This June, Professors Ravi Jain and Ty Rallens along with Dr. Brian Williams took students from the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) in Classical Education to Oxford, England for two weeks of intensive graduate study and paired with one-of-a-kind experiences. Twenty-one students in total took two courses—Professor Jain's Classical Pedagogy I: The Culture of the Classroom and Professor Rallens' new elective Classical School Leadership: Organizations and the Tradition.

During the first week, Pedagogy I the class met mostly in North Gate Hall, the building where the Oxford Inter-Collegiate Christian Union was founded in 1879—the original campus ministry! They also had a private tour of Magdalen College Chapel (the college where C.S. Lewis taught for 29 years) and held a providentially sun-kissed “punting and poetry” session on the river nearby in-between rain showers.

For the second week, the Classical Leadership course met at Pusey House, an institution dedicated to preserving the original pattern of Oxford colleges as houses that daily integrated study and Christian worship. Those students also contemplated treasures such as Alfred the Great’s jeweled reading tool and an ancient chess board at the Ashmolean Museum, then held a seminar at C.S. Lewis’s house of 33 years, The Kilns.

Said one student: “[the course] taught me what to change and work on, and made me encouraged to serve the Lord with joy and seek after Him with my whole heart even more.” Amen. May next year’s Oxford trip yield a similar harvest!