts academies in Arizona, new faculty gather for an orientation, affectionately called NFO (New Faculty Orientation). This year we have 392 new teachers and support staff who will be joining in the joint pursuit of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty at our 25 charter academies, two preschools (Young Hearts), our national online academy, and our two private academies (Great Hearts Christian Academies).

The entire orientation spans over two weeks for the new staff members, with the first day beginning in their respective home campuses to meet with school leadership and to get acquainted with each other. There, the staff engaged in a seminar discussed of the poem, The Tuft of Flowers by Robert Frost, introducing them, some for the first time, to the Socratic discussions they will soon lead in their classrooms.

After their first day at their academies, these newly formed teams will come together for the next several days at the Great Hearts Veritas campus, the oldest academy in the Great Hearts network located in Arcadia, as they prepare for the year ahead. These first few crucial days will introduce the new faculty as a whole to the philosophy that sets Great Hearts apart from the rest.

Great Hearts Arizona Superintendent Brandon Crowe opened the joint session by welcoming the new staff, stating that each of them represented 7-10 people who had applied for their position, and congratulating them for receiving the honor of an admirable profession. He went on to explain that they will be receiving a lot of information all at once. “It is a bit cliché, but you will feel like you are drinking from a fire hose, as they say,” he quipped. Crowe further explained the reason for bringing all the new staff into one location for the orientation, adding, “Whether we work together or apart, our work is shared.”

Co-founder Dan Scoggin presented the Six Loves of Great Hearts, a foundational talk that pulls back the curtain into why we do what we do:

1. The Virtues: The cultivation of habits like justice, moderation, courage, piety, and prudence.
2. The Western Tradition: Studying the great historical and cultural achievements born from cities like Athens, Jerusalem, and Rome.
3. Human Dignity and Freedom: Recognizing the dignity of the person and liberty as a universal human right.
4. Philosophical Realism: Orienting education toward the pursuit of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.
5. Conversation and Community: Fostering friendships and the Great Conversation within a close-knit, local school community.
6. Humility: Cultivating self-giving and the recognition that there are ideas and examples higher and greater than ourselves.

Scoggin also explained the decision to name the school “Great Hearts” at its founding. At the time, including the word “heart” in the name of an educational institution was considered counterintuitive. Drawing on C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man, Scoggin argued that education must do more than develop intellectual ability. Lewis critiques educational models that treat values as merely subjective feelings, maintaining instead that the spirited and emotional dimension of the soul is essential to connecting reason with desire. Without it, education risks producing individuals who are intellectually capable but morally indifferent.

At the conclusion of the morning talks, attendees were dispersed into school groups throughout the campus for another seminar, this time on the Meno, a dialogue written by Plato around 385 BC, that begins by asking Socrates whether virtue can be taught, acquired by practice, or comes by nature. The discussion was followed by lunch, where attendees had a chance to discuss the morning and their excitement about the new school year with their newfound colleagues.

Over the next couple of weeks, they will continue to navigate the district culture imparted to them by Great Hearts leaders, learn more about the classical curriculum and hear best practices of how to practically administer it from some seasoned and tenured teaching professionals, as well as receiving “nuts and bolts” information from Human Resources. All with this focus of equipping them to be the best they can be for our scholars on the first day of the new school year.

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