ACADEMIC LEADER’S DAY
Academic Leader’s Day:
A unique opportunity for academic deans, department heads, lead teachers,
or specialty teachers.
Produced in cooperation with the Alcuin Fellowship, this pre-conference track is intended to strengthen and sharpen our schools’ academic leadership with an annual focus on a particular theme. Don’t miss this opportunity to connect, collaborate, and refine best practices with classical educators from around the country.
Pre-conference | Wednesday, June 24 | 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Join us in the evening for the Leader’s Day reception!
The Pursuit of Wisdom and the Disputatio
If one of the goals of Christian Classical education is to instill the love of wisdom, what does it mean to take the love of wisdom (philosophia) as
This workshop draws on readings from Socrates and Thomas Aquinas to answer these questions. The first goal of the workshop is to introduce educators to a time-tested pattern for raising wisdom questions in any classroom context, a form known as the disputatio (or “disputed question”). The second goal is to provide practice in using the disputatio in a variety of classroom exercises and writing assignments. Both educators and students find that learning to use the disputatio serves to integrate and deepen many of the formative benefits of a classical Christian education.
Our Speakers:
Dr. David Diener
Dr. David Diener is an Assistant Professor of Education at Hillsdale College and the Executive Director of the Alcuin Fellowship. Previously he spent fifteen years in K-12 private education, eleven of those in administration and eight as headmaster of classical Christian schools. He regularly provides consulting services and teacher training to classical schools and is the author of Plato: The Great Philosopher-Educator. He also serves as the series editor for Classical Academic Press’ series Giants in the History of Education and is an associate editor for the journal Principia: A Journal of Classical Education.
Dr. Phillip J. Donnelly
Dr. Phillip J. Donnelly is Professor of Literature for the Great Texts Program in the Honors College at Baylor University. He is the author of The Lost Seeds of Learning: Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric as Life-Giving Arts (Classical Academic Press) and Milton’s Scriptural Reasoning (Cambridge University Press). He has worked with classical schools for about twenty years, helping faculty discern how a Christian understanding of the verbal arts can inform their daily work as educators.
Dr. Todd Buras
Dr. Todd Buras is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Chair in the Department of Philosophy at Baylor University. His PhD was awarded by Yale University in 2004. His primary area of research and publication is 17th Century Scottish Philosophy and related topics in contemporary philosophy of religion and philosophy of mind. In recent years, he has been involved in the development of curricula for teaching ethics and philosophy at the high school level; his work on these projects has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Academic Leader’s Day Schedule
| Time | Presenter | Topic |
|---|---|---|
| 9:00–9:15 | Diener | Welcome and Introduction |
| 9:15–10:00 | Buras | Wisdom Questions in Modern Education |
| 10:10–10:55 | Buras | Lessons from Socrates: The Pursuit of Wisdom in Conversation |
| 11:05–11:50 | Donnelly | Lessons from St. Thomas: The Pursuit of Wisdom on Paper |
| 12:00–1:15 | Lunch Break | Optional Live Reading of Antigone |
| 1:30–1:40 | Diener | The Alcuin Fellowship |
| 1:40–2:25 | Donnelly | Interpreting Sophocles’ Antigone through the Disputatio |
| 2:35–3:20 | Buras | Debating Sophocles’ Antigone through the Disputatio |
| 3:30–4:00 | Donnelly & Buras | Concluding Discussion |
More at RTR for Leaders:
ACCREDITED SCHOOL MEETING
MEMBER SCHOOL MEETING
AFTERNOON TEA FOR HEAD OF SCHOOL WIVES
