The Power of Paideia Part II: Paideia in Practice

-by Alex Schaivone, New Hanover High School

Catch up with Part I of Alex's blog post here: (The Power of Paideia Part I: I'm a Believer)

After a month of anxiously waiting to dive into my first Paideia seminar, I struggled to find a text that would do the process justice while also appealing to my students. I perused the Paideia Institute’s website (which is a fabulous resource if you’re just starting Paideia seminars for the first time), scouring the lesson plan archives for just the right seminar for my students. As a teacher of seniors, I knew that this lesson had to be good. It was the beginning of their last year of high school and I was determined to start the year off on the right foot.

I searched and searched for the right text when I finally came across Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Ulysses.” If you aren’t familiar with “Ulysses,” it is the perfect text for those about to embark on their next great adventure. With powerful lines like “Some work of noble note, may yet be done,”  “Come, my friends,/'T is not too late to seek a newer world,” and “One equal temper of heroic hearts, /Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will/To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,” I was confident that there was something special about this text that my seniors would be able to connect to. Even now, I am convinced that there isn’t a better poem to read at the beginning of the end of their high school careers.

Prior to our first seminar, I had students read and annotate the full text of “Ulysses” for homework. In an ideal world, we would have been able to go through this process together, but limited time calls for flexibility. When students sat down in class on the day of our first seminar, I explained that while we have had discussions in class before, the Paideia seminar would be slightly different.

While I was nervously anticipating a rocky start to implementing such a new type of discussion, the Paideia process is incredibly easy to follow. Utilizing the lesson plans provided online made the first seminar simple and stress-free. I was amazed by the level of depth and understanding students were conveying after only a few minutes of discussion.

After reading “Ulysses” and following the Paideia format for discussion,  my seniors were exploring poetry with more insight and depth than they had ever done before. While a simple annotation and traditional discussion would have allowed for minimal depth, my students were using textual evidence to discuss the speaker’s motivation, the relationship between poet and the work, and the intricacies of poetry. We were exploring themes of contentment and conflictedness, discussing intertextuality, and analyzing the modern cultural relevance of a work published nearly two centuries ago.

At the end of the seminar, I asked students to rate the poem’s level of difficulty. Many students admitted that “Ulysses”  was far above their comfort level; however, through the seminar process, they tackled a difficult text with confidence. I was officially a believer. If the Paideia process allowed students to tackle Tennyson with ease, I was convinced that there was nothing it couldn’t do.

Since then, we have utilized Paideia seminars as an introduction to our study of The Great Gatsby, focusing on the essay “The Social Me” as a platform to discuss characterization and how the idea of personal identity relates to Fitzgerald’s novel. Over the next year, it is my goal to continue these seminars at least once a month. I couldn’t be more pleased with how approachable the process is and I am still blown away by the results it produces.

If you’re interested in trying out the “Ulysses” Paideia seminar, you can find the lesson plan here- https://www.paideia.org/lesson-plans/ulysses/.


Have you tried Paideia Seminars with your classes? How did it go? We'd love for you to share in the comment section below!