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Dr. Bob Cannon, headmaster of Veritas Scholars Academy, joins us today to discuss the exceptional faculty that make VSA a truly world-class online school. Learn about our rigorous teacher selection process, why 95% of our teachers come back year after year, how our ongoing teacher mentorship works, and more!

If you or someone you know would like to join our team, we are constantly expanding! As of the recording of this episode, Veritas Scholars Academy brings on roughly 20 new teachers every year and we keep the hiring process open all year long. Interested indivduals can apply at veritaspress.com/employment.

Episode Transcription

Note: This transcription may vary from the words used in the original episode for better readability.

Marlin Detweiler:
Hello again and welcome to another episode of Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian education. I expect that you know the guest that we have here, if you've been a regular listener or someone that's been around Veritas for a while, Dr. Bob Cannon, the headmaster of our online school, Veritas Scholars Academy. Welcome, Bob.

Dr. Bob Cannon:
Thanks, Marlin.

Marlin Detweiler:
Today we wanted to talk a little bit about teachers, our teachers in particular, and the tremendous group of people that God has gifted us with. Let me start with a very open-ended question. Bob, what do you think about when you think about the teachers that you get to oversee?

Dr. Bob Cannon:
I often refer to them as our faculty. We call our school an academy, so faculty is an appropriate word that I've seen used elsewhere, especially in classical circles. I can't say enough about our teachers. They all know that I feel that way about them. When I started about ten years ago, Marlin, we had somewhere on the order of 60 or 65 teachers, and we have made our way to about 175 teachers on our faculty.

That's been a lot of fun to watch. God has, as you alluded to a moment ago, really blessed us with these individuals. There are a whole lot of things I can say about them, but let's just leave it at, they are some of the most meaningful people that I get to interact with on a daily basis.

And I've been in education now for better than 20 years, and I've worked with some very high-caliber teachers in my past, and I wouldn't trade the people that I work with now for anybody. I love working with our faculty.

Marlin Detweiler:
One of the things that has become a dramatic statistic related to our teachers is the retention rate that we've had for several years now. Comment on those numbers and give us some sense of why you think that's true.

Dr. Bob Cannon:
Sure. It's about five years now where our retention has clearly been. At least that's what I have in my mind's eye. It's at least five years of 90% retention or better. And there was a time not terribly long ago, several years ago, where I thought, wouldn't it be a wonderful thing to have a consistent record of 90-plus percent in the way of retention of our teachers.

And I have watched over the past five years that number creep up to a current retention rate of 95% this current school year.

00:03:38:18 - 00:03:40:15

Marlin Detweiler:
Unbelievable.

Dr. Bob Cannon:
Next school year, I'm anticipating it will be a rate of at least 96%. It could be better or higher than 96. I chuckle a bit when you ask the question because when talking with candidates who wish to join our faculty, and I talk with a lot of those people, they want to know a little something about our teachers.

And I mention retention rate as a part of that narrative, and they ask me the same question. Why so high? What is it that causes teachers to stay? And I often respond with two major points and a third point just to make them chuckle a little bit. One, they love working with one another.

Our teachers engage with each other in a really meaningful way, and that has to do with their biblical worldview, which they share, their love of learning, and their love of their students. They also really, really love working with their students. Speaking of that, at the end of every school year, we see a lot of tears, not just from students, but from teachers as well, because they anticipate that here comes the summer and this class is over.

And it's hard to leave once you've gotten to know your students so well. The third point that I say tongue-in-cheek is that teachers tolerate working with me as well. I say that tongue-in-cheek. They know what I mean by that. Oftentimes there's this dynamic between faculty and administration that isn't always so positive in a lot of environments.

But here I find that the faculty and the administration are rowing in the same direction. We enjoy working with each other. I am so grateful to hear our teachers talk about the folks like our school manager, Michelle Langley, and others on our team with whom they enjoy working so much because they know that we are always operating in their best interests.

In fact, when our dean of students, Tom Garfield, and I talk about conducting observations and evaluations of our teachers, the approach that we take with teachers is not to observe them to find things that they may not be doing the way we want them to do them. The real spirit of our observation and evaluation process is to enter into those exercises with the right assumption that our teachers are really good at what they do.

We vet people pretty thoroughly before we invite them to become a part of our faculty, so we know they're good. When we enter into that evaluative process, we're looking for ways to help our teachers become better and better at what they do. That's in their best interests, it's in our best interest as a school, and it's in our students' and families' best interests.

It's a win all the way around to approach the evaluative process that way, and I know that our teachers appreciate that about the way we conduct ourselves. There's a lot more that can be said, but I think that's some of the key things.

Marlin Detweiler:

You and I frequently talk about, and of course, I enjoy being involved in the process of every teacher hire, as well as Tom Garfield, dean of academics. You said dean of students, by the way, and I know you meant—oh.

Dr. Bob Cannon:
Thank you.

Marlin Detweiler:
But we constantly are talking about the fact that because we have a world market to choose from, we’re not restricted to a limited geographic area like a city or a region. We don't have to have teachers relocate to come teach for us. Because of that, we talked about the fact that we ought to have a world-class collection of teachers.

So as we hire somebody, we ask the question frequently, are they or can they easily become a world-class teacher? And I'm convinced that us sticking to that has caused us to have a collection of teachers that may have been unmatched anywhere, at any time. I think we have simply the best collection of teachers I've ever seen, given what we do in K-12 education.

But then we take, and this is where your team is to be congratulated. The evaluation process. You should unpack that. Tell us, pause with this question rather than throw several questions out. But tell our listeners what a teacher goes through and the evaluation process over the course of a year.

To keep it concise, we evaluate our teachers about half a dozen times a year. I would challenge any other school environment to try to match that. We frequently look to our teachers for how they're performing and, again, with an emphasis on how they can improve what they're doing. We have walkthrough evaluations, which is a brief look at what they're doing in a classroom, perhaps even with a particular emphasis on looking for certain characteristics in their teaching that we would give them targeted feedback about.

We have fuller observations. That's more lengthy. That happens routinely as well with our teachers. It happens more frequently with new teachers to Veritas than it does with seasoned or experienced teachers in our particular environment. We like to give that kind of evaluative feedback more frequently to those who are new because they're still getting their feet under them, if you will, with regards to our DNA.

They're acclimating to our environment. That happens pretty quickly. They are also formally evaluated. Every one of our teachers is formally evaluated at the end of every year, so that they're given feedback that's more of a cumulative nature. With many of those teachers, particularly new teachers, that is a face-to-face meeting like you and I are having right now, where our dean of academics...

Thank you for correcting me earlier. Our dean of academics is giving that feedback to our new teachers specifically. There's something else that I want to wrap in here. I don't know if you would be headed in this direction at some point, but I think it's well connected to talk about our teacher certification process.

Marlin Detweiler:
I actually am going to deal with that next. But I think, before you get there, maybe, the evaluation process. It might strike someone as almost impossible to say, how can you evaluate teachers six times in a year? And of course, some of them, as you mentioned, are very simple. There are checkpoint evaluations starting on time and, you know, very basic things like that.

It's more than just those kinds of basics. And I know that, and we don't need to get into all 28 points that are evaluated there, but because they know what they're being evaluated on, it really makes them a whole lot more comfortable in my thinking. It would for me because I know what I'm going to be evaluated on these checkpoints.

It's very easy for me to manage them, and the scores that we get on average are just off the charts because of it. And the teachers' consistency and performance come from that. But maybe talk a little bit about what happens in a full evaluation, the fact that those happen a couple times a year, especially for newer teachers or teachers that are new to us, that is.

Dr. Bob Cannon:
Yeah. First, I'll say that I'm chuckling a bit because I joke with our dean of academics from time to time that maybe we're getting a little soft because our teachers keep scoring so well. But that's not the case. We evaluate the evaluation process from time to time, and we're right on point there.

Also, to the question of how are we accomplishing all of that? Our dean of academics is conducting the overwhelming majority of evaluations or observations specifically, but we also have individuals behind the scenes to whom we delegate that task. And those are more experienced teachers who have an administrative angle in what they do. And so they are actually evaluating other teachers under the oversight of our dean of academics.

So it sounds like a logistical nightmare, but it's really not more cumbersome than it ought to be.

Marlin Detweiler:
One of the beauties of what we have is that every class is recorded. And so, yes, it's not necessary for an evaluator like you or our dean of academics, or the people that help you all out. It's not necessary to schedule through the day. "Oh, this is where that teacher's teaching. I got to be there."

Yeah, and that sort of thing. It can be done on the schedule of the people doing the evaluations because they have recordings to work with.

Dr. Bob Cannon:
That's exactly right. And I'm glad that you mentioned it because it also has the advantage. Whereas in a physical school environment, evaluations take place by administrators who step into the classroom while the class is being conducted, while instruction is happening. And, of course, every child turns their head to look at the evaluator, and it disrupts the dynamic of the instruction. In our environment, we're able to conduct those evaluations without touching that dynamic because we're looking at the archived recordings of any of those classes.

And incidentally, while we're watching a class, if we want to hit rewind by 30s because we didn't quite catch what was said and we want to be sure, we can do that. So there are a lot of advantages.

Marlin Detweiler:
Being in a virtual initial advantage is you get a broad sampling. You can look at the first five minutes of a class, the middle of a class. And so, and that's not possible when you're evaluating in a live setting.

Dr. Bob Cannon:
Right. It's very different. As for the fuller evaluation, that would encompass about 45 minutes of time, looking at an hour-and-a-half class. And I say 45 minutes of time because you can speed up the observation so as to make efficient use of the time. Because, to your point, there are a lot of people who are observed in our environment, and it continues to grow. By the way, that fuller evaluation is looking at finer details, finer points of what it means to be in a Christian environment, in a classical environment.

Are our teachers being rhetorically effective in their instruction? It's conservative for me to say that there are twice the number of details in a full evaluation when compared with a walkthrough evaluation or observation experience. So it's fairly thorough. And every teacher has that full evaluation at least once a year, but many times twice in the year to complement what we're doing in the way of walkthroughs and to complement the formal meeting at the end of a year where a teacher is evaluated even further.

Marlin Detweiler:
Well, I said earlier that we believe we have a world-class, maybe the best collection of teachers assembled. And a lot of that has to do with the front end, the hiring process, which we're talking about now. We're talking about how we evaluate teachers. But there's something more to the retention rate and to the quality.

And that's the certification process that you started to talk about a moment ago. Tell the audience what we do when it comes to bringing teachers along in the Veritas system, our DNA and our expectations in a broader sense. You know, the first process is getting through the gate. The second process is kind of a reactive. The evaluative process is a reactive one. And tell us a little bit about the certification process.

Dr. Bob Cannon:
About seven years ago, we initiated year one of our in-house teacher certification. To be clear, some people wonder, does this have anything to do with state certification? And it does not. It has to do with those kinds of attributes that we are most concerned about in our classical Christian space here. So about seven years ago, we instituted year one, where we had teachers on a monthly basis to keep it simple: read something, watch something, and then discuss that something.

So in September, they would read Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning. They would watch you, Marlin, as our president, present on the old new way, a video that you created some time ago about classical Christian education. Then, close to the end of the month, on a Friday morning at 11 a.m. East Coast, all of those teachers who were participating in that year-one certification schedule would get together in a meeting place in Adobe Connect, our meeting and classroom space.

And that would be led in a facilitated conversation where you lead them, and they would discuss Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning. They would discuss the Sayers essay, and they would discuss the video that they watched and answer a number of prompting questions that you would ask them at that time. So that's a small snapshot of what happens in year one in September. Then we move.

Marlin Detweiler:
Can you summarize? The year one is essentially helping teachers understand how our expression of classical Christian education and what it means in theory and in practice in the classroom? Is that a yes or fair yes.

Dr. Bob Cannon:
It's helping. It's helping new teachers to Veritas assimilate into our environment. Yeah. Then they move on to October, and they read something like The Seven Laws of Teaching. They'll watch a video that's pertinent. And then Tom Garfield, our dean of academics, will facilitate the conversation towards the end of the month, Friday, 11:00 a.m.

And they do this every month until May. And in May, they meet with me, having met with a number of other people, mostly administrative people, sometimes an outside speaker who will come in to talk about a particular subject. And in May, we then have a discussion where we summarize the cumulative thoughts that we've gathered over the course of the year.

The following year, we said, well, now what do we do with this year-one group? Let's create year two. And then we had the same kind of process for those folks. And now we'd have a year-one group and a year-two group who have graduated.

Marlin Detweiler:
Year one group, and the intermediate group.

Dr. Bob Cannon:
Something like that. Yeah. Yep. And then, subsequently we had year three. So we have three groups going at different times on Fridays, of course, but they're all given assignments to read, to watch and learn from, and then to discuss with one another. Before I forget to mention it, the very best thing that comes out of this process is the collegial learning environment that they get to experience with one another.

It's our version of a professional learning community, if you will, as some schools call it. And ask any teacher. And they would tell you that even though there is a financial incentive to their being involved in this process, which we don't need to get into the details of, the greater benefit that they feel is the interaction with their peers.

So once we had year one, two, and three in place, well, what do we do when we get to year four? Rather than have a perpetual number of years on the schedule, we turned year three into continuing education, as we call it. And so every year, that continuing education schedule of what they read and what they watch changes, and then the facilitated conversation at the end. At this point in time, about two-thirds of our faculty are involved in that teacher certification process.

And I anticipate that that will also probably continue to grow, although sometimes Fridays are a difficult time for our teachers to come together. So, there are times when there's no way around it, but we do have a majority of our teachers engaged in that, and they really enjoy it.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah, it's been amazing to me how much it has worked to bring people into our environment in an intentional way that many organizations think of a new church, a new church has people come to it at the beginning. They go through a learning process together of what that church is becoming. And it's an expression of the Christian faith.

And its worship style and practice and all those things kind of get learned together. But there's no, and rarely have I seen an intentional ability to bring parishioners, members of a church on to experience the same things or to learn those same things. And this system, I think, has allowed us to bring people in and fit in permanent ways.

And I guarantee you that has been a reason for which we have such a high retention rate, because people have not only learned what's important to us, but it's become important to them.

Dr. Bob Cannon:
Yeah, it is certainly a contributing factor, no doubt.

Marlin Detweiler:
Well, there is another thing that we do also, and it comes up in the interview process. So I know that teachers are very concerned about it. And that's the whole idea of what do you do in terms of teacher training to get somebody, a new teacher or even a returning teacher, up to speed over the summer so that they're ready to hit the ground running in their class?

Dr. Bob Cannon:
When a teacher joins us, we give them a heads up on the front end, and it's sometimes a question in the interview process, how do we prepare our teachers to do what they do? How do we orient them? How do we train them? We actually at times think of those as two separate parts of the process.

I often say to candidates, those people that I anticipate are going to join our faculty, that we won't disappoint. They wonder if or what kind of training they're going to receive. And I usually respond to say they will receive more than they expect. We have orientation videos that we've created ourselves at Veritas. We have orientation videos created by others, such as the vendors who provide us with our learning management system and our classroom space.

I mentioned Adobe Connect a while ago. We have live meetings starting in March in the spring for new teachers.

Marlin Detweiler:
Back to September, just to be clear.

Dr. Bob Cannon:
That's right. So march all the way through the spring and through the summer we have live or face-to-face meetings where we're acclimating teachers to who we are and some of the more important details that they need to be aware of as they step into the classroom. And, otherwise here, we appoint a mentor teacher to all of our new teachers for the first year.

I'll say just off to the side, that there was a time when teachers would ask questions of the whole faculty. And I think there came a day when I scratched my head and said, wouldn't they prefer to have one person that they can go to? But, so we set in motion the idea of a mentor teacher, at least in their first year.

But beyond that, mentor teachers, new teachers to our environment have a school manager. They have assistance to the school manager and to the headmaster to turn to. They have a manager of diploma services, a dean of academics, a dean of students, a headmaster, a department head within their respective departments. You're getting the idea. They have a lot of people that they could conceivably turn to.

Marlin Detweiler:
A lot of places to learn.

Dr. Bob Cannon:
I can't emphasize enough the importance of a teacher feeling like he or she is well-prepared to step into our environment in their first days of instruction with us. I want them to feel even over-prepared. Now, on the flip side of the equation, it's been wonderful over time to have teachers return to me to say, you told me I'd get a lot of support and you weren't kidding.

I got so much support. Any time I had a question, people were at the ready. They were more than willing to come alongside me to help me understand better what I needed to.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah, well, I thought it was a really good idea for us to record this episode because there's a lot that goes into the process of what makes up our faculty. And I think it, I can imagine that parents, considering bringing their children to us and taking live classes at Veritas Scholars Academy, would enjoy knowing how careful we are in the hiring process.

There are lots of other things we didn't talk about, background checks and things like that that have become commonplace today. We're trying to not miss anything, and I think it has contributed to what is just an incredible faculty. So one of the benefits of what we're doing here, of course, is to encourage parents and give them confidence that they will have teachers teaching their children that are clearly best in class.

But there's another aspect that I wonder if this episode will help with also, and that is to alert people who might consider teaching for us. How does somebody start that process?

Dr. Bob Cannon:
It's pretty easy. You simply go to our website, scroll to the bottom, there's a button there that says employment. And if you click on employment, you'll see that one of a number of positions that's open is teacher. Clicking on teacher takes you to our hiring portal. There's an application there where you have an opportunity to also upload a resume and that's how things get started.

I will say too, that a number of our teachers have come to us through the mechanism of our current teachers understanding us well enough to say, I know somebody else who would thrive in this environment. And so a number of our teachers that we've hired over the years have come to us because of our existing teachers, telling their friends, their family, church members, other educators that they've worked with in the past.

And that's been wonderful because they're able to convey to those people what their experience has been, and it's intriguing to a lot of candidates to have heard that before they even submit an application or meet with me.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. Well, the other thing it's worth noting here, for our audience, is that we are always interviewing teachers. Currently, based on our size, we're probably hiring about 20 teachers per year. And that requires us. Yeah. We don't want to hire 20 teachers on July 1st or the month of July. So we're working 12 months a year through the interview process because it is such a large task for us at this point.

And so if people that are hearing this are interested, they don't need to wait till a certain time of year. Any time of year is an effective time of year to apply and go through the process. Do you want to talk about that process? Somebody goes to our website, they get an application. Then what?

Dr. Bob Cannon:

Once an application has been submitted and I've reviewed the application, I reach out to the individual to schedule a time to meet. We'll have about a 45-minute conversation. And if all is going smoothly, the next thing that I would ask that candidate to do is submit a teaching video, a sample of just five minutes, to give us a sense of their teaching personality, if you will.

We then, as a next step, move into a second interview where the headmaster, the president, and the dean of academics, in fact. Case in point, Marlin, you and I have an interview early this afternoon. We have that meeting with an individual.

Marlin Detweiler:

And it's this that is a final interview. You and I and Tom Garfield, our academic. Did you know academics are involved in every applicant process before they're hired.

Dr. Bob Cannon:

Every single.

Marlin Detweiler:

One. So we take very seriously the vetting process where we have everyone involved that could possibly be reasonably involved.

Dr. Bob Cannon:

Yeah. Then it's a matter of discussing that applicant and what we've encountered with them in our second interview, as well as hearkening back to the first interview at times. We then check references, and at that point, I'm responding to that applicant to talk about the classes that we've agreed they would be best suited for. Incidentally, it's worth mentioning, in light of that comment that whether it's at the secondary level or the grammar level, our audience may perceive that at the secondary level, there are specialists in education, among the faculty or teachers.

At the grammar level, usually grammar teachers in most environments are generalists. They're teaching everything. We exercise a different approach here where both at the grammar and the secondary levels, we want teachers teaching what they are best at and what they love most. And those two things go hand in hand. So even at the grammar level, if someone is particularly skillful in math, we're not going to ask them to teach other subjects that they're unfamiliar with.

So at that point, we're identifying what the teacher may teach. And we get them scheduled for the coming year.

Marlin Detweiler:

Well, that's a good place to end. We have covered a lot of ground, and I hope that our listeners have found this very helpful. It's nice to think through comprehensively about what we do to create the world-class faculty that we have. So thanks for the work that you do. And thanks for helping us understand it better.

Dr. Bob Cannon:

It's my pleasure. Thank you, Marlin.

Marlin Detweiler:
Folks, thanks for joining us again on another episode of Veritas Vox. We hope to see you next time. Bye bye.