Grit, Loyalty, and Poetry: How Classical Education Shaped a Future Army Leader

One day at a classical school changed the course of her life.

In seventh grade, Sarah spent a single day shadowing at Jackson Hole Classical Academy. She says she learned more that day than in the seven years of school before it.

What followed was an education in great books, Latin, and poetry learned by heart, including Rudyard Kipling's "If-" Years later, when Sarah arrived at West Point to train as an Army officer, she found that same poem on the walls of the barracks.

Today, Sarah is a West Point graduate preparing to lead a platoon of soldiers. Her story shows what classical education is for: forming young people who know what's right, do what's right, and give of themselves in service to others.


Related Resources

News I home schooled my children till 16 — all four got into Oxbridge

October 10, 2026

Elizabeth Howard


I home schooled my children till 16 — all four got into Oxbridge

This week my son Xavier will start his first term at Oxford University studying maths, my fourth child to get into Oxbridge. His older sisters, Olivia and Felicity, are Oxford graduates in classics and music respectively and his older brother, Max, has a degree in engineering from Cambridge. Two of them had choral scholarships; two had academic scholarships.

Podcast What Do We Lose When Work Becomes Only a Paycheck? with Jeffrey Dill

October 05, 2026

Forged: Timeless Ways of Living


What Do We Lose When Work Becomes Only a Paycheck? with Jeffrey Dill

What happens when work becomes little more than a paycheck, food becomes something we expect to appear in a grocery store, and home becomes mostly a place of consumption? In this episode, Brian Williams speaks with sociologist, professor, and farmer Jeffrey Dill about the dignity of work, the discipline of living within limits, and what farming can teach us about family, freedom, and responsibility. Drawing on his experience with a regenerative beef and pork farm in Pennsylvania, Jeff considers what industrial efficiency gives us and what it can quietly take away: connection to land, craft, neighbor, and the formative power of labor itself. Their conversation ranges from Adam Smith and Wendell Berry to care work, fatherhood, household life, and raising young men who understand that a good life is larger than a career. Listen for a thoughtful invitation to recover work as something that forms us, not merely something that pays us. Jeff also reflects on folding laundry as a discipline, time outdoors with family as a delight, woodworking as a craft, and the love of God and neighbor as the calling that gathers the rest of life together. The conversation closes with W. H. Auden and a reminder that meaningful lives are built through ordinary acts of work, love, service, and fidelity.

News When It Comes To Choosing Schools, Families Are Mixing It Up

October 05, 2026

Angela Watson


When It Comes To Choosing Schools, Families Are Mixing It Up

A New Study On Sector Mixing And Homeschooling