A Peek into the Logic & Rhetoric School Classrooms

You may not know Amy Lindsey yet, but she returns to Regents this year after three years in Florida where her husband completed his medical residency. Mrs. Lindsey began teaching at Regents in 2013 and later became the school’s first Director of Curriculum and Instruction. More recently, she shepherded Regents’ accreditation process.

“I get the privilege of sitting in classes in the Logic and Rhetoric School to help mentor faculty,” says Mrs. Lindsey. “That means I have the most day-to-day exposure to what is happening inside the classrooms across the whole upper school. One thing I have noticed since returning this year is that the level of analysis and depth of discussion has gotten much better. More students have been here a long time and have been trained to think well and the result of that is that classes are much better at analysis and discussion. Students who have been here a long time bring in the others in often very thoughtful ways."

"I was recently sitting in a ninth grade Bible class that was discussing Jonah, and one student related the sailors to the Ninevites as two parallel groups of gentiles that contrasted with the Hebrew person who was the unbeliever. The parallel structures and the paradox that emerged essentially summarized the story of Jonah, and I had missed that my whole life! This type of analysis is what I see emerging in classes.”

“Another example of the high-level analysis that I see developing happened in eleventh grade American History. The students were talking about the Constitution and the powers it grants to the federal government. Can the government assume only those powers explicitly conveyed, or is there embedded in the Constitution, implicit power for the federal government to do other things that are necessary and expedient?"

"The students were grappling with where do we stand on this issue today and why. Many of them saw how this question that Jefferson and Hamilton struggled with is still difficult to answer today, when thinking about the Constitution and how our country operates. Students were looking at those original debates as well as Washington’s cabinet and prepared to debate either side of the argument themselves. It was a beautiful example of deep and flexible thinking.”

Mrs. Lindsey has been involved in classical education since the age of seven when her mother helped found Dominion Classical School. She later graduated from Ad Fontes Academy, a classical Christian school in Centreville and received a Bachelor of Arts in English with a focus in comparative literature and a minor in Latin from George Mason University. Mrs. Lindsey also holds a Master's in Curriculum and Instruction from UVA's Curry School of Education. She is married to Micah and enjoys reading, running, and spending time in the great outdoors with her husband, their sons Eli, Wills, and Jude, and their dog.