Society For Classical Learning

August 16

• The first session will be about getting to know one another and learning what each member of the cohort brings to the table. What discipline do you teach? What do you do well? What do you struggle with? Lastly, we will begin to outline a vision for the ideal Christian Classical classroom and map out a plan to get there.

September 13

• Any rhetorician worth their NaCl (s) will start by defining their terms. In this session, we’ll dig deeply into the Shakespearean inquiry – “what’s in a name?” I think it matters.

October 11

• In addition to our thinking about what makes our classrooms classical, we must also keep at the forefront of our minds what makes our classrooms Christian. You have two eyes – one must always be on what makes this lesson Christian and the other on what makes it Classical.

November 15

• Aristotle, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein. We’ll stay big picture and attempt to capture the shifts in Worldview (or paradigm shifts) that have occurred over the last two millennia. We’ll also attempt to capture the main questions that all scientific worldviews have in common – what is matter, what is motion, what is change, what causes change, and what is space. Did someone say four causes?

December 13

• With sessions on the nature of science, classical science, Christian pedagogy, and the history of science to work with, we’ll begin to map out a plan of implementation for the Spring semester. We are scientists, we experiment, let’s redesign a unit. What do you want to try in your classroom next semester? An overview of 5E lesson planning and Next Generation Science Standards will be included.

January 10

• Who gets the privilege of determining what is true or how we even come to know if something is true? Are scientists the sole harbingers or truth? Theologians? Philosophers? Obviously, there’s a lot to unpack here but we need to have a firm understanding of what science can and cannot tell us if we are to make real progress.

February 7

• Empirical proof is at the heart of science but most labs are about as complicated and “scientific” as a recipe for chocolate chip cookies, and smell way worse. Further, extant educational literature provides little support for why we should do labs especially given the cost and expense. However, parents and administrators love the term “hands on” so what are we as teachers supposed to do? How can we offer a lab curriculum that honors what we value as Classical Christian educators?

March 7

• Far too often, we teach science as an accumulation of facts. What should be an entree into the fascinating world of inquiry instead comes off a lot like trivia. But fascinating things are happening that hardly ever get mentioned in our classrooms. Relativity, quantum mechanics, Schrodinger’s poor cat, cosmology, and CERN to name a few! Let’s spend some time getting up to speed on frontier expanding modern science and discuss how exposing our students to questions instead of answers can awaken their awe and wonder. This will also give us a chance to talk about emergence and reductionism which is always fun.

April 11

• You knew we’d have to talk about it eventually. We’ll explore various ideas about creation and discuss how to teach these to our students.