Foundations in Classical Teaching with Dr. Christopher Perrin
This faculty orientation will support you where you are at in your classical education journey as you study through select ClassicalU courses. Each course linked below has a professional certificate available upon completion. To get you excited to begin, here is a brief 11-minute lesson with Dr. Christopher Perrin contemplating the foundational question of “What is Classical Education?”
All-Faculty Learning Track - Year One
The Good Teacher
This course, presented by Dr. Christopher Perrin and Carrie Eben, offers a rich and accessible introduction to the foundational principles of classical education for teachers. Together, Perrin and Eben unpack ten classical pedagogical principles and show how they apply across subjects, student ages, and school models. Each principle is explored not only through philosophical reflection but through vivid classroom stories, concrete strategies, and thoughtful encouragement.
The Scholé Way
In this all-new course, Dr. Christopher Perrin explores how the classical concept of restful, contemplative learning—scholé—provides formation in wisdom, virtue, and a deep intellectual life. Tracing the roots of scholé in classical philosophy, Christian theology, and monastic education, the course examines how this tradition contrasts with the anxiety-driven tendencies of modern schooling.
Essentials of Effective Teaching
In this course, Robyn Burlew shares her accumulated wisdom and practical insights into what it means to be an effective classical educator. Those teachers yearning for practical, hands-on guidance in teaching methods, classroom cultivation, testing and assessment, and effective planning will find this course truly essential.
Principles of Classical Pedagogy
In this course, Dr. Christopher Perrin presents the essential principles of classical pedagogy that have been part of the classical tradition of education and explains how each of them can enable one to teach with great effectiveness and impact. Dr. Perrin has given this training to many classical schools and homeschooling teachers across the country, receiving great reviews that have led to great demand for this training.
All-Faculty Learning Track - Year Two
Growing Classroom Culture through Parent Partnerships
In this course, Robyn Burlew shares her accumulated wisdom and practical insights for forging meaningful partnerships with parents in order to develop a rich and healthy classroom culture.
Principles of
Classical Pedagogy II
This course features master classical educator Andrew Kern present what he considers to be two critical modes of classical pedagogy: mimetic and Socratic teaching in which educators present models for imitation and when students become aware of their ignorance and begin to truly seek answers. Combined, the mimetic and Socratic modes of teaching help students to engage, study, and seek after the true, good, and the beautiful, which leads to the cultivation of virtue and wisdom.
Essentials Philosophy
Dr. David Schenk introduces teachers to some of the essential elements of philosophy. Philosophy has traditionally been a capstone study (along with theology) for a classical education that follows the study of the liberal arts. Every classical educator, therefore, should have at least modest philosophical training. This course provides that by presenting us with some of the most central ideas, debates, challenges, arguments in the history of philosophy.
New to Classical Education
Learning Track - Year One
Introduction to Classical Education
The renewal of classical education has grown significantly over the last two decades. In this foundational course, Dr. Christopher Perrin provides a clear definition of classical education and then explores key questions. Even seasoned classical educators agree that it can still be difficult to answer the fundamental question: “What is classical education?”
Theology of Beauty and the Imagination
Dr. Junius Johnson explores the role beauty and the imagination play in brokering encounters with God for your students. Dr. Johnson responds to philosophical questions and also gives practical applications of beauty, imagination, and wonder in the classroom.
Principles and Practices
In these 31 short lessons Dr. Christopher Perrin and Justin Whitmel Earley invite you to learn more about this educational renewal. Christopher provides a quick orientation to the principles and practices of classical education while Justin shares about how the home and the school can be harmonized.
The Teacher’s Playbook
Newer classical school teachers often find it difficult to visualize what good practice looks like in one’s own particular context. In these sessions, Jerilyn Olsen lays out a vision of what good teaching might look like, and how teachers can organize their ideas around the framework of rhetoric.
Launching Your Classical Classroom
Drawing from years of experience and grounded in the principles of classical Christian education, Kim Warman offers mentorship in the essentials of classroom design, student formation, curriculum planning, and parent partnership. This course helps teachers begin their first year with clarity, confidence, and an orientation toward scholé—restful teaching rooted in purpose and peace.
New to Classical Education
Learning Track - Year Two
A Brief History of Classical Education
This course presents a pithy introduction and overview of ancient and medieval education, tracing the roots and genesis of the classical tradition of education. Dr. Matthew Post is a precise and clear teacher who does a superb job of summarizing and capturing the essence of important thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine and their contributions to the classical tradition of education.
A Brief History of Progressive Education
In this course, Dr. Jason Edwards presents a concise history of progressive education that explains how modern education emerged around 1900 to challenge and eventually replace traditional, classical education as the reigning paradigm for American education.
The Liberal Arts Tradition
In this seminal course, Dr. Kevin Clark and Ravi Scott Jain take us through a thoughtful, clear presentation of a paradigm for the tradition of classical Christian education. Clark and Jain emphasize that the 7 liberal arts are “not enough” to capture the classical tradition of education but that the liberal arts exist within the larger context of a tradition that includes piety, gymnastic, music, philosophy, and theology. To restore a vibrant classical, Christian education, we must recover not only the liberal arts but also this wider tradition that enhances the liberal arts, setting them free to enable the mastery of philosophy and theology.
Grammar School (K-6)
Learning Track - Year One
Grammar School Teaching and Leadership
In this course, master grammar school educator and principal Lori Jill Keeler harmonizes classical principles of education with modern research on the brain, blends her knowledge and insights with practical counsel, and makes practical suggestions for how to wholly engage every student when teaching.
Teaching the Bible Classically
Bible scholar and professor Dr. Fred Putnam presents a course on teaching the Bible as a classic or classical text.
Narration: A Classical Guide
In this course, Charlotte Mason expert, Jason Barney explores and explains the practice of a reading practice called narration and shows how teachers in classical schools can employ it to great effect and benefit.
Renewing Math Education for Mountain Scholars
This mini-course led by Andrew Elizalde challenges conventional approaches to teaching mathematics and equips educators to recover a classical, thoughtful, and deeply human vision of math education. These lessons expose the historical, philosophical, and pedagogical roots of our current challenges and offer a transformative alternative grounded in truth, beauty, and the nature of the learner.
Latin for the Grammar School Teacher
This course offers demonstration lessons from two curriculum lines offered by Classical Academic Press: Song School Latin (for grades one and two) and Latin for Children Series (for grades four through seven).
Grammar School (K-6)
Learning Track - Year Two
Grammar School Symposium
In this course, Dr. Christopher Perrin introduces and defines classical education, and Lori Jill Keeler provides instruction on excellent grammar school teaching (including topics such as building a strong foundation, classroom management that is conducive to learning, teaching with the brain in mind, and developing a growth mindset).
Awakening the Moral Imagination through Fairy Tales and Stories
In this course, Dr. Vigen Guroian presents three lectures on the ways that classic literature awakens the moral imagination. He also leads several discussions with three classical educators in which they discuss six classical stories and explore the ways these stories awaken the moral imagination and thus cultivate virtue.
On Teaching Fairy Stories
In this course, Dr. Junius Johnson shows how the task of educating rhetoric students is, in part, about the re-enchantment of the student’s mind and heart. He opens this course with a definition of faerie and fairyland, lays out the usefulness of fairy stories within a classical curriculum, and gives demonstrations of how to teach from these stories using Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Rossetti’s poem “Goblin Market” along with other classic and contemporary sources.
Charlotte Mason: A Liberal Education for All
In this course Charlotte Mason expert Jason Barney shows the ways that Mason is part of the general tradition of classical education while also noting several of her insightful contributions to embodying a liberal education for all English children in the 19th century.
School Leaders - Year One
Grammar School Teaching and Leadership
In this course, master grammar school educator and principal Lori Jill Keeler blends her knowledge and insights into the classical tradition of education with practical counsel on how grammar school teachers can plan and teach with excellence, shepherd the hearts of children, and create dynamic yet peaceful classrooms.
Essential School Leadership
This pithy course on essential school leadership will prove to be of great benefit and importance to any classical headmaster, administrator, or principal. Veteran head of school Keith Nix leads one of the flagship classical schools in the country–the Veritas School of Richmond, VA.
Leadership and the Liberal Arts
Join Dr. Christopher Perrin as he walks through what many classical thinkers have to say about leadership and the liberal arts. Learn about how virtue is connected to leadership in the classical and Christian traditions.
Assessing Students Classically
This multi-presenter course reviews assessment approaches in the history of education and suggests methods of assessing students classically that align with the ideals of the classical tradition of education.
Growing Classroom Culture through Parent Partnerships
In this course, Robyn Burlew shares her accumulated wisdom and practical insights for forging meaningful partnerships with parents in order to develop a rich and healthy classroom culture.
School Leaders - Year Two
The Seven Liberal Arts
In this course, master classical educator Andrew Kern (along with Christopher Perrin) presents an insightful survey of the seven liberal arts–explaining their origin, history and significance in the classical tradition of education.
The Teacher's Playbook
Newer classical school teachers often find it difficult to visualize what good practice looks like in one’s own particular context. In these sessions, Jerilyn Olsen lays out a vision of what good teaching might look like, and how teachers can organize their ideas around the framework of rhetoric.
David V. Hicks Commentary
This author commentary course on ClassicalU with David Hicks features interviews with David and his wife Betsy recorded in their Montana home. David answers questions about his work in education, his thoughts on the renewal of classical education today, what makes a great teacher, his work as an author, and more. With Betsy, they also share about their work building a Palladian classical home together and their dreams for the land surrounding their home to be used by the Church for the founding of a monastery.
Growing a Classical School
In this course, Dr. David Seibel provides an in depth look at the leadership styles and subsystems essential to reaching institutional mastery by considering six case study schools. He provides helpful metaphors for understanding the four stages of the school lifecycle and the most common problems for the four subsystems based upon the work of author Ichak Adizes.
Wendell Berry’s Virtues of Renewal
Learn how to teach Wendell Berry’s virtues of renewal within your classrooms in this course with professor Jeffrey Bilbro of Grove City College. These virtues of renewal are alternatives to the dominant virtues of our “industrial economy” that values specialization, competition, and techniques over the virtues of attention, gratitude, humility, hope, memory, fidelity, and convocation.
The Monastic Tradition of Education
In this brief course, Dr. Christopher Perrin traces the history of classical education as it resided in the Western monastic tradition. At a time when many are considering “the Benedict Option,” it is worth studying Benedict (480–543 AD) and the tradition of monastic education that preserved and extended classical Christian education
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