Sample Presentations for Workshops and Webinars

Overview/Introduction

  • Catholic Liberal Education:  How the Recovery of the Church’s Educational Tradition is Transforming Catholic Schools 
  • Educating Humanity:  Means and Ends, Pedagogy and Purpose
  • Faith and Reason:  Education in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition
  • Ordo Amoris: The Nature and Purpose of Catholic Education 
  • The Baring of Standards: From State Standards to Divine Standards
  • Classical is Not Enough! Augustine on Classical Education

Classroom Foundations

  • Wonder and its Counterfeits in the Classroom
  • Integration: Weaving Threads in the Tapestry
  • Imagination:  The Power of Narrative
  • Inquiry: The Art of the Question
  • Virtuous Assessment: Respecting the Dignity of the Student
  • The Teacher as Leader, Seminar Style
  • Cultivating a Growth Mindset in the Liberal Arts Classroom 
  • Can Classical Liberal Arts Education Solve the “Boy Crisis”?
  • Catholic Anthropology According to St. John Bosco

Primary/Elementary

  • Before the Liberal Arts: Shaping Little Souls 
  • Teaching with Fairy Tales
  • The Art of Reading Instruction 
  • Lesson Planning with the Trivium

History

  • Finding Oneself in History:  An Educational Framework
  • “Just the Facts Ma’am”? The Place of History in Liberal Education
  • Introduction to the Ancient World: Literature, Philosophy, Religion
  • Introduction to the Medieval World: Faith and Reason
  • Introduction to Modernity: Fragmentation and Discord
  • Why Western Civ? The Uniqueness of Greek Philosophy

Middle School/High School

  • Rhetoric or Reality? Why Facts Can Fall Flat, How Ideas Can Get Twisted, and How Pointing Out Logical Fallacies Can Help 
  • Aquinas: The Disputed Question as an Answer to Relativism
  • Socrates and Harkness: The “Why” and “How” of Seminar 
  • St. Thomas Aquinas at the Harkness Table: Balancing Structure and Seminar
  • Algebra and Intellectual Formation: The Cartesian Revolution
  • Reading the Bible With Scissors and Paste: A Critique of the Modern Reading of Genesis 1 & 2

Language

  • Language: The Trivium
  • What Is the Trivium, What Was the Trivium, and How Should We Teach the Trivium?
  • Integrating Poetry Across the Curriculum: Why and How?

Teaching Works of Wisdom and Beauty

  • Introducing Classical Hymns and Golden Treasures
  • Teaching C.S. Lewis: The Screwtape Letters 
  • Teaching C.S. Lewis: The Great Divorce
  • Martin Luther King and Moral Education: An Approach to the “Letter from a  Birmingham Jail”
  • Teaching C.S. Lewis: Mere Christianity 
  • Teaching C.S. Lewis: The Abolition of Man
  • The Unraveling of Marriage: Teaching Pius XI’s Casti connubii
  • Wisdom from Newman’s Idea of the University… for High School!  
  • Nine Things I Learned from Dante’s Divine Comedy
  • The Life and Works of J.R.R. Tolkien, including “On Faerie Stories,” “Leaf by Niggle,” and the Sacramental Imagination in Tolkien lore  

Science and Mathematics

  • An Invitation to Wonder: STEM in the Catholic Liberal Arts Classroom
  • Introduction to the Quadrivium: Studies of Number
  • Number: Harmony at the Tip of the Compass 
  • Mathematics: The Poetry of Logical Ideas
  • A Science Experience: Discovering Method Amid Delight

Advanced Formation/Enrichment

  • The American Founding, American Government, and the Declaration of Independence 
  • The Life and Legacy of President Abraham Lincoln 
  • The Plague at Athens and Coronavirus: A Distant Mirror? 
  • The Origins of Algebra and Calculus
  • Scripture Studies 
  • Angelology 101: An Introduction to Catholic Teaching on Spiritual Creatures 
  • Hymns
  • Homer
  • The works of Plato, including Apology and Republic
  • Aristotle on the Stages of Learning 
  • The Life and Works of St. Thomas Aquinas
  • Catholic Perspectives on Islam: An Historical Introduction
  • Culture and Evangelization: A Historical Overview