Workshop Speaker
How to Lead a Discussion
In this session, Dr. Eliot Grasso will offer tools to help teachers lead meaningful discussions with their students. Dr. Grasso will explain how to prepare for discussion, how to create interpretive questions, and how to foster an environment of inquiry that encourages students to take ownership of their learning process.
Dr. Eliot Grasso is a tutor on the faculty of Gutenberg College where he also serves as Vice President. He teaches courses in music, art, philosophy, history, literature, and hermeneutics in the Western tradition. He has been teaching in higher education in Europe and North America for nearly 20 years and holds a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Oregon, a M.A. in ethnomusicology from the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick, and a B.A. in music from Goucher College. A teacher at heart, he engages students with the big questions of life through the classics of the Western tradition and fosters the faithful pursuit of truth so that they can live good lives.
Dr. Grasso has given presentations on culture, education, music, and the arts at institutions, conferences, and homeschooling communities around the world including New York University, Boston College, University of Washington, University of Limerick, Central Washington University, CiRCE’s FORMA Symposium, Society for Classical Learning, Classical Conversations, Great Hearts Symposium, Kepler Education, Worldview Academy, OCEAN Network, and Gutenberg College’s Art of Learning Conference. He has published articles on art, music, and culture in The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland, World Music: A Global Journey, Journal of the Vernacular Music Institution, CiRCE’s FORMA Journal, Gutenberg College’s Colloquy, Iris na bPíobairí, and An Píobaire.
He is dedicated to training teachers in Socratic-style discussion and has given workshops for Classical Conversations, Great Hearts Academy for Classical Teachers, Escondido Charter High School, Seattle Classical Christian School, Mountain Scholars, LETRS, and Gutenberg College’s Great Books Symposium. Dr. Grasso is also a regular guest on podcasts including Basecamp Live, Refining Rhetoric, VIRTUE, and The Gutenberg Podcast.
In a parallel universe, Dr. Grasso is an award-winning performer, composer, and recording artist and plays Irish traditional music on the uilleann pipes, an eighteenth- century species of Irish bagpipe with which he performs internationally. Critics say that his “intuitive sense of melodic and technical variation make him one of the most creative and dynamic musicians in the contemporary world of Irish traditional music,” and “one of the finest uilleann pipers in the history of Irish music in America.” Dr. Grasso has performed at the National Endowment for the Arts Awards, the National Humanities Awards, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the National Geographic Concert Hall, and the Library of Congress. He has appeared as a featured artist on NPR’s “Prairie Home Companion” with Garrison Keillor, performed and taught for the William Kennedy Piping Festival in Armagh, and appeared as a soloist in the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall for Scotland’s renowned National Piping Festival, Piping Live! Dr. Grasso has served as a music director, co-producer, and consultant for ballets and stage productions and has over a dozen recordings to his name.
A fuller picture of his artistic endeavors is available at eliotgrasso.com.