Do you know the best time to begin reading great books?  Right now! Regardless of the age of the student or the reading level of the story, the same principles of good reading apply.  What’s more, some of the very best stories ever told were written for children! Students in our elementary classes will learn basic principles of good reading and then apply them to a hand-picked selection of uplifting, inspiring stories.  Not only will they love the experience in the moment, but they will acquire skills that will last a lifetime.   

Monday class time; optional writing course available

Junior High students tend to feel things deeply and engage new ideas with enthusiasm and abandon.  What a great time to read literature! Lively and tasteful discussions of enduring classics for young people will bring the wisdom of the ages to bear on relevant themes such as loyalty and friendship, responsibility, honor, and coming of age. Students are encouraged to participate aloud and enter joyfully into the Great Conversation – for many of them, a lifetime of profound reading begins here and now!

Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday sections; optional writing course available

For the first time, Mr. A is offering classes in his specialty! This course presents a tour of the critical periods in America’s past, coupled with guided discussions of important works of historical fiction that shed light on them. We will introduce junior high students to the proper techniques for reading, thinking, and writing about history. Along the way, we hope they will begin to appreciate their own place in the American tradition.

The American experience is unique in world history – a nation founded not on ethnicity but ideology, whose people have struggled for more than two centuries to realize the proposition that all men are created equal.  American literature demonstrates the power of this idea in all of its triumph and devastation.  We’ll join Hester Prynne, Jay Gatsby, Henry Fleming, Huckleberry Finn, Atticus Finch and others as they live out the contradictions inherent in a nation “of the people, by the people and for the people.”  Are you an American, too?  Come read and find out! 

Tuesday or Wednesday morning sections; Optional writing course available

Did you know that just about every major principle of Western civilization – whether religious, political, economic, sociological or artistic – comes to us by way of England?  The British heritage as a conduit of culture is unmatched in western history, and its literature provides compelling evidence of this record going back twelve centuries.  We’ll hit the high points with Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Austen, Dickens and others.   Come join us and realize your own debt to “this precious stone set in the silver sea…this earth, this realm, this England” (King Richard II 2.1).

Tuesday morning class time; Optional writing course available

Most of the ideas we hold dear – the glory and frailty of human nature, the beauty of self-sacrifice, the hope of heaven – come to us as gifts from the past.  As we read the great epics of the ancient and medieval worlds – among them The Book of Job, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, Beowulf, and The Divine Comedy  – we’ll witness the birth of these concepts first hand, and see our own natures mirrored in the plights of heroes.  More recent works by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and C.S. Lewis will remind us of the enduring relevance of the wisdom of the ages.  In the end, we’ll know ourselves as creatures of our ancient history in ways we never imagined. Join us for a literary world tour – one that begins and ends at home.

Tuesday morning class time; Optional writing course available

In this class, Junior High and High School students will be introduced to the art of reading poetry.  Through reading and discussion of more than 75 classic poems, they will be equipped to recognize the poet's tools, literary devices and many prevalent poetic forms.  Most importantly, they will learn to do the hard work of listening to the poet, thinking his thoughts after him, searching out his symbols and images, his devices and diction in order to come to terms with his ideas.  Lively discussion using the Socratic Method will follow reading of individual poems, which exemplify key ideas introduced in class.

Tuesday morning class time

For the first time, Mr. A is offering classes in his specialty! This course covers the critical periods in America’s past, from both historical and literary perspectives through a combination of primary historical documents and relevant historical fiction. Through reading, discussion, and writing assignments for each unit, students will learn to distinguish these types of sources and correctly handle and interpret each one like a historian.