Why study with John Trapasso in an educational program focused on learning, thinking, and skill development?
 
1. An exceptional education for home school families and all learners

• I have worked at leading independent schools for 27 years and am now offering my honed, proven, thinking-centered humanities program to home school families for grades 7 to 8 and high school. 
• My students have gone on to excel at top private high schools, including leading east and west coast boarding schools, and at Ivy League and other top universities.
• However, my program is not for the few but for all learners.  It challenges advanced students and supports and provides tools for those with learning differences.  My thinking-centered program helps everyone to achieve.

 
2. Teaching focused on learning, thinking, and skill development that is powerful and has a lasting, transformative impact on students’ lives

• My critical thinking-centered approach to teaching is rare in the world of education.  My students recognize they are learning in a different way and value and enjoy this dynamic and empowering way of learning.
• This claim is supported by testimonials from students, parents, and letters of recommendation from schools; their words are the best way to help you understand what makes my teaching unique.
• Many have testified to the excellence of the academic training I provide and its transformative impact on young learners. 
• Students have written to me years later to thank me and report the significant role my teaching has played in their academic success, careers, and lives. 
• Some explain how they use my tools regularly as adult professionals.

 
3. Develops the ability to learn through a critical thinking-centered program

• My overarching objective is to develop students’ ability to learn.  My course helps them to build a foundation and framework that supports all future learning across the disciplines. 
• Students receive thorough instruction in the key processes of intellectual inquiry and critical thinking based on the work of Dr. Richard Paul and the Foundation for Critical Thinking, where I trained and worked as an instructor.
• By virtue of continual practice, students develop their understanding through projects that require employing the processes of learning in order to do their own thinking.
• The goal is for students to learn how to think like a historian, a literary critic, and a writer by doing the real work these professionals do, by doing their own historical and literary analysis and supporting and communicating their own ideas through essay writing, visual communication tools, or oral expression. 
• Students learn that the process of inquiry we use in the humanities share commonalities with those used in other disciplines and come to realize that there are universal critical thinking and inquiry methods used by all fields of study. 
• In this way, our work in the humanities helps to unify student learning across the disciplines and demonstrates how the fields of study are both alike and different from each other.
• This unification of the disciplines helps also to simplify and facilitate student learning and combat the problem of fragmentation and disconnect between the subjects that often plagues traditional education and confounds student learning. 

 
4. Skill-centered learning that develops the adult power tools for success

• Undergirding the broad process of intellectual inquiry are the fundamental tools of reading, writing, critical thinking, and oral explanation and discussion skills.
• Developing these tools to a high degree is a central purpose of my course and much time is dedicated to this work so that students do in fact make significant progress on them.
• I have developed my own effective, step-by-step methods for cultivating these essential reading, writing, thinking, and discussion skills over my 27-year career. 
• Students are given direct instruction and concrete tools to develop these skills, while the content of the humanities curriculum is taught through projects that require their regular exercise.
• In my class, students work like apprentices engaged in honing these skills day-by-day and advance towards becoming a master of their craft.
• Operating like young craftspeople also helps them to develop a mature work ethic and to value the power of revision and the process of continual improvement, strategies that we emphasize in my program.
• My students become insightful readers, capable writers, able critical thinkers, and effective at oral explanation and discussion; many report that they are far ahead in these skill areas when they go to high school.
• The testimonials from former students noted on this website often discuss specific tools I taught, such as the analytical essay writing process or cause and effect flow-charting, and how they greatly aided their academic careers and professional lives.
• Please look at the work of my 6th to 8th grade students and see for yourself the level of work they are able to produce through my tested skill development program. 

 
5. Active, engaging, and challenging work students enjoy
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• Focusing on the development of the processes of inquiry and the core power skills ensures that the students learn in an active and engaging way. 
• While a traditional educational approach tends to focus on the memorization of known information, my students work more actively and are challenged to read closely to find key points and to conduct analysis to draw their own conclusions and construct their own understanding. 
• They present their findings to others through writing, speaking, or our key visual tools such as cause and effect flow charts or building “houses of thought” using the critical thinking “elements of reason.”
• We often engage is class-wide critiques of student work where they get the opportunity to develop their abilities to judge and evaluate, and to provide and receive constructive feedback. 
• Many days are centered on class discussions, where students respond to class readings, share their ideas, and question and investigate together to develop a deeper understanding of the material. 
• I lead these conversations through Socratic questioning that responds to and probes the students’ thinking, asks them to clarify their ideas, and generates new questions.  All of the students learn to do the same, and we have freewheeling discussions were students share, support, and defend their thinking, respond to each other, agree or disagree, and propose new lines of inquiry. 
• Students enjoy my classroom.  Together we create a supportive learning environment where we appreciate each other’s company, respectfully learn together, and savor a healthy dose of humor.  We explore intriguing and significant human questions and engage in spirited discussions that help foster learning that is fun. 

 
6. An education that is empowering and develops independence
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• My program empowers students to think for themselves.  They recognize and value that, and know that they are in a unique learning program.  They can feel themselves growing strong in our intellectual gym through our rigorous daily workout routine.
• Our thinking- and skill-centered classroom helps to empower students because they develop the ability to learn independently.
• When they see the final draft of an analytical essay they have produced, they feel proud of what they have accomplished because they have conducted their own analysis and are presenting their own ideas. 
• With the skills I help them develop, they individually constructed their understanding of the topic under investigation and rightfully experience ownership and pride in their new knowledge and achievement.
• In this way, my program also helps to develop the students’ feeling of independence.  They come to know they can learn on their own, and this helps them to feel powerful and free.  These are two of the ultimate goals of my teaching; this is what I want for my students.