Cultivating Virtuous Minds in Humanities

Mr. Ketchum and his high school students have been examining and implementing his Deep Hope “that we honour God by cultivating virtuous minds”. In the various humanities courses that Mr. Ketchum teaches, he uses this as a guide to walk through what it looks like to have a virtuous mind from a Christ-centered perspective. Mr. Ketchum and his English Studies 12 class read a book by his own high school superintendent from Kenya. Through the reading of Virtuous Minds, Mr. Ketchum and his students examined seven intellectual virtues: humility, honesty, fair-mindedness, curiosity, courage, carefulness, and tenacity. They unpacked each of these virtues together as a class and named members of the class who exemplify each of these virtues.

Students individually reflected upon and wrote about which virtues they are cultivating, which ones they feel they have made a lot of progress in, and which ones they need to work on. As a class, they discussed how a mind that exemplifies these virtues is inevitably going to look more like Christ and draw people to Him. Mr. Ketchum deeply appreciated building a shared vocabulary to identify student achievements and actions that are related to these virtues.