First Tuesday at Aletheia
Thoughtful conversations on education, formation, and cultural clarity
Each First Tuesday, Aletheia hosts a public conversation exploring the deeper questions shaping education, authority, and formation today. These sessions are designed for parents, educators, and thoughtful leaders seeking clarity beyond slogans and systems.
When Words Change, Worlds Follow
Why vocabulary shifts quietly reshaped education
First Tuesday | 
8:00-9:00 PM (ET)
📍 Online (Zoom) | Free registration required
Modern education often feels sophisticated yet hollow. Teachers are overwhelmed, parents feel sidelined, and students are credentialed but unrooted.
This First Tuesday conversation explores a rarely examined cause: the quiet thinning of language.
Over time, words like formation, authority, inheritance, and stewardship were replaced with thinner terms such as development, facilitation, outcomes, and neutrality. These shifts were not accidental—and they reshaped how education understands truth, responsibility, and the human person.
This session will help participants:
Recognize how language frames educational assumptions
Understand why neutrality in education is never truly neutral
Recover older categories that bring Biblical and historical clarity to the present.
See why formation—not technique—is the missing center
What This Conversation Is—and Is Not
This session is:
✔ Thoughtful, not polemical
✔ Grounded in history and educational philosophy
✔ Accessible to parents and educators alike
✔ Oriented toward clarity, not culture-war rhetoric
This session is not:
✖ A policy briefing
✖ A partisan argument
✖ A technical workshop
✖ A nostalgic call to “go back”
You don’t need specialized background to attend—only a willingness to think carefully about how words shape the worlds we build.
Why First Tuesday
First Tuesday conversations exist to make space for careful thought in a noisy educational landscape. Rather than reacting to headlines or chasing trends, these sessions slow down and ask more fundamental questions:
What is education for?
What kind of person is being formed?
Who holds authority—and why?
What has been lost, renamed, or forgotten?
Each session stands alone, but together they form a coherent vision of education ordered toward truth, wisdom, and responsibility.
About the Speaker
Tessa Willen is an educational leader, instructional designer, and faculty member at Aletheia Christian College. Her work focuses on education as formation, teacher formation, and restoring moral clarity to learning environments shaped by bureaucratic and technocratic assumptions.
She works with parents, educators, and institutions seeking alternatives to neutralized schooling and fragmented learning.
Join the Conversation
First Tuesday | 8:00-9:00 PM (ET)
📍 Online (Zoom) | Free registration required