About

Paideia Academics is an online resource hub for the modern classical educator, offering insights, resources, and training that is proven, practical, flexible, and rooted in the historic Christian classical tradition. We develop and publish the following for classical teachers serving students at home, in schools, and in homeschooling communities.

• Teacher Training Courses
• Mimetic, Poetic, and Dialectic/Socratic Lesson Plans and Teaching Guides
• Homeschool Co-op & Community Development Resources
• Curriculum & Learning Guides
• Articles

OUR STORY

Paideia Academics began in 2012 as a two-family in-person homeschooling community started by Jennifer (Dow) Souza and Dara Weaver. Over the next six years it grew to include 25 families, about 70 students, and became a template and inspiration for homeschooling groups around the world seeking to start academically focused communities who are committed to teaching the traditional classical liberal arts with excellence and embodying truth, goodness, and beauty in the content, community, administration, and governance of their groups.

As interest grew in how Paideia was operating their homeschool group, we began to share our curriculum guides, start up training, and community practices to help other groups grow. In 2020 Paideia made the shift to an online academy and continued to develop our teacher training courses and resources that included a host of online courses for educators in the art of teaching the seven liberal arts.

Since 2024, Paideia Academics made another shift and closed the online academy after twelve successful years in existence. Today, Paideia Academics exists as an online guide for the modern classical educator, offering insights through the occasional article or social media post and training and support through online courses, digital resources, and live workshops for classical teachers serving students at home, in schools, and in homeschooling communities.

Since 2012, we have learned, over and over again, the most impactful and transformative classical teachers and learning environments have, first and foremost, mastered a way of being, a mindset, and a disposition toward their students, what they teach, and their own teaching practice. From there, the particulars follow quite easily. If you want to master the art of classical teaching, join us. Beginning is easier than you may think.

Offerings

Core Commitments

Honor & Dignity

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. Psalm 8:3-5

We believe that each person has innate dignity as an icon of Christ. We seek to love each other by noticing and respecting them as icons while also allowing others to see us and call us to live more fully as icons in imitation of Christ. We believe truth, goodness, and beauty may be found in any book, culture, or person, whether it be an ancient liturgy, a child, a tribal story, an old poet, or a modern-day musician. As such we endeavor to seek to understand as we study art, letters, and sciences.

Form & Tradition

We celebrate tradition and form. At Paideia Academics, we honor this reality by aligning ourselves with forms and traditions that have stood the test of time and honor the dignity of every student, teacher, and subject/content area we teach. Being created in the image of a Triune God, we acknowledge that we are inherently communal beings that find nourishment and unity in coming together around good, true, and beautiful ideas, art, and letters that speak deeply to what it means to be human.

Ecumenical & Christian

We deeply value a Christian ecumenical atmosphere. All are welcome. Our community comprises people from many nations, cultures, and backgrounds who come together around Christ the Logos, and the Classical Liberal arts tradition. We believe historic Christianity and the classical liberating arts are a space of common ground and dignity for every human person. We enjoy learning from literature, art, and ideas across the globe and among many nations, groups, and people.

Hospitality

“The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.” ― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Hospitality is the act of both becoming present and becoming a healing presence to one’s neighbors, all of our neighbors, including ourselves. Hospitality is an embodiment of the belief that each person has innate dignity and is worthy of honor.

Hospitality makes a classical liberal arts education and its end goal possible. We make space for each person, text, or idea through hospitality to learn, encounter truth, not-know, wrestle, experience victory and failure, discuss, connect, and heal. It includes a lot of mess and mystery, beauty, form and freedom, courage, humility, responsibility, and openness. Hospitality is the foundation for the trust required to experience real learning, freedom, and healing. It is woven throughout every experience at Paideia Academics.