Tracey Leary

I was born and raised in Panama City, FL, and have lived in Alabama for 30 years. My parents, especially my father, valued reading highly and so I was an avid reader growing up, but also enjoyed pursuing a musical interest as well. I attended Huntingdon College on a piano scholarship and graduated with a degree in both Music and English. I also received a Masters degree in Education at the Auburn campus in Montgomery and taught at a classical school for four years. I married my husband, Ross, in 1999, and we have three boys who I began homeschooling six years ago. For most of that time, we were heavily involved in a classical co-op which grew to well over 100 moms and kids and in which I taught, served on the board of directors, and wrote and compiled the humanities curriculum for the secondary grades. My hobbies are reading, sewing, and baking, and my family enjoys traveling, cheering on the Auburn Tigers, pampering our guinea pig, and debating everything from Dante to Star Wars.

Teaching Philosophy

To paraphrase Charlotte Mason, I believe that what a student knows is not as important as how much a student cares about what he or she knows. To that end, I believe that a quality education for students consists both of reading works that inspire and challenge them and providing a format for them to discuss those works in a group setting with a teacher who is herself inspired and challenged by them. As an educator, my desire is that no student feel intimidated by the Great Books. Rather, I want to help students to see first and foremost, that the reason these books have endured for centuries and are still being read today is not because they are lofty and worthy of being contemplated by the wisest thinkers of our day, although they are that, but because they are at heart Great Stories, which can be read and enjoyed by people of all ages.

I provide reading guides for student support as they tackle their focal weekly assignments to help them identify major points and themes in their reading and to formulate questions and ideas they can bring to class discussion. I also pair each literature selection with a selection from history in order to allow the student to simultaneously hear more than one voice from the time period being studied as well as a “living book” which provides a more recent but still valuable exploration of the periods or themes under discussion, all of which are read simultaneously at a moderate pace over several weeks in order to facilitate the student’s ability to ponder the books and make connections among two or three related streams of thought. I also provide an optional assignment drawn from movies, music, and other media that students are encouraged to complete, and which I will use in class discussion, as we explore how the Great Conversation is still taking place all around us. In class, I incorporate a Book of Centuries for chronological understanding as well as other tactile challenges and activities such as map work which dialectic students enjoy, in addition to the discussion that is the heart of our weekly meetings.

Statement of Faith

I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that He died for our sins, was resurrected and lives at the right hand of God. I believe this was necessary because mankind’s sin in a historical Garden of Eden irreparably separated him from God, and that from that time we have all been born with a sin nature. Only Christ, who is fully human and fully divine, was born sinless and lived a perfect life, which enabled Him to become the satisfactory sacrifice for sin that God’s justice required. I am a member of Morningview Baptist Church, which is a Southern Baptist Church, although Morningview teaches from a Reformed perspective and is affiliated with Founders Ministries. My husband and I were members of a PCA church for twenty years before we joined Morningview ten years ago. Most of the material I teach, however, was developed for a co-op in which we had a wide variety of denominations represented, although all were Protestant and Evangelical, and so I teach with this wider perspective in mind.

Testimonials

>Mrs. Tracy Leary was a wonderful teacher. She was very helpful when we had questions, very kind in her evaluations, and encouraging to my son. He thrived in this class! - Cassie Minter, Kepler parent