Academic challenge doesn't always mean more work. Sometimes it means following an idea farther.
That’s the thinking behind LYCEUM, Wellington’s honors humanities experience for 7th and 8th graders. Short for League of Young Creators Exploring Universal Meaning, the program takes its name from Aristotle’s Lyceum, a place for questioning, reasoning, discussion, and the pursuit of wisdom. Created for students who are doing well in humanities and ready for a different kind of challenge, LYCEUM asks them to examine complex texts, wrestle with big questions, and connect ideas across disciplines.
A question about a novel might lead students to consider how history changes their reading of it, or why people centuries apart have been drawn to the same ideas. As students pursue these questions, they keep track of where their thinking takes them. Each builds a Codex, part notebook, part intellectual map, and part portfolio of the questions, quotations, patterns, and ideas they collect throughout the year.
This fall, students in LYCEUM reading “Cloud Cuckoo Land” considered how stories travel across time and connect people separated by centuries. The novel also led them into history, art, music, philosophy, and culture.
Student Mika noticed one connection close to home: her grandmother, Dr. Sandy Drakatos, had expertise that could help the class understand Constantinople, one of the novel’s settings. Mika helped bring her grandmother into the classroom, where students explored the city beyond the pages of the book. They learned how its names, rulers, cultures, architecture, and identities changed over centuries.
For middle school humanities teacher Mason Roulston P ’31 ’34, Mika’s observation reflects what LYCEUM invites students to do.
“We’re trying to create a place where curious kids can follow an idea farther than the normal boundaries of a class might allow,” said Roulston.