Featured Resource

The Teaching Company

The Joy of Lifelong Learning Everyday”: The Teaching Company’s slogan promises a product perfectly in sympathy with the purposes of our Institute for Catholic Liberal Education.  And, in my experience, the product delivers, making it an excellent resource for faculty development.

The Teaching Company offers a wide variety of courses from the best teachers available around the country.  You can usually purchase DVDs, CDs, or audio downloads.  I prefer the CDs, because I can listen to them in my car.  I strongly recommend that schools build up a library of these courses.  You can use them as faculty in-service programs and also make them available to individual teachers.  Individual lectures are limited to 45 minutes, sometimes 30 minutes, making them ideal in either venue.  Teachers will find that they will enjoy sharing some of the lectures with their students.  You might also make them available to board members, allowing them to enjoy some of the learning that they are making possible for others.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the courses on Shakespeare (with Peter Saccio), Listening to and Understanding Great Music (Greenberg), and Relativity and the Quantum Revolution (Richard Wolfson).  Some of my colleagues have found a course or two disappointing, so you might wish to get recommendations for specific courses before investing in them. 

They are, in fact, an investment.  DVDs range from $250 to $350; audios from $150 to $250.  However, the Teaching Company’s website always offers sales on some of their courses, reducing DVDs to as low as $100, CDs to $70, and audio downloads to $50.  The Shakespeare and music courses are currently on sale (the music course, which includes 48 lectures, is available for $120 for the CDS).

Please visit http://www.teach12.com/teach12.aspx for more information.