The Unique Philosophy of American Heritage Teaching:

At American Heritage Academy, we instill in our staff that “education comes from within.” True education is a scholar’s internal discovery and as such, their own doing. Meaningful learning cannot be achieved by the use of external forces or third party persuasion. Rather, it is an internal awakening that quenches a scholar’s hunger for knowledge.  This principle element of teaching is misplaced by many in the field of education today. Continual busy work and unlimited worksheets used in repetitive learning cannot achieve the same results as personal drive. While it is possible to teach to a test, “learning for life” comes only to those who choose the personal responsibility to be teachable. This personal empowerment to learn, along with …Continue Reading

He was uncommonly tall. His exterior suggested to every beholder the idea of strength, united with manly gracefulness. His form was noble and his port majestic. No man could approach him but with respect. His frame was robust, his constitution vigorous, and he was capable of enduring great fatigue. His passions were naturally strong; with them was his first contest and over them his first victory. Before he undertook to command others, he had thoroughly learned to command himself. The powers of his own mind were more solid than brilliant. Judgment was his forte. Truth and utility were his objects; he steadily pursued and generally attained them.

As a military man, he possessed personal courage and a firmness which neither danger or difficulties could shake. His genius supplied every resource. He knew how to conquer by delay and his prudent firmness proved the salvation of his country.

His integrity was incorruptible. His principles were free from the …Continue Reading

John Adams said, “our government is designed for a moral and virtuous people.”

A people possessing the virtues of: courage, temperance, wisdom, and justice. Paramount – charity, faith and sacrifice. So how can we do this? – How do we teach our scholars virtue? I believe that it can be learned through emulation – making the best characteristics of a noble and great person our own.

And this is done through the study of history and biographies. We learn about the noble and great and it forever plants in our hearts and minds:

1. Standards of resolution
2. Allegiance to principle, country and friend
3. A strengthening of conscience and a resistance to the fierce blandishments of will.

The scholar emulates these great people and in so doing learns to do her best – by and for those who have depended on her and that she may have done that best, and often, when she did not want to, when she was exhausted or when in doubt of the wisdom of the duty prescribed to her, or when a hundred other obligations competed for her attention.

She understands, before those she studied were great, they were studded by failure, by error, by self-doubt and that in acknowledging these to be true and by mastering their consequences, learning from them and moving on, that they earned their reputation, the fame of succeeding generations, that was their noblest reward.

They were not the best and the brightest. They were the wisest and bravest.

So I would ask – is there a person in history that you love, whose life somehow speaks directly to your own consciousness, whose life, with its sorrows and exaltations, somehow means something to the way you live your own? A life you can somehow realize?

Find people who inspire you! Study their lives and you will find and live up to greatness.

Every year American Heritage  Academy scholars take the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS: Iowa Test of Basic Skills). This test has been the preferred choice of educators since 1935. Each year scholars are measured against the nation’s students to ensure that instruction at American Heritage Academy exceeds the highest standards of education in the United States. We are proud of the accomplishments by our students and faculty; once again …Continue Reading

If our Founding Fathers were with us today,  I believe they would tell us three things:

1. To have Faith in God
2. Preserve and protect our God-given freedoms
3. Understand the principles of our Constitution

But above all else, our Founders would want to give us hope that our nation will endure; and to remember, God provided miracles at critical times in their history and there are miracles yet to come.

Our debt today is to pay back to our Founders the price they paid with their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.  We repay this debt by preserving the Constitution for our posterity. We must maintain their same character of integrity, courage, and faith.

The simple faith that wrought miracles. Live by the principles you know to be true, make the …Continue Reading

We often think about those traits that make one a good teacher – an intelligent mind, strong will, and unquenchable drive. While these are traits with which a teacher may be born, there is one much deeper condition that makes one a true master teacher.  A teacher must not rely on their own natural abilities but rather focus on inspiring their students.

To better understand what it means to inspire, Noah Webster’s 1828 American English Dictionary says that inspire means to communicate divine instruction to the mind, to infuse into the mind new meaning. In the definition of inspire take note that it means to communicate divine instruction.  Instruction comes through the Holy Ghost. In 2 Peter of the Holy Bible it says, holy men of God spake when they were moved by the Holy Ghost and they only spoke when the had this Spirit with them. The most important quality of being able to inspire others requires that a person rely on powers greater and more powerful than …Continue Reading