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A whole book in six weeks · Three mornings a week
Homer’s Odyssey read whole across one summer, Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the same hour. Meeting three times a week is what makes finishing it possible.
New this term. Reviews from students and parents appear here once families have taken it.
The same seminar we teach across a full term, compressed into six weeks by meeting three mornings a week instead of one. Students read roughly two books of the poem between meetings and arrive with the text marked.
Frequency is the pedagogy here, not a scheduling convenience. When two days pass instead of seven, nobody has to spend the first ten minutes remembering who Telemachus is, the argument carries from Monday into Wednesday, and a fourteen-year-old finishes a canonical epic in a single summer.
It is the same hour every meeting, which is the only way three mornings a week fits into a family’s summer.
This one meets three times a week, always at the same hour. That is a real claim on your week, and it is deliberate: this material is learned faster in short frequent contact than in one long meeting, and the gap between meetings is short enough that nothing has to be re-established at the start of each one.
This course accumulates. The class reads the same pages at the same pace and each meeting picks up the argument where the last one left it, so joining halfway means joining an argument already in progress.
Because there is a whole body of work at the end of it, this one is graded (letter) and can be carried to a transcript. Enroll before the second meeting.
Week 1
Books 1–4. A household without its master and a son who has never met his father.
Week 2
Books 5–8. The hero we finally meet is crying on a beach.
Week 3
Books 9–12. The Cyclops, Circe, the dead, the Sirens. Odysseus tells his own story, which is worth noticing.
Week 4
Books 13–18. Disguise, hospitality, and the long test of a household.
Week 5
Books 19–22. The scar, the bow, and the slaughter in the hall.
Week 6
Books 23–24. The bed that cannot be moved, and what the poem finally says about home.
The Odyssey
Homer, trans. Robert Fitzgerald or Emily Wilson
Either translation. Students are asked to compare passages across both at least once.
The poem is treated as a great work worth reading whole, not as a set of myths to summarize. Students are expected to disagree with Odysseus, and often do.
Read our academic philosophyMeetings are recorded and released to enrolled families for fourteen days. Recordings capture the instructor and shared materials; student video is not published.
Full refund up to seven days before the first meeting; inside seven days, everything paid is credited to your Lyceum balance. No refunds or credits once the class has begun. Cancel any section from your parent account.
These describe how this instructor has been trained, reviewed with educators and accessibility specialists. They are not a diagnosis and not a marketing claim.
Students and parents review separately, on different questions, and the two aggregates are never blended. Every review is verified and moderated.
No parent reviews for this class yet.
Reviews from students are published as “Student, age 13”, never with a full name. Photo and short video reviews are supported and moderated before they appear.
Great Books
The year-long seminar · Ages 15–18
A full year inside Tocqueville: both volumes, forty pages a week, discussed live every Tuesday with twelve other students.
Dr. Alan HaleNew this term
Reviews appear once families have taken it.
$8/wk
$56 in total
$22.40 for add’l siblings
Great Books
A whole-book seminar
Douglass in his own words: the Narrative read whole, plus the Fourth of July speech, with attention to how a man argued his way into freedom.
Ms. Imani BellNew this term
Reviews appear once families have taken it.
$8/wk
$56 in total
$22.40 for add’l siblings
Constitution & Founding
The ratification debate, read as a debate
Publius on one side, Brutus and the Federal Farmer on the other, and a class that has to decide for itself who had the better of it.
Mr. James OkadaNew this term
Reviews appear once families have taken it.
$8/wk
$56 in total
$22.40 for add’l siblings
