Mentor: Modeling What We Teach

by Ross Garner

Mentor is the faculty journal of John Adams Academy. The purpose of this journal is to uncover the tenants of John Adams Academy’s American Classical Leadership Education® model, especially as it applies to the role of the mentor participating in that model. Here we hope to explore the alliance between the four pillars of American Classical Leadership Education—the Art of Mentoring, John Adams Academy’s Ten Core Values, Classics, and the Liberal Arts, considering how they guide scholars to become servant leaders. As educators and members of an intellectual community that inherit and relate a legacy of truth, wisdom, and beauty, we perceive the abundance in each contribution to the Great Conversation.
We take our name from the complementary sources of the Latin word mens, and mentis (mind, thought, intention) and the Homeric character Mentor (Μέντωρ), to whom great Odysseus entrusted care of his home and family, and in the guise of whom the goddess Athena gave counsel to the young Telemachus. The former origin recalls our human tradition of sentience, the latter our divine duties of love and loyalty. Taken together, the essence of mentoring is sharing with others the beauty and truth that has fallen to us.
Each issue, Mentor invites all John Adams Academy faculty and the larger classical education community to examine how the liberty-based art of mentoring and particular core values, expressed in classic books, histories, artifacts, songs, equations, and theories, guide scholars on their journey to greater light and truth. Whether the themes be humble, aimed for the heart of the youngest child, or rich and complex and intended for the minds of the mature and wise, we welcome your invaluable insights as we seek to better understand what the liberty-based American Classical Leadership Education offers us in our collective journey toward servant leadership.

93 pages, Paperback

Published September 22, 2022