BY MATTHEW E. MILLIKEN

mmilliken@heraldsun.com; 419-6684

DURHAM — “A good seminar is driven by diversity,” Terry Roberts said. “Almost like an engine that makes it hum.”

His engine had plenty of power Tuesday night. He was leading a seminar of 20 parents and students, plus one teacher, at a Kestrel Heights Charter School community event.

The purpose was familiarizing parents with the school’s seminars, which use an educational model called Paideia (pah-DAY-ah). Roberts, one of four seminar leaders, was an honored guest; he heads the National Paideia Center, a UNC Chapel Hill affiliate.

His seminar group’s diversity became apparent soon after folks settled down in Room 206.

Roberts asked each person to describe their communication style. The answers: nonverbal, not afraid to speak up, awesome (“awesome and modest,” Roberts noted), “I make people laugh — I’m funny,” “I laugh a lot,” “I like to explain things” (the teacher), “I’m little Miss Chatterbox,” succinct (others: “What?”), “I talk a lot,” “a good listener” (Roberts himself), opinionated, diligent and “I like to play outside.”

Roberts then described the seminar process, in which the moderator asks open-ended questions. “There could be as many possible answers as there are people in the circle,” he said.

He read aloud a Brothers Grimm fable, “The Three Languages,” about a young earl who after years of study outrages his father by claiming only to have learned animal tongues.

The story finished, Roberts posed a question: What was the most important thing the young earl learned? Parent Ivory Taylor answered first: the earl kept an open mind and listened.

After everyone responded, Roberts asked them to explain their answers.

Student Elijah Wood thought the key lesson was learning the pigeons’ language. “If I had a bunch of pigeons who could talk to me, I would so use it for tests,” he explained.

No pets in school, a fellow teenage student named Eric interjected. “You might be better off with gnats, or with dust mites.”

What, Roberts asked, did people think of the old earl?

An idiot, Wood and other kids said.

Intolerant and narrow-minded, said a woman named Marilyn.

“He should have just got off his lazy butt and taught [his son] himself,” said Abbey Wood, Elijah’s sister.

The old earl was an authority figure, Roberts noted. Should anyone have the right to dictate what youngsters learn? What kind of education is valuable?

Afterward, Taylor expressed admiration for the process.

“You got a lot of the parents involved,” he said. “The kids were very involved. It showed me you need more seminars.”

In fact, Kestrel Heights teachers hold them regularly, and there are school-wide seminars every six weeks. Eighth-grade teacher Amy Burke coordinates Paideia education at Kestrel Heights; one of the hardest things, she said, is leading seminars without offering opinions.

Mother Lea Wood said this is Abbey’s first year at Kestrel Heights and Elijah’s fourth. She attended a two-room school in southern Indiana and loves the charter school.

“It’s so good to have the kids getting comfortable in a group setting like this,” she said.

Her normally taciturn son’s verbosity Tuesday night, she added, had surprised her.

“He’s a different kid here,” she said. “He’s a different kid here.”