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NPC Support for At-Home Learning

NPC Logo with book and tree

The Covid-19 virus has changed the way we do almost everything—especially schooling. In response to almost universal school closings and widespread uncertainty about the coming months, we at the National Paideia Center are working to support educators and parents in their efforts to continue teaching children. We want to nurture and simultaneously support instructional efforts through innovative materials and professional development opportunities. Please read through the options below to find materials and programming that are suited to your current needs. And please don’t hesitate to be in touch with our staff to suggest other programming that we can offer that is specifically tailored to the situation in your school or your home learning environment.

New for May 2020

You can now share your experiences with our Paideia At-Home Learning initiatives on our Flipgrid account! This platform allows you to record a short video about our Family Plans (see below) and the kinds of conversations they are sparking with your family. We would love to be able to interact with you in this fun new way.

Also, be sure to scroll down the page for the second episode of Dr. Terry Roberts' podcast, "Dialogue in the Time of Corona."

For Families

Free Family Seminar Plans. We are excited to introduce our first-ever collection of Paideia Seminar Plans geared to family discussion, available free of charge. We continue to add new plans weekly to this resource. As parents and grandparents ourselves, we are fully immersed in this shifting landscape of learning. When we at the National Paideia Center discussed how we could add our ray of light to the collective home-based learning experience, we wanted what is best about the Paideia Seminar to be utilized at home. The plans that we share come from years of dinner discussions, living room chats, and bedtime philosophy sessions that push our families to think more critically and creatively about the ideas and values which make up the realities we know. Learn more here.

For Educators

Online Professional Development Opportunities. The National Paideia Center is dedicated to helping Paideia educators around the country during this unprecedented time of school closures and extreme social distancing. Accordingly, we have developed two platforms for online learning: a "synchronous" Introduction to Paideia Seminar webinar, and an "asynchronous" Introduction to Paideia Seminar module course. The synchronous webinar will happen in real-time while the asynchronous modules can be viewed when convenient. Visit our Professional Development schedule page to learn more about each option; a subscription to the Paideia Seminar Plan Collection (see below) is included.

Custom Seminar Planning. We are pleased to announce a new service in which our experienced Staff and Seminar Facilitators will work with you to create up to ten custom seminar plans specifically designed to deliver your curriculum to your students. This service will allow you to design Paideia Seminar Plans for specific curriculums and/or student populations. Read more about this opportunity.

Paideia Seminar Plan Collection. Since the original release in 2019, we have continued to add fully developed Paideia (or Socratic) Seminar plans at an unprecedented rate. This Seminar Plan library is by far the most valuable online resource for seminar facilitators in general and Paideia teachers in particular. It is the perfect supplement to the information contained in the new edition of The Paideia Seminar: Creative Thinking Through Dialogue (see below). It is also a rich resource for any educator who is focused on literacy development, regardless of grade level or subject area. Learn more about our affordable subscription.

New Seminar Manual. The new third edition of the Paideia Seminar manual, The Paideia Seminar: Creative Thinking Through Dialogue, represents all the latest innovations in planning, facilitating, and assessing the Paideia Seminar Cycle—including close reading; speaking and listening; and extensive writing. It is an extraordinarily valuable training and reference tool which can serve an educator in learning about the Paideia Seminar as well in the years of practice that follow. In addition, it contains the latest and best thinking about the entire literacy cycle and how it nurtures social and emotional as well as intellectual growth. Order your copy here.

"Dialogue in the Time of Corona: Meditations from Our Time and Place"

Our director, Dr. Terry Roberts, has begun sharing his thoughts about dialogue in these uncertain times. To listen to the podcast or download the text, click the links below. Dr. Roberts has also written a statement about the vital importance of dialogue in a time of civil unrest; it is available to read and/or to download.

Episode 1

Episode 2

This site provides information using PDF, visit this link to download the Adobe Acrobat Reader DC software.