An Examined Education

Caleb Kapusinski graduated with the class of 2021 and now works in sales as an account manager for a general contractor. His episode is organized around two convictions he has carried into the workforce and has not stopped thinking about since. The first is that a smaller school creates space for a fuller person. At Cambridge, Caleb played basketball, ran cross country, performed in theater, and s...

Stephen Priest graduated with the class of 2020 after attending Cambridge since second grade. He went on to Baylor University, where he majored in mathematics, philosophy, and linguistics, and is now completing a master's in philosophy at Georgia State, where his research touches on AI ethics and moral cognition. The throughline connecting all of it runs directly back to Cambridge. Stephen's episo...

Josh Kapusinski arrived at Cambridge in eighth grade expecting to enter ninth. His first lesson was in humility. His second was that literature could do in a classroom what it had always done for him alone at home. Josh now teaches rhetoric, speech and debate, and senior thesis at the Geneva School, a classical Christian school not unlike Cambridge. He spends a good deal of his time thinking about...

Aksel Yoder graduated with the class of 2023 and spent eleven years at Cambridge. He is now in college, and on Saturday mornings he meets with a classmate to read through the Gospel of John. That Bible study is the heart of his episode. Aksel's reading partner is a committed Christian, but one whose biblical foundation runs narrower than his own. What Aksel discovered in their conversations was no...

Samuel Gingrich graduated with the class of 2019 and now works in market research, analyzing survey data for business clients. It is exactly the kind of work that demands the full breadth of a Cambridge education at once. His episode centers on what Cambridge calls the "both/and" approach to the humanities and the sciences. In his professional life, that integration is not philosophical; it is pra...

Sophie graduated with Cambridge's eighth class in 2025, having spent the better part of her life in the community from junior kindergarten through senior year. She is now a first-year at UC San Diego studying molecular biology. She is two quarters removed from graduation and already finding Cambridge everywhere she looks. The idea Sophie carried out of Cambridge is that there is always an occasion...

Isaiah Francisco enrolled at Cambridge in kindergarten and graduated thirteen years later with the class of 2023. He is now a junior at the University of Notre Dame, majoring in history and minoring in International Security Studies, and is preparing for a commission as a Naval officer. His story is one of formation meeting vocation. When Isaiah reflects on Cambridge, he reaches naturally for the...

Nathan Kim enrolled at Cambridge in its founding year in 2006 and graduated with the class of 2020. He went on to study economics at Gordon College and now works as an implementation specialist at Epic Systems in Madison, Wisconsin. But the most formative part of his story has less to do with where he ended up than with what it took to get there. Nathan didn't have an easy run of it. There were ye...

Ethan Chin graduated with Cambridge's eighth class in 2025 and has been part of the community since junior kindergarten. Now a freshman at Harvey Mudd College, he reflects on what it meant to spend formative years in a place that valued depth over speed, discussion over delivery, and formation over output. Ethan unpacks two ideas that have stayed with him: coherentism as an epistemological model,...

In this episode of An Examined Education, we hear from Emma Kim, Class of 2018, now a UC Berkeley graduate and returning faculty member at The Cambridge School. Emma reflects on her journey from student to teacher and the profound gratitude she feels as she celebrates Cambridge’s 20th anniversary from the other side of the classroom. Looking back, she considers how the school’s guiding vision, to...

In this episode of An Examined Education, we hear from alumna Anna O’Neill, Class of 2025, now a freshman at Colorado State University, as she reflects on her 13 years at The Cambridge School. Anna shares how the house system and three years of student leadership shaped her growth, strengthened lasting friendships, and cultivated a deep sense of community. She highlights two enduring gifts of her...

In this episode of An Examined Education, we hear from Mason Settergren, Class of 2024, now a sophomore at Hillsdale College studying Classics and Math. Mason reflects on how 13 years at The Cambridge School cultivated a deep and abiding intellectual curiosity. From physics and Greek to neuroscience and theology, he describes an education where subjects were never siloed but woven together, each i...

In this episode of An Examined Education, Sara Spinar, a member of the Class of 2025, reflects on spending her entire fourteen-year education at The Cambridge School before preparing to study Humanistic Studies at John Cabot University in Rome. Sara shares how the house system and Cambridge’s both and vision shaped her most deeply. While the school is known for academic rigor, she reflects on how...

In this episode of An Examined Education, Emma Mohler, a 2023 graduate of The Cambridge School and current student at Hillsdale College, reflects on how her time at Cambridge shaped both her intellectual curiosity and her understanding of what it means to care for others. Emma shares how the sacrificial investment of teachers and the depth of relationships within the community formed her attentive...

In this episode of An Examined Education, Alex Chin, a member of Cambridge’s eighth graduating class, reflects on spending twelve formative years at The Cambridge School before heading to Duke University. From pre-K through high school graduation, Alex describes Cambridge as home, a place shaped by deep relationships, rigorous academics, and a community that continually pushed him to grow. He shar...

In this episode of An Examined Education, alumna Jasmine Rupani Gingrich (Class of 2019) reflects on how her years at The Cambridge School shaped not only her academic path, but her understanding of grace, vocation, and faithful presence in the world. From discovering a love of rhetoric that led her to study communications at Gordon College, to working as a barista in Berkeley and later serving in...

In this episode of An Examined Education, Cambridge alumna Haley Hom, Class of 2018, reflects on her full journey through a Cambridge education and beyond, from grammar school through law school and into her calling as an attorney. Through a series of formative moments, Haley shares how the habits of thought, discipline of writing, love of learning, and support of a gracious community prepared her...

In this episode of An Examined Education, Cambridge alumnus Josh, Class of 2018, reflects on how a Cambridge education continues to shape his life well beyond graduation. Now a University of Chicago graduate and founder of a venture-backed AI company serving biotech and pharmaceutical firms, Josh traces a clear throughline from his time on Cambridge’s debate team to the work he does today. He shar...

Transcript: (Auto-generated) Welcome to An Examined Education, a podcast from the Cambridge School. At Cambridge, we often say that education is never merely about what students know, but about who they are becoming. For 20 years, our community has been shaped by conversations that ask enduring questions about truth, goodness, and beauty, and by a shared commitment to forming students who think we...

As The Cambridge School marks twenty years, An Examined Education opens a new season by turning to the voices that know its formation from the inside: its alumni. In this season-opening episode, we hear from Alyssa Kim, Class of 2022, now a senior at Georgetown University studying history on a pre-med track. Alyssa reflects on a journey shaped by Cambridge from pre-K through graduation, one that c...

In this episode of An Examined Education, we sit down with Cambridge School Latin teacher Donny McNair to explore the Roman historian Livy and the power of narrative in shaping a civilization’s moral compass. Livy lived through the collapse of the Roman Republic and the rise of Augustus' empire—a time of immense political and cultural upheaval. Through vivid, almost novelistic storytelling, Livy d...

What holds a society together when factions clash and partisanship rises? In this episode, Kelsey Bonilla, history and government teacher at The Cambridge School, unpacks the deep connections between law, government, and a flourishing civil society. We trace the founders’ inspirations from Rome to the Enlightenment, explore the responsibilities of citizenship, and ask how education can ground us i...

In this episode of An Examined Education, host Jeff Yoder sits down with Patrick Claytor, a Bible and Latin teacher at The Cambridge School, to explore how faith and community shape personal identity and societal flourishing. Drawing on the metaphor of a "cut flower society," they examine how secularization uproots individuals from traditional sources of meaning while people continue to seek commu...

Longing to Know - Esther Meek Nicomachean Ethics Book VI - Aristotle An Essay in Regulative Epistemology by Robert C. Roberts and Jay Wood

An Examined Education, presented by The Cambridge School in San Diego, explores the foundations of classical Christian education and its vital role in today's world. In this episode, Jean Kim, founder and head of school, delves into Os Guinness's compelling metaphor of "cut flower civilization" - the idea that Western society continues to display the beauty of Christian and classical influences wh...