About Me and My Teaching Philosophy
Hello! My name is Jessica Tancredi. I’m a Southern California native, wife and homeschooling mom of 4, and adjunct English professor at Chaffey College for over a decade.
I started officially homeschooling my eldest when she was in Kindergarten in 2018. I have always loved teaching and learning new things, and I wanted to be the one teaching my own children, so thus the adventure began. I knew I wanted our learning to be based on great literature, because I wanted my children to love books and reading just like I did. I was initially drawn to the classical education model and within a year or two of starting homeschooling I found Charlotte Mason. Early on I read Karen Glass’ book Consider This which connects Charlotte Mason’s philosophy of education to the classical tradition, both of which emphasize education as a formation of heart and soul as much as the mind.
As an English professor I have dedicated my professional life to teaching writing, grammar, argumentation, logic, and rhetoric, alongside classic works of literature and literary analysis. I firmly believe that writing should be taught in an organic way, with oral and written narration as the foundation. Once students are practiced in narration, we move gently into more formal prompts for various compositions and essays, and ultimately research papers. Different elements of grammar, mechanics, format, editing, logic, and rhetoric are introduced and practiced incrementally along the way.
I do not believe that formulaic approaches to writing are necessary to build great writers; oftentimes they are in fact detrimental, as they tend to kill a student’s interest and creativity in writing. I believe we should learn writing by reading great writing and literature, narrating it, imitating it, and building out our own ideas out from it. Order and coherence can be taught without requiring a student to conform to a specific formula. Not every student will love writing, but every student can learn to write well, and appreciate it as an art and skill. Like any skill, one can become better at writing through practice.
Regarding literature, I am committed to preserving the literary tradition that has been largely lost in the face of modern literary criticism with its endless lenses and interpretations. This literary tradition has been upheld by modern writers like CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien, who dedicated their lives to communicating through the written word, and to sharing stories full of Good, True, and Beautiful ideas, carrying the thread of the Great Conversation. The literary group, The Inklings, of which they were apart, is the inspiration for the name of this online school, Inklings Academy.