What is mastery learning? How does it relate to education? Andrew Pudewa explains the methods, goals, and benefits of the ability development model as developed by Dr. Shinichi Suzuki. He also discusses applications to disciplines other than music. Learn how you can create success in areas where you or your students have struggled in the past.

The truth, beauty, and goodness of a classical education can extend beyond our academic pursuits to the transformation of our family culture. Come explore how the classical tools of education can bring goodness to your family’s discipleship and your role as mentor in your home.

How often does assessment feel like a betrayal of the virtue we are pursuing in education? Students are told to love the good, true, and beautiful and then feel beatdown by a grade. With Adler’s three columns as our guide, we will explore how to assess in ways that are nurturing, formative, and full of goodness.

Classical Christian Education is grounded in language-focused learning. That means a classical pedagogy is worthless if it is not applied to something; and, that something is books and letters, Great Books as it were. If Barnes & Noble's recent spectacular comeback teaches us anything, it's that even in a digital age dominated by social media, reading books and building personal libraries is essential to human flourishing. Thus, it's incumbent on educated persons to develop a virtuous habit of reading and collecting good books.

We live in an image-obsessed world. But what goodness lies within those images? Sadly, today's selfies and snapshots seldom point us to the profound, often provoking us in disturbing ways. Yet God made us in His Image, and indeed it was Good. In this interactive workshop, we invite you to contemplate the good and holy image of the Icon of the Trinity.

This talk will explore the Intellectual Virtue of Knowledge and seek to give educators some practical ways to foster this virtue and gain an understanding of how "the deceits of the world, the flesh and the devil" (The Book of Common Prayer) work to assault our confidence in knowing the True and Good.

Francis Bacon asserted: “Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing and exact man.” These are the arts of language, yet in many ways our modern education distracts us from the very activities that cultivate better reading, speaking, and writing, and how that ultimately facilitates better thinking.

The truth, beauty, and goodness of a classical education can transform our lives beyond our academic pursuits. Learn how seven simple activities can create a schole (restful) lifestyle for you, your family, and your students.

This session will lead attendees through a discussion of approaches, resources, and tips for Latin study as well as ideas for finding (or creating!) a support system.

Using Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, this talk illustrates the lifecycle of a classical Christian school—from adjusting to truth’s brilliance, exploring reality by its light, to the courageous return into darkness. Discover how intentional, sacrificial leadership sustains missional clarity, academic integrity, and resists institutional decline—all by continually returning to the cave and guiding students, families, and communities upward toward enduring wisdom and virtue.

The Enlightenment was launched by a class of curious wonderers that were known as gentlemen scientists. Their desire to explore the mysteries of the world around them led to the creation of the Royal Society and led to a network of correspondents who regularly communicated about their questions and proposed solutions across Europe. How was it that these men and women could learn and discover so much without textbooks and formal scientific educations? What can we who live in this post-Sputnik era learn about how best to study science, freed from the constraints of the 'facts' and liberated to pursue truth from this class of independent scientists?

Marshall the tools of classical learning for effective, engaging conversations on the screens and in the streets. Communication today can be divisive, and the five canons of Rhetoric can unleash goodness back into our social dialogue.

Explore the accessibility and relevance of classical education in diverse communities. This session challenges assumptions, examines cultural adaptability, and considers how timeless truths and rigorous learning can serve all students—regardless of background. Join us to rethink who classical education is really for—and why it matters.

Attending to music is a challenge in our hurried day and age where most of our music encounters are the car radio or the overhead speaker at the store. Attending to the sympathies between the music, not the lyrics, and our souls is even more difficult in an age when we are constantly distracted. This session explores a practical way for educators to begin to integrate music with story and images to provide a means of understanding both music and ourselves. This breakout will include a brief introduction to the use of music in a classical education and a practical lesson

demonstration.

This session will review the mimetic lesson process and then work through the steps for creating a Latin lesson using grammar-based Latin curricula.

For Christians, the acknowledgement of Goodness can lead to despondence and resignation. If we sin daily, how can we be called “Good” or “Virtuous”? Why strive to be good when failure is guaranteed? These questions can make action of any kind feel impossible, leading to passivity becoming king, whose “authority” is reinforced through daily inaction and atrophy. By embracing the Grace of God, we are invited to take intentional action in the pursuit of Goodness and Virtue, with the freedom to fail and try again. Despite ourselves, a moral liturgy can be developed through purposefully engaging the Word, the world, and the witness of Christ. This is at the core of Education.

Join us as we contemplate the nature of poetry and explore what it looks like to curate excellent, imaginative verse and weave it into the fabric of a classical education, whether at home or in the classroom. From nursery rhymes to ancient epics, poems of myriad length and form should be a feature of paideia, building a rich storehouse of words and a powerful array of imagery for the purpose of cultivating virtue.

Secular humanism claims humanity must cast off the shackles of religion to reach its full potential, yet ironically, severs itself from the nourishing root of Western education and culture, Christianity. This talk examines how postmodern thought—by acknowledging faith as fundamental to all knowing—invites a recovery of Christian humanism. Anchored in the Incarnation, Christian humanism offers the richest, most authentic vision for restoring human dignity, reanimating education, renewing cultural coherence, and fostering lasting human flourishing within a fragmented, post-Christian culture.

Throughout history we encounter many literary characters as well as historical figures having the epithet “the Great.” In this workshop, I invite you to listen to the stories of three “Greats.” At the end of our session we will work together to define what attributes qualify one to be a “Great.” The three individuals whom I will present all contributed to Goodness in society in their time, and we reap the positive effects today. One preserved the Christian faith, One restored Western Civilization, and one protected the people of Angleland, preserving the Anglo-Saxon language and society from which we can also claim heritage.. May we be inspired to do likewise.

Is the only ‘good’ story the one that reflects redemption? What about the dark, despairing stories or stories without happy endings? Are those stories worth reading too? This workshop focuses on understanding and applying the criteria of Bent, Broken, Healing, and Whole, as outlined by Oliver DeMille, when encountering narratives in various forms. By assessing stories with this framework in mind, students learn to curate a personal canon of the best stories, while avoiding the twisted ones, a skill they can carry with them for a lifetime.

Goodness mirrors the nature of God himself. We want our actions to reflect goodness, our character to radiate goodness, and our goals to pursue goodness. In Leviticus 19:2 God said, "You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy." Easy, right? How do we live and grow in a way that enables us to do this? Classical education gives us strong and deep roots, and as they grow, they prepare to stretch into new soil. As we make decisions, big and small, there is value in choosing soil where our roots can thrive. The best step is to find "good soil" and trust God to help us grow? But what do we do when the soil is not nourishing? Our pursuit of goodness is seeking the will of God and conforming to the character of Christ. Goodness comes in taking a daily best next step.