About Us
Strengthening Local, Face-to-Face Educational Communities
Our Team
Our Purpose
We are a small group of Orthodox Christian educators lead by Dr. Mark Tarpley who desire to create quality resources to serve homeschool families, schools, and local Church communities.
As Christian educators, we recognize that families and schools today are caught between two dominant educational approaches in America – the progressive and the neoclassical. While we recognize that the neoclassical approach is more advantageous than the progressive approach, we also recognize that neither of these represents a traditional approach to Christian paideia. Our goal at Forgotten Lighthouse is to create educational resources which embody a traditional and normative approach to Christian paideia rooted in the Patristic tradition. Such an approach seeks to foster within the child a deep understanding of who he is and who he ought to be in light of the person of Jesus Christ.
Founder
Dr. Mark Tarpley has worked in the field of education for over twenty-five years. Currently, Mark serves as an administrator in the role of Academic Dean at a private Christian school in Fort Worth, Texas—a hybrid education model of classroom instruction and homeschooling. Mark has taught in public and private schools and holds a teaching certificate in math 8-12. His instructional experience includes middle school, high school, undergraduate, master’s level, and doctoral level courses.
Mark earned his M.Div. from St. Tikhon’s Theological Seminary, working under the guidance of Dr. Christopher Veniamin for both his M.Div. thesis and his doctoral dissertation, receiving his PhD from Southern Methodist University in Patristics and ethics. His graduate work focused on the Church Fathers’ writings on marriage, family, and education.
Mark and his wife, Sophia, have seven children.