ABSTRACT
The Paideia Seminar is a collaborative, intellectual dialogue facilitated with open-ended questions about a text. The seminar is designed to teach conceptual understanding of the complex ideas and values that give meaning to the curriculum. One of the reasons that cognitive lightning strikes so often during seminar discussion is that, by definition, Paideia Seminars feature the discussion of significant ideas and values, evocative, often profound ideas and values. The school was committed to the Paideia Program, and all students participated in a school-wide seminar every other week. In introducing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in 2010, Vicki Phillips and Carina Wong of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation wrote that the foundation was advocating for the CCSS, because "the evidence supports the need for students to have certain skills as they move into college". Once the figures were secured end-to-end with clear tape, the students laid their own creations aside and took up the image as their seminar text.
