Parent Paideia Seminar - Nov. 5, 2008

[JMAP Admin]

Steve Ball, Principal from a K-12 Magnet School that uses Paideia
teaching in Chatanooga, TN led the seminar of about 15 parents. He
explained the 3 cornerstones of Paideia Philosophy:

1) Didactic Teaching – Giving information in a lecture format
2) Coaching – Teachers coach and act as facilitators to help students
learn how to use the information to improve themselves and the world
around them.
3) Seminar – A collaborative dialogue using challenging, open-ended
questions to help students explore a text, artwork, or music.

The goal of Seminar is to learn how to think critically and to
disagree using civil dialogue.

At Steve’s school, the entire school has Seminar every Wednesday –
Muir will be following a similar, school-wide program.

During the parent meeting, Steve led the group in a ‘mock’ seminar so
we could see first-hand how this process works. It was an interesting
evening that showed us how the Seminar method can really help delve
deeper into a subject and explore individual and group ideas about a
topic.

The following is the text we used in the Paideia Seminar

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Declaration of Paideia Principles

We, the members of the Paideia Council, hold these truths to be the
principles of the Paideia Program:

1. that all children can learn;

2. that, therefore, they all deserve the same quality of schooling,
not just the same quantity;

3. that the quality of schooling to which they are entitles is what
the wisest parents would wish for their own children, the best
education for the best being the best education for all;

4. that schooling at its best is preparation for becoming generally
educated in the course of a whole lifetime, and that schools should be
judged on how well they provide such preparation;

5. that the three callings for which schooling should prepare all
Americans are, (a) to earn a decent livelihood, (b) to be a good
citizen of the nation and the world, and (c) to make a good life for
one's self;

6. that the primary cause of genuine learning is the activity of the
learner's own mind, sometimes with the help of a teacher functioning
as a secondary and cooperative cause;

7. that the three types of teaching that should occur in our schools
are didactic teaching of subject matter, coaching that produces the
skills of learning, and Socratic questioning in seminar discussion;

8. that the results of these three types of teaching should be (a)
the acquisition of organized knowledge, (b) the formation of habits of
skill in the use of language and mathematics, and (c) the growth of
the mind's understanding of basic ideas and issues;

9. that each student's achievement of these results should be
evaluated in terms of that student's competencies and not solely
related to the achievements of other students;

10. that the principal of the school should never be a mere
administrator, but always a leading teacher who should be
cooperatively engaged with the school's teaching staff in planning,
reforming and reorganizing the school as an educational community;

11. that the principal and faculty of a school should themselves be
actively engaged in learning;

12. that the desire to continue their own learning should be the
prime motivation of those who dedicate their lives to the profession
of teaching,.