As an English teacher at Bedford High, Chris Zellner’s days, theoretically, are all about literature. But it’s rare that he has a chance to discuss a text with anyone who isn’t encountering it for the first time. “We get 25 minutes at lunch,” says Zellner, who is in his fourth year of teaching. “We don’t often get the chance to talk to adults about books.”

This month, Zellner is one of sixteen K-12 teachers enrolled in a seminar called “Problem Children: Romeo and Juliet, The Catcher in the Rye, and Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You.” Led by Harvard instructor Theo Theoharis, the group spends the first morning of the three-day seminar discussing parent-child dynamics in Romeo and Juliet, which many of the participants teach to eighth- or ninth-graders. But unlike many teacher professional-development programs, this one doesn’t require the group to write a new curriculum, plan for MCAS-prep, or so much as utter the word “accountability.”

The seminar is one of 70 offered this year by Teachers as Scholars, which former Brookline High School teacher Henry Bolter founded in 1996. Bolter, a white-haired man with a huge grin, is quite cheerfully out of step with most strains of teacher-development. Participants in his seminars (which provide some Professional Development Points, or PDPs that public school teachers need for re-certification) often develop new lesson plans after the experience, but they don’t have to –- and that’s a key part of Bolter’s philosophy.

Bolter started the organization in part because of his own negative experiences with professional development. Lectures, he recalls, were inevitably held at 4:30 p.m. in a stuffy classroom, focused on teaching technique rather than subject matter, and treated teachers with condescension. “The subtext was always: ‘You’re not doing it right yet,’” Bolter recalls. “It was so erosive to people.”

What Bolter wanted to do was get teachers reacquainted with the world of ideas — “the reason most of them went into the profession in the first place” — by connecting them to university professors who could offer the latest in a field. Teachers as Scholars, which individual schools or whole school districts pay to join, now serves about 1,000 K-12 teachers a year. The cost per teacher for a three-day course ranges from $400 to $500, depending on how long the school has been a member. This year’s seminars include “Boston on the Eve of Revolution, 1763-1776,” “The Solar System and Beyond,” and “Women in the Modern Muslim World,” and meet in classroom space Bolter rents from Harvard Hillel, in Harvard Square.

During the lunch break of the “Problem Children” seminar, I sat down with him to hear why he thinks his way works.

What makes your approach different from the professional development you did?
It’s the assumptions it makes about teachers: that they’re curious, thinking adults interested in learning new things. I start out with the assumption that teachers are interested in ideas and can become excited and engaged. That’s what they need to do for the students. I get a lot of comments from teachers about how the excitement of being a learner again gives them energy for the classroom. And, at a more basic level, it gives them a break. You treat them like adults, and assume they’re interested. You trust them that something will come out of this. There’s no requirement to produce anything.

So how do you measure whether it’s successful?
If they come back! If people show up on the second day. [He laughs.] No, really, I sit in on a lot on the seminars, and I collect course evaluations, and many teachers say it’s the best professional development of their lives. I think I’ve tapped into a deep need to be treated respectfully, and just have their intellectual lives indulged a little bit. [Later, Bolter points to results of a survey of past participants: 93 percent say they would take another TAS seminar; 86 percent call it one of their most valuable professional-training experiences; 80 percent report incorporating seminar content in their classroom.]

How have you gotten schools to fund this program, given that it offers none of the usual measurements of success, like improved test scores?
They go back to their schools and say it’s the best development experience they’ve had, and principals listen.

Of your 52 member schools and school districts, most are suburban. Does your message play better in the suburbs than in the city?
We do have Somerville, but most are suburban. We’ve found it very, very hard to get into Boston. The politics are so daunting, and if you’re doing something that doesn’t have measurable classroom outcome….[He shakes his head.] We don’t promise test scores will go up. We promise teachers will come back renewed and in better shape to keep doing their jobs. Boston’s under a whole different set of political pressures, but teachers there have the same kind of needs.