Our Story

Adam and Missy earned bachelor’s degrees from Hillsdale College in 1991. Adam then received his Ph.D. candidacy in History at the University of Washington, and Missy took her MA in Imaginative Literature from Harrison Middleton University. They sent all six of their children to Hillsdale College as well, and five majored in literature! Even our beloved finance guy knows his Virgil from his Dickens, and waxes eloquent about the great books and the Western tradition.

Adam and Missy homeschooled their six children K-12 for over 25 years. They know firsthand the daily pressures and vicissitudes of the project. Veterans in the industry, they feel called to help parents and teachers provide their students with an excellent literary education and to share what they believe to be the fruit of that education: the enlivening grace provided in the person and work of Christ Jesus.

CenterForLit was born in 2003 when our co-founder, Missy Andrews, took a dare from a homeschool mom who asked her to lead a co-op workshop on how parents without literature degrees could teach their children the classics. She wrote Teaching the Classics in response, and she and her husband Adam have been advocating this inspiring and powerful methodology to parents and teachers ever since.

Out of Teaching the Classics, they developed programs and curriculum materials based on that foundational seminar to answer the call of a homeschool mom, up to her ears in dirty diapers, laundry, and homeschool classes – who nevertheless would like to quickly equip herself to have the significant conversations great authors provoke through the classics. In the same way we hope to serve the overwhelmed teacher, drowning in administrative duties and class prep, who would like to spend more time on nurturing his or her students with meaningful discussions and less time on paperwork.

Today the core staff of CenterForLit is composed of Adam and Missy, their son Ian and his wife Emily, and their daughter Megan. A family business from the start, we see our customers – who are, in reality, our colleagues – as members of an extended family that always forms around books and culture.