Overview: One of the most distinctive elements in a classical school is the humanities class.  Here, subject matter that is typically dispersed among three or four separate classes is brought together to provide students a rich, meaningful encounter with their cultural heritage.  The integrated humanities approach combines literature, history, art, philosophy, and writing instruction in a manner that vastly expands the dimensions of a young person’s understanding.

In this course, we will explore how an integrated humanities approach to the Greeks can enhance your students’ appreciation for their foundational contributions to Western culture.  We will see how the riches of Greek art and literature can be taught alongside the fascinating history of this period, and what sort of lessons and assignments can be used to draw students deeper into this material.  Among the topics we will spend time discussing will be the Odyssey, the Persian War, the Parthenon, and the Pre-Socratic philosophers.  Teachers will receive guidance on how to plan this material in an integrated manner, while having the chance to participate in numerous lessons that they can use in their own classrooms.

Who: Classroom teachers in grades 7-12 or home educators who would like to learn more about how an integrated humanities approach can benefit their students, or who are looking for a new ideas about how to teach the Greeks. 

What: Workshop will run for four consecutive days, for two and a half hours each day.  Participants will receive guidance on planning a course with an integrated humanities approach, as well as ideas for numerous lessons and assignments. 

Requirements: Zoom app (courses are LIVE and not recorded) Participation is necessary for a classical experience. Zoom link will be provided prior to the class.

Dates:  4-Day Workshop is held daily-- Monday, July 29 through Thursday, August 1st, 2024

Time: 9 am -11:30 am Central Time 

Cost: $175, register today! (non-refundable)

Recorded: Our courses are interractive, so we encourage live attendance. All courses are recorded and available 48-72 hours after the course and will be available for 1 month. You will be sent a YouTube link. 

About The Instructor:

Mark Signorelli:  Mark Signorelli served as the director of two classical Catholic high school programs in New Jersey, where he also taught a number of courses in the humanities.  In addition to over twenty years of experience as an educator, Mark has also written extensively for a wide variety of journals, including the Imaginative Conservative, Arion, Modern Age, Public Discourse, the University Bookman, and Front Porch Republic.  He currently writes at his own site, The Classical Corner.

Who: Teachers of logic/dialectic, or anyone interested in learning

What: How can the Bible be used as a supplement for teaching logic and dialectic? The logic portion of the course will focus on 1 Corinthians 15 where Paul uses a series of conditional arguments for the resurrection in the first half of the chapter. The second half of the chapter looks at comprehension and extension (the properties of concepts). The dialectic portion will look at several of Jesus' dialogues (e.g., Matt. 16:13-16; Lk. 10:25-37; Mk. 12:35-37) and make some comparisons to Socratic dialogue. Together, these examples show us logic and dialectic at work, making it easier to understand principles and concepts in these areas.

Time: 5-6:30pm CENTRAL

Recorded: All courses are recorded and available 48-72 hours after the course and will be available for 1 month. You will be sent a YouTube link. 

About the Instructor: 

Drew Mery is a classical educator, having taught Logic/Philosophy and American Government/Economics at Paideia Academics, as well as serving on the board of Pietas Classical Christian in Brevard County, FL, providing vision and upper school curricular guidance. Drew holds an MA in Humanities (Great Books) and BSc in Biblical & Theological Studies. He has published papers in FORMA Journal (of the CiRCE Institute) and The Consortium Journal (of Kepler Education). Drew loves wisdom literature, discussing Great Ideas, engaging in Socratic dialogue, and reading and writing essays; you can explore his writings on his substack, The Philosopher’s Beard. Drew lives in central Florida with his wife and three children.

"So we should insist that gentleman should study each of these subjects to at least the same level as very many children in Egypt, who acquire such knowledge at the same time as they learn to read and write. First, lessons in calculation have been devised for tiny tots to learn while they are enjoying themselves at play."

-Plato, Laws 819 B

What: Plato says in his Laws that children should be taught Math according to the old Egyptian method of play. We will explore what it means to teach math (or as the Ancients called it "counting") in a way that is engaging and fitting for younger children. 

Who: Classroom or home educators particularly of elementary age children who wish to learn more about math instruction in the classical tradition.

Date and Time: Thursday, August 8, 7:00-8:30pm (Central)

Recorded: Our courses are interractive, so we encourage live attendance. All courses are recorded and available 48-72 hours after the course and will be available for 1 month. You will be sent a YouTube link. 

Cost: $25 (non-refundable)

About the Teacher:

Aaron Mitchell has been teaching various disciplines in classical schools since 2012. He received his B.A. from Cornell College with a triple major in Classics, Philosophy, and Religious Studies. Upon graduation, he began teaching at Great Hearts Academies in Phoenix, AZ. While there, he taught Middle and High School Latin, History, and Music. In 2017, Aaron was privileged to return to St. Peter’s Classical School, his High School Alma mater, as a faculty member. During his tenure there he taught Greek, Latin, Literature, and Euclidean Geometry. He has spent the last few years doing curricular development for Math and Classical Language instruction at St. Peter’s, particularly focusing on classical language instruction using both inductive and deductive methods, and how an ancient understanding of quantity effects math instruction. He enjoys reading poetry, playing music with his wife Corrie, and watching their son play youth baseball.

What: Discover the fascinating research that suggests that children who engage in undisturbed free play are more likely to develop self-regulation and healthy attention spans than children who are overly regulated by external mechanisms.  Consider ways to apply these principles in learning and leisure. 

Who: While especially relevant to homeschool families, teachers and administrators can also benefit from these principles. 

Cost: $20 (non-refundable)

Date & Time: Tuesday, August 27, 2024, 7:00-8:30 PM CENTRAL.

Recorded: Our courses are interractive, so we encourage live attendance. All courses are recorded and available 48-72 hours after the course and will be available for 1 month. You will be sent a YouTube link. 

About the Instructor: 

Benjamin Lyda holds a Master of Humanities degree from The University of Dallas and is certified by the state of Texas to teach 6-12 grade literature, history, speech communication, special education, and debate. He is the author of Scriptorium – Writing with the Progymnasmata, a 3rd-8th grade curriculum. 

He has been head of a classical charter high school and founder of a Charlotte Mason inspired K-12 school.  His more than 20 years of teaching experience is wide and varied including teaching in urban and suburban settings.  In addition Benjamin regularly works with both advanced and struggling students in public, private, and homeschool settings.  He founded and ran The Children’s Shakespeare Academy, directing full productions of the bard’s plays for homeschool children 9-18.   He is married to his high school sweetheart and together they are bringing up six children. 

"Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare."

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.

Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,

And lay them prone upon the earth and cease

To ponder on themselves, the while they stare

At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere

In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese

Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release

From dusty bondage into luminous air.

O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,

When first the shaft into his vision shone

Of light anatomized! Euclid alone

Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they

Who, though once only and then but far away,

Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay

What: Online teaching and discussion of Euclid's Elements once a week for five weeks. Euclid's Elements is the most commonly read book of Mathematics for the last two thousand years. Participants will discuss sections of the Elements and practice critiquing and presenting Propositions from the Elements in an effort to provide practical knowledge of how one might teach math from a primary source or, as Charlotte Mason might say, a "Living Book."

Who: For educators who wish to learn what it means to learn and teach mathematics classically. For those wishing to understand, both theoretically and practically, how math can be taught in way which integrates it into the larger conversation of a classical curriculum.

Class Limit: Places are limited so we can all participate in discussion.

Course Dates:  The course will begin on August 29th and meet for five consecutive Thursdays ending on September 26th.

Time: Every Thursday, 7:00pm-8:30pm (Central)

Course Overview:

August 29th - Introduction and Definitions, Postulates, and Common Notions

September 5th - What is a Proposition? Book I: Props 1-5

September 12th - More Complex Propositions - Book I Props 6-7, 13-16

September 19th - Book I Proposition 26

September 26th - Book I Prop 47

Requirements: 

• A zoom app
• A copy of Euclid's Elements
  • My suggestion for a hard copy would be Sir Thomas Heath's translation from Green Lion Press
  • A free copy of the same translation can be found here

Recorded: Our courses are interractive, so we encourage live attendance. All courses are recorded and available 48-72 hours after the course and will be available for 1 month. You will be sent a YouTube link. 

Cost: $50 (non-refundable)

About the Teacher

Aaron Mitchell has been teaching various disciplines in classical schools since 2012. He received his B.A. from Cornell College with a triple major in Classics, Philosophy, and Religious Studies. Upon graduation, he began teaching at Great Hearts Academies in Phoenix, AZ. While there, he taught Middle and High School Latin, History, and Music. In 2017, Aaron was privileged to return to St. Peter’s Classical School, his High School Alma mater, as a faculty member. During his tenure there he taught Greek, Latin, Literature, and Euclidean Geometry. He has spent the last few years doing curricular development for Math and Classical Language instruction at St. Peter’s, particularly focusing on classical language instruction using both inductive and deductive methods, and how an ancient understanding of quantity effects math instruction. He enjoys reading poetry, playing music with his wife Corrie, and watching their son play youth baseball.

"The end of education is not thinking; it is acting. It is not just knowing what to do; it is doing it. The sublime premise of a classical education asserts that right thinking will lead to right, if not righteous, acting."

David Hicks, Norms and Nobility

What: Online teaching and live discussion of Norms and Nobility every two weeks, plus access to study material to accompany your reading, as well as discussion space to explore ideas together and ask questions outside of live meetings. This book is an investment to purchase and requires an investment of time and thought as well; however, it has the potential to transform your thinking about education in a way that will be a positive benefit to a teacher, and that teacher's students, forever after.

Who: This study is for thoughtful educators who wish to deepen their knowledge of classical education and consider how ancient ideas about education and its purposes can be implemented in contemporary times. This book is for those who want to challenge themselves, as it requires effort to read.

Class Limit: Places are limited so we can all participate in discussion.

Course Dates: The course will run from September 3, 2024 to March 4, 2025.  There will be 13 live meetings, plus online discussion.

Recordings: Recording of live meetings will be sent within 24-48  hours after the meeting and available for two weeks after each class.

Time: Every other Tuesday, 7:00pm-8:00pm (CENTRAL TIME)

Cost: EARLY BIRD RATE: $199 if registered by August 6

 $249 if registered after August 6.

Course Map 

2024

September 3 - Preface and Prologue

September 17 - Chapter 1, Virtue is the Fruit of Learning

October 1 - Chapter 2, The Word is Truth

October 15 - Chapter 3, Teaching the Father of the Man

October 29 - Chapter 4, The Tyrannizing Image

November 12 - Chapter 5, Saving the Appearance

November 26 - Chapter 6, On the Necessity of Dogma

December 10 - Chapter 7, The Ennobling of the Masses

January 7 - Chapter 8, The Promise of Christian Paideia

January 21 - Chapter 9, A Curriculum Proposal (What Might Have Been)

February 4 - Chapter 10, Some Questions and Assumptions

February 18 - Chapter 11, Three Schools in One Academy

March 4 - Chapter 12, The School Within the School, and Epilogue

About the Teacher 

Karen Glass is a homeschool mother who has taught her four children through graduation and spent over two decades delving into educational philosophy, beginning with Charlotte Mason and extending to classical educators throughout history. She has a B.A. in English, but her real education has been self-education, and her passion for education has led her to write several books, including Mind to Mind (an abridgement of Charlotte Mason's Philosophy of Education), Know and Tell: The Art of Narration, In Vital Harmony: Charlotte Mason and the Natural Laws of Education, and A Thinking Love: Studies in Charlotte Mason's Home Education.  When she asked David Hicks, the author of Norms and Nobility, to read and consider writing a Foreword to her first book, Consider This: Charlotte Mason and the Classical Tradition, he graciously consented to do so.

    "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all  

              Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

-John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

What: Stratford Caldecott's work Beauty for Truth's Sake is one of the most important books written about Classical Education, in particular for its emphasis on what was called in the Medieval world, the quadrivium. If you read anything about classical education, you will often hear the term trivium, bandied about. The Trivium had to do with literary arts (reading and writing) whereas the quadrivium had to do with the numerical arts (arithmetic). This work seeks to help us understand math as an integrated part of a classical education guided by ultimate questions about the world and how we relate to it properly.

Who: Educators and parents who are interested in the history of math and how math, or more properly, the quadrivium, relates to and is an integral part of classical education.

Class Limit: Places are limited so that we can all participate in discussion.

Course Dates: The course will run from September 6th to October 25th, 2024. There will be 7 live meetings.

Please note that this class is being held on Friday nights. There is also a Wednesday night option if Friday is not good for you. Please do not sign up for both.

Time: Fridays from 7:00pm-8:00pm (Central)

Please note that we will not meet on Friday, October 4th.

Course Overview: 

September 6th - Introduction, "To Sing with the Universe"

September 13th - Chapter 1, The Tradition of the Four Ways

September 20th - Chapter 2, Educating the Poetic Imagination

September 27th - Chapter 3, The Lost Wisdom of the World

October 4th - No Class

October 11th - Chapter 4 The Golden Circle

October 18th - Chapter 5, "Quiring to the Young-Eyed Cherubims"

October 25th - Chapter 6, The Liturgical Consummation of Cosmology 

and Conclusion, Beyond Faith and Reason

Requirements: 

A copy of Stratford Caldecott's Beauty for Truth's Sake

Recorded: Our courses are interractive, so we encourage live attendance. All courses are recorded and available 48-72 hours after the course and will be available for 1 month. You will be sent a YouTube link. 

Cost: $40 (non-refundable)

About the Teacher

Aaron Mitchell has been teaching various disciplines in classical schools since 2012. He received his B.A. from Cornell College with a triple major in Classics, Philosophy, and Religious Studies. Upon graduation, he began teaching at Great Hearts Academies in Phoenix, AZ. While there, he taught Middle and High School Latin, History, and Music. In 2017, Aaron was privileged to return to St. Peter’s Classical School, his High School Alma mater, as a faculty member. During his tenure there he taught Greek, Latin, Literature, and Euclidean Geometry. He has spent the last few years doing curricular development for Math and Classical Language instruction at St. Peter’s, particularly focusing on classical language instruction using both inductive and deductive methods, and how an ancient understanding of quantity effects math instruction. He enjoys reading poetry, playing music with his wife Corrie, and watching their son play youth baseball.

What: For some students getting a decent oral narration can feel like having to pull teeth. This class will go over different methods that can be used to to engage even the most reluctant narrator. Come prepared to read, write, draw, and play!  

Who: Teachers for all ages are welcome. 

Cost: $25 (non-refundable)

When: Thursday, September 12, 2024, 7:00-9:00 PM CENTRAL.

Recorded: Our courses are interractive, so we encourage live attendance. All courses are recorded and available 48-72 hours after the course and will be available for 1 month. You will be sent a YouTube link. 

About the Instructor: 

Mariah Martinez has worked in education since 2015 as a teacher, curriculum developer, and mentor teacher. Mariah attended the Honors College at Houston Baptist University where she received a B.A., double majoring in Philosophy and English. In 2021, she received a Master of Humanities in classical education from the University of Dallas. She is certified as a 7-12 ELAR instructor in the state of Texas. She began her teaching career at a Great Hearts school in San Antonio and now works at a Founders Classical charter school in Texas. She has eight years of middle and high school teaching experience and is a founding faculty member of the high school at her current location where she now serves as the assistant headmaster for the upper school. She has experience not only with developing classical curricula for the high school environment but has also developed guides for creating house systems and student leadership positions. Mariah's goal is to help make the methods of classical education and the philosophies behind them accessible for all.