What’s the Point of All of This?
So what do I expect someone to understand from my time in the classroom? That everyone should teach the same way that I did? No, not at all. I did a fair bit of my own learning and overcoming in my own time. Rather, I’d like to ruminate on a sentiment Mrs. Lawson, my mom, told me on the car ride home from my last official day in class:
“I’ve never wanted to learn more in my life, and I’m the teacher!” She laughed. “I wanted to learn with them. When you brought in fun activities, it made me want to spend time making my own instead of giving them stupid worksheets. It made me think I could really do it. That I’m allowed to have fun, too.”
The point is: it doesn’t have to be Classics. It doesn’t have to be high ability. It was Classics because I love Classics, and I find joy in teaching it. It was a high ability because they are expected to succeed, they’re the average-breakers, the test scores, the “cream of the crop.” They get away with a lot more by measure of their academics alone. This was a test run for a larger academic shift in thinking: learning needs to be fun.
In the current academic climate, anxiety in students (especially high-ability students) is only going to increase while exploration and hands-on learning will disappear. So, teachers, it doesn’t have to be Classics. It can be fashion history, cooking, astronomy, locations from around the world, anything you could possibly imagine. As long as you find yourself feeling like a kid again, giddy and excited, they will follow. They will follow in your empathy. They will hold adult conversations, critique the past, and use this knowledge to critique the present.
Thus, I end with no tables or charts of their academic marks. I don’t bring to you a math test or a reading exam to “prove” that this work is worth something. That’s the problem facing the very essence of education: proving that it’s worth it. Instead, I show you my story, show you the pictures of smiling faces shadowed by Roman helmets, and ask you to take this peep-hole into the classroom and turn it into a window for looking forward into preserving education and uplifting educators.
