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?”
Saint Augustine School Learning Tracks
All-Faculty Orientation
The Scholé Way
In this refreshed course, Dr. Christopher Perrin explores how the classical concept of restful, contemplative learning—scholé—provides formation in wisdom, virtue, and a deep intellectual life and contrasts with the anxiety-driven tendencies of modern schooling.
Narration: A Classical Guide
In this course, Charlotte Mason expert, Jason Barney explores and explains the practice of a reading called narration in which students learned to tell back and summarize passages which they have read and shows how teachers in classical schools can employ it to great effect and benefit.
Theology of Beauty and the Imagination
Dr. Junius Johnson explores a theology of beauty and the imagination in this eight lecture course. Dr. Johnson gives practical applications of beauty, imagination, and wonder in the classroom. Get ready to learn about the role beauty and the imagination play in brokering encounters with God for your students.
Teaching Music with the Humanities
In this course, Dr. Junius Johnson explores the vital role of music in the humanities classroom and demonstrates how to incorporate various listening exercises in the curriculum.
The Abolition of Man Book Study
In this concise course, Dr. Steve Turley introduces and explains Lewis’s insights into education, beginning with a clear overview and then taking us chapter by chapter through the book. He concludes with a lecture showing how many of Lewis’s predictions about education have proved prescient and accurate.
Socratic Teaching Symposium
In this symposium course, we address why classical educators must learn the skill of Socratic teaching, and describe several approaches to leading a Socratic seminar or discussion, noting various advantages and disadvantages associated with each approach with a panel of presenters.
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 and contrasts the progressive model with the classical model it rose to challenge.
Orientation in Mathematics
Teaching Singapore Math
Master teacher and grammar school principal Dawn Swartz blends her familiarity with classical education, her extensive experience, and her passion for Singapore Math into this practical course on how to implement and teach Singapore Math
Teaching Math Classically
In this course, veteran math educators and classical school academic leaders Andrew Elizalde and Bill Carey describe the way mathematics should be recovered and renewed as a liberal art and therefore as a humanities subject.
Orientation in English Literature
Reading and Teaching The Odyssey
In this course you will read through Homer’s The Odyssey, guided and inspired by St. John’s College tutors Dr. Eva Brann and her colleague Dr. Hannah Hintze. In addition to hearing from both Eva and Hannah on The Odyssey, you will also find four seminars (discussion-based class sessions) featuring several St. John’s students and another tutor.
The Saint Augustine School Literary Tradition
This course offers a rich and insightful introduction to teaching four cornerstone works of Western literature—Beowulf, Hamlet, Macbeth, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—through the wisdom and expertise of classical Christian educators.
Together, these lessons model how to teach classic literature in a way that is intellectually rigorous, spiritually enriching, and pedagogically sound.
Teaching Augustine
Dr. Junius Johnson invites educators to explore the life and works of one of the most influential figures in Christian thought, Augustine of Hippo. In this course, Dr. Johnson elucidates key passages from Augustine’s Confessions, De Doctrina Christiana, and City of God, showing teachers how to thoughtfully discuss these works with students in a contemporary context.
Optional Enrichment Orientation
The Science Mastery Workshop
In this workshop, teacher and writer John Mays presents a transformative mastery-based teaching and learning model focused on science instruction. This proven approach is successful at enabling students to replace cramming, passing, and forgetting with learning, mastering, and retaining what they have learned.
Science and the Symphony of Creation
In this course, John Mays helps science teachers connect their students to the wonders of reality, the beauty of creation, and a fuller experience of God’s creation beyond the things we find in our science textbooks, classrooms, and lessons.
Teaching Science Classically
In this course, John Mays recovers the ways in which Christian science educators can teach science not as a discrete, isolated subject, but as part of tapestry of the true, good, and beautiful that evokes wonder and curiosity.
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