Teachers Institute: Professional Development Through the Great Books
Enriching Lives and Classrooms Through the Great Books
At St John’s we believe that closely studying the best, hardest books in community with others is the best way to grow as educators and that is what these seminars will offer. There will be no lectures or presentations, only close reading and rigorous but open-ended conversation, the practices that comprise liberal education at its finest. We aim not to master any particular subject but to enter into all of human knowing more deeply, all in the service of returning to our classrooms more intellectually and imaginatively alive than ever.
Our seminars provide both intellectual enrichment and practical classroom insights, giving you tools to bring fresh energy and ideas to your teaching. This year’s seminars take up any number of questions confronting educators: the nature of knowing in an age of AI, the shape and content of the canon, and much else besides.
The Eva Brann Workshop in the Technology & Computation: 2026–27 Teachers Institute Saturday Seminars
The series is named in memory of longtime Tutor Eva Brann. She, famously, did not use a typewriter, let alone email or any of the other bits of technological apparatus that populate our lives. Is there not, then, something deeply odd about a series dedicated to Technology & Computation but named after Ms Brann? We’d like to think that not only is the answer “no,” but that the series is absolutely in keeping with the College’s—and Ms Brann’s—own ways. For both are deeply committed to reading the texts that have given us the problems and questions that confront us in their original form, all in an effort to get clear on our contemporary situation. So, rather than investigate whatever it is that sits, today, at the frontier of computer science, we make space to return to the papers, books, and essays that themselves made possible what we see all around us. We turn to them to see how it is that human mindedness might be thought to be modeled by a machine; how human action might be mediated at every moment by digital apparatus; how human forms of relatedness might be radically reconfigured. We turn to these writings, then, as inquirers into the human situation. We turn to them—with, we hope, an eye as penetrating as Ms Brann’s, to find out how we found ourselves where we are today, surrounded at every turn by devices and digits. And how we, as students and teachers committed to liberal education, might live most freely.
Why Educators Choose the Teachers Institute
Our Method
Like all instruction at St. John’s, the Teachers Institute emphasizes close reading, careful listening, and shared inquiry. These seminars provide a rigorous yet supportive space where educators can wrestle with enduring questions and connect meaningfully with peers.
The Teachers Institute is part of the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College, which has a long tradition of preparing educators through serious engagement with the Great Books. Many participants in the Institute go on to pursue the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts (MALA), the Master of Arts in Eastern Classics (MAEC), or the Master of Arts in Middle Eastern Classics (MAMEC).
*Many participants have successfully used these seminars for CEU credit. Please check with your school’s HR office for specific requirements.