Restful, Classical, Learning, Online. Scholé Academy offers live, online courses that pair a classical curriculum with the pedagogy of restful learning (scholé). Our instructors foster deep engagement to cultivate learning that lasts.
Courage, the Truth, and Persuading toward the Good
~ by Phaedra Shaltanis ~ “And when the fight is fierce, the warfare long, Steals on the ear the distant triumph song, And hearts are brave again, and arms are strong. Alleluia! Alleluia!” -William W. How, “For All the Saints” Between All Saints Day and Veteran’s...
Measuring the Harvest: Is assessment at odds with human flourishing?
~ by Alison Haley ~ Isn’t the harvest season just lovely? There’s something remarkable about this time of year when seeds and food are gathered and the deciduous trees remind us that seasons of rest must follow much growth. When it comes to the harvest, the toil of...
Debate and Discussion: An Invitation to Walk in Humility
~ by Amy Morgan ~ Early in the first chapter of Dr. Shelley Johnson’s book, Everyday Debate & Discussion, she defines “debate” in a number of ways including etymologically. She points out that “debate” comes from the Latin battuere, to beat, and the preposition...
How C.S. Lewis Helps Us Grow in Wonder
~ by Casey McCall ~ When C.S. Lewis was just a child of seven or eight, he was already creating fictional worlds. Before there was Narnia, there was Boxen, replete with talking animals and realistic political drama. Lewis’s biographer James Como notes, however, that...
Exchanging our Tools for Summer
~ by Phaedra Shaltanis ~ And now for the kiss of the wind, And the touch of the air's soft hands, With the rest from strife and the heat of life, With the freedom of lakes and lands. -Paul Laurence Dunbar, “In Summer” Here at last! We’ve planned and toiled, studied...
Why I Study Latin
~ by Amanda Reeves ~ A quick internet search for why students should study Latin offers many defenses of the language. Articles suggest that Latin students perform better on standardized exams, have a wider English vocabulary, and learn other languages more easily. I...
The Habit of Liturgy
~ by Emily Brigham ~ Before teaching for Scholé, I previously taught at another school, and one of my favorite traditions was the “morning circle.” My first grade class and I began our days circled around, going through a repertoire of poems, verses, and songs. This...
Justify Your Answer
~ by Alison Haley ~ Student: “Do I need to show my work?” I can still remember sitting in middle school algebra and hearing our much-loved teacher urge students over and over to show their work. In my mind, it was to prevent cheating and the copying of answers from...
Becoming a Thousand Men: How Children’s Literature Forms Virtue
~ by Emily Brigham ~ Legend has it—and I don’t believe it’s apocryphal—that my older sister was talking like Anne Shirley at the age of three. Immersed in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables from this young age, the verbose and imaginative language of the...
Making Christmas New—The Old-Fashioned Way
~ by Fr. Chris Marchand ~ An underlying concern lies at the heart of how we go about our annual Christmas customs: how do we pass meaningful traditions down to our children? Indeed, in many ways children are the primary consideration behind nearly all our Christmas...
From Slander to Sanctity
~ by Phaedra Shaltanis ~ Our culture is suffering a grave injustice, and I’m distressed about the effects it’s having on us. For months we’ve been nearly smothered by conflicting reports on public health, political intentions, and social justice. Polite disagreement...
Parallels of Writing and a Pursuit of Justice
~ by Amy Morgan ~ In his book The Four Cardinal Virtues, Joseph Pieper shares Plato’s definition of Justice as “the virtue which enables man to give to each one what is his due” (Pieper 44). Pieper later paraphrases Thomas Aquinas’s explanation that justice assumes...
Wonder and Piety as the Basis of a Liberal Arts Education
~ by Lylah Molnar ~ Yesterday my husband and I, who are both teachers, were pondering how much having a child changes our perspective on the way children learn. Though we are both familiar with the latest research on how to motivate and teach students, there is...
The Just Educator
~ by Joanne Schinstock In the well-known story of the Prodigal Son, a son asks for his inheritance and then rejects his father by leaving home to waste it all. He is impious, but in an act of justice, he receives what is owed him-- the slop with the pigs. Then he...
Justice, Holiness and the Canterbury House of Studies
~ by Rhea Bright ~Before ever there were books of philosophy or psychology or self-help, there was a man on the streets of ancient Athens asking questions about what we might call “the good life”. One of his followers, known to posterity simply as Plato, wrote the...