Last month, 20 high school teachers had the chance to become students again as they read core texts together and saw where their conversations took them. During the weeklong Great Books Summer Seminar hosted by Mercer University’s McDonald Center for America’s Founding Principles, the teachers learned how to bring student-centered discussions like those at Mercer to their own classrooms.
Courses in the University’s long-standing Great Books program, one of two tracks through which undergraduates in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences can complete general education course requirements, connect students with foundational works of literature, history and philosophy and build a community of shared experiences as they interpret them.
“The faculty is there not to be a lecturer but instead to manage a discussion,” said Dr. Will Jordan, political science professor. “The students are really leading the enterprise. This active participation is student-centered; it requires listening, speaking and disagreeing respectfully, all of those things which are necessary for civic participation and so important to life.”
The summer workshop for high school teachers, led by McDonald Center Co-Directors Dr. Jordan and Dr. Kevin Honeycutt, exposed high school teachers to the pedagogy of the Great Books program. The seminar was first hosted in 2010, 2012 and 2013 with grant funding from the Walmart Foundation and revived in 2024 through an endowment from the late Tom and Ramona McDonald, longtime Mercer supporters who believed in the power of education, Dr. Jordan said.
“We’re not trying to get anywhere; we’re just exploring questions, and the important thing is what emerges from the conversation,” said Dr. Honeycutt, philosophy professor. “What I try to do with students is to give them the courage to ask the question and the humility to accept the answer, and that’s what we’re trying to do with these teachers.”
The theme of this year’s summer workshop, held June 21-26 on the Macon campus, was “Novus Ordo Seclorum: Creating the American Republic.” High school teachers from Middle Georgia to Gainesville, Florida, traveled to Macon to participate.
Every morning, the group had two discussions about their assigned texts, which showed them how to facilitate a Great Books conversation. Then, they spent each afternoon in a workshop that dove deeper into the techniques, context and pedagogical choices.
Kevin Fabulich, a high school economics and U.S. government teacher at the University of Florida’s P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School, attended the 2024 Great Books summer program and this year shared strategies for engagement and implementing a grading rubric.
“It was great. I ended up speaking a lot, but I also took a lot away from it,” he said. “The other teachers’ experiences, both challenges and successes, and using those in the classroom was beneficial to me.”
Dr. Jordan said the week went well, and he was impressed with the teachers’ engagement and enthusiasm.
“The important thing is they really get a chance to be students again and to do some of the things that got them interested in teaching in the first place, which was talking about books and ideas and learning things,” Dr. Jordan said. “The teachers are very excited and grateful for the opportunity to do this. They’re constantly thinking of how they’re going to replicate part of this.”
The Great Books format facilitates authentic learning, and Dr. Jordan and Dr. Honeycutt have been pleased to hear that past participants are using their seminar knowledge in their classrooms to better reach their students.
Fabulich has been using Socratic dialogue — a cooperative, question-and-answer discussion method — for a while in his government classes, and the Great Books pedagogy has allowed him to expand upon that. He hopes to incorporate Great Books discussions into his economics curriculum as well.
“As a government teacher, it brought in an additional realm of works I hadn’t used before. But also, for the works I had been using, it gave me more detail and nuance to work out of as a teacher,” he said. “When my students do (these discussions), they take away a lot more than they would if they were reading the work on their own. It’s engaging, and it’s fun, and they enjoy experiencing the work at the same time. They’re at the center of the learning.”
Brandon Brock, CLAS ’15, teaches English at Mary Persons High School in Monroe County and attended this year’s Great Books seminar. Once just a Mary Persons student with a budding love for philosophy, he had the opportunity to attend a Great Books seminar that Mercer hosted for high schoolers in 2011.
“The reason I came to Mercer was the Great Books program and having that seminar experience,” Brock said. “It was so impactful. It’s so unique, and it’s so special, and there’s no other college in the U.S. that does it the way that we do it. You get all of us around the table and really magical things happen.”
Mercer’s Great Books program had such a profound impact on Brock as a student that he jumped at the chance to return to the discussion as a teacher this summer.
“It impacts the way that I teach now. (My class) is 100% discussion based, and that is a direct result of the pedagogy of the Great Books program. Discussion works, and I saw that because of Great Books. That also helped me get into teaching. It was Great Books that made me fall in love with the very notion of education.”
Fabulich described the week as a “nice working vacation” and said it was rewarding for everyone involved. Brock said the workshop reinvigorated him and reminded him what it’s like to come to an unfamiliar text as a student.
If additional resources can be secured in the future, the McDonald Center co-directors would like to expand the summer program to include tracks for both first-time and returning participants.
