Dr. Amy Gilbert Richards is a Faculty Fellow of the Templeton Honors College's Master of Arts in Classical Teaching program. She is author of Disability and Classical Education: Student Formation in Keeping with Our Common Humanity. This book goes hand in hand with her course of the same name on ClassicalU. Both the book and the course emerged from her course in Templeton's MAT program, where she teaches a class called ‘Difference and Human Dignity in the Great Tradition’, which is dedicated both to developing an understanding of what it is to be human through the lens of disability and difference, and to offering practical techniques for classical classroom approaches for students with special needs. She lives in Havertown, PA with her husband and their three girls.

Tom Doebler has spent his entire twenty-year career in education working with and for students with exceptionalities. 17 of those years has been with Great Hearts Academies, where he has shared in the work of building a large and robust program of Exceptional Student Services that aligns with the heart of classical education and our mission to provide access to the ennobling experience of a classical, liberal arts education to any family that wants it for their child.Tom lives in Phoenix with his wife Angelika and his two children, Vera (5) and Rowan (3).

Structured on a foundation of philosophical insight and practical wisdom, Dr. Richards invites classical educators to welcome students with learning differences not as exceptions to be managed but as gifts who reveal the richness of our shared humanity. Drawing on categories like the “strange vocation,” doxological classrooms, and Universal Design for Learning, she offers both a robust anthropology and tangible guidance for creating learning environments rooted in Truth, Goodness, and Beauty—where every student flourishes.

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