Upper-School Scholarship Skills Workshop
The Upper-School Scholarship Skills summer course will have a dual focus on advanced reading and productivity skills.
Advanced Reading Skills
Formal reading instruction is often limited to basic literacy skills, which are frequently mastered by 6th grade. In addition to elementary reading (“decoding”) skills, students need to develop inspectional, analytical, and synoptical reading skills. In this summer course, we will practice together the skills presented in Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren’s work How to Read a Book, using selections from the Great Books of the Western World. In this manner, students will become better prepared to tackle the wide variety of texts that they will encounter in their courses: textbooks, nonfiction, novels, poems, plays, histories, essays, and more.
Productivity Skills
I have personally benefited from many books and productivity strategies, and I don’t think there is one perfect system that fits every person. Rather than requiring students to follow a specific system, I will offer basic principles and suggest ways that students can adapt them to their preferences and life situations. These will include strategies for how to:
- Budget time
- Maintain a calendar
- Keep a log or journal
- Manage complex projects
- Create and update task lists
- Plan days, weeks, months, years, and beyond
- Track habits
- Establish routines
Expectations
Summer Reading Groups are less formal than the yearlong courses, but students are still expected to participate and come to our meetings prepared. While there will be some reading assignments from How to Read a Book, it is a long text and we won’t read it cover to cover. Much of the work in the course will be hands-on practice in productivity. Students will set up a planner, put together and maintain a personal calendar, practice planning long-term projects, track task completion, and budget time.
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This course draws on How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler as a primary text, adapting its goals and scope to fit the needs of younger students.
Teacher will provide material electronically.
Peter Belfry has a range of teaching and tutoring experience in a variety of subjects and age levels from kindergarten through to adult education at the college level and has taught at several classical, Christian and public schools. Currently, he serves as a professor of computer science with Canadore College, teaching courses on Operating Systems and programming languages such as Windows, Linux, HTML, C++ and Visual Basic. Peter holds an Honors BA from Trent University in History as well as a BA in Education, specializing in History and Computer Science. He holds an MA from Knox Theological Seminary in Classical and Christian studies, which provides him a background for teaching from a classical perspective. For his MA program, he read many of the Great Books as well as studied Scripture and church history. Peter has completed a week-long teacher training with the Association of Classical Christian Schools and Rockbridge Academy. His favourite piece of classical literature is Dante’s The Divine Comedy. In addition to teaching, Peter also has experience serving in a pastoral role and enjoys volunteering to serve in his local church and community. He helps in evangelistic outreach as well as teaching lessons from the Bible. Peter has experience and training as an English as a Second Language instructor as well. He has experience teaching both online and in person. He believes in Scholé’s approach in seeking “restful learning” and believes that education should be life-giving and freeing for the soul as it should acknowledge the Lord Jesus as the source of all that is true, good and beautiful. Peter lives in the North Bay, Ontario area with his wife and twin boys. pbelfry.scholeacademy@gmail.com
Tisha Frost has been teaching in a variety of settings over the last 20 years after following one of the best pieces of advice she was ever given, “Be who God created you to be and you will set the world on fire” (attributed to St. Catherine of Siena). This inspired her to study both history and theology during her undergraduate years. She obtained a B.A. in American Studies, with a minor in Theology, from the University of Notre Dame. She also holds a Master of Education from the University of Notre Dame, specializing in Middle School and High School Social Studies. Through her experiences of teaching many students, including her own children, she has seen the need for restful education that is focused on the true, good, and beautiful. Tisha resides in Northern Minnesota with her husband and six children. When she has a moment to herself, she enjoys children’s literature, British mysteries, good movies, and baking. tfrost.scholeacademy@gmail.com
Computer: You will need a stable, reliable computer, running with a processor with a speed of 1 GHz or better on one of the following operating systems: Mac OS X with Mac OS 10.7 or later; Windows 8, 7, Vista (with SP1 or later), or XP (with SP3 or later). We do not recommend using an iPad or other tablet for joining classes. An inexpensive laptop or netbook would be a much better solution, as such devices enable you to plug an Ethernet cable directly into your computer. Please note that Chromebooks are allowed but not preferred, as they do not support certain features of the Zoom video conference software such as breakout sessions and annotation, which may be used by our teachers for class activities.
High-Speed Internet Connection: You will also need access to high-speed internet, preferably accessible via Ethernet cable right into your computer. Using Wi-Fi may work, but will not guarantee you the optimal use of your bandwidth. The faster your internet, the better. We recommend using a connection with a download/upload speed of 5/1 Mbps or better. You can test your Internet connection here.
Webcam: You may use an external webcam or one that is built in to the computer.
Headset: We recommend using a headset rather than a built-in microphone and speakers. Using a headset reduces the level of background noise heard by the entire class.
Zoom: We use a web conferencing software called Zoom for our classes, which enables students and teachers to gather from around the globe face to face in real time. Zoom is free to download and easy to use. 
To download Zoom:
- Visit zoom.us/download.
- Click to download the first option listed, Zoom Client for Meetings.
- Open and run the installer on your computer.
- In August, students will be provided with instructions and a link for joining their particular class.
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