About a few days ago, Brian (again, our principal at St. Peters) warned us that this Friday we would have visitors- ten teachers from a neighboring classical school, to be exact. Occasionally, they get Fridays off and use it as an opportunity to visit and learn from other teachers in the area.
So there I was, a teacher of only 2 years, leading a discussion first on Medieval Provencal Poetry and then on Book 18 of the Iliad, with 8 of the 10 teachers sitting there watching. And I was nervous.
My first class on Medieval Poetry turned out a little weird. There was an image in one of the poems describing someone’s heart being “submerged” by their love interest. I tried exploring this “submerging” image by asking them questions about what to do if you are supposed to save someone who is drowning. Apparently no one had ever taken a lifeguard class. Or if they had, it was a scary violent lifeguard class. Their solution to saving a drowning person was to knock them unconscious in order to restrain them. Yeah, not such a good idea!!
And then came by 9-10th graders talking about the Iliad. And they hit the ball out of the park. Whaddya know?! We were having a discussion about why it was the Greeks and Trojans were so intent on saving the bodies of their fallen comrades in connection with the type of dignity that Homer tries to restore to the soldiers by describing such gory deaths so beautifully. I had sent them home last class with a type of pull question to answer in their notebooks, basically asking them to think about the connection between soul and body.
I don’t know why I should have been surprised, but they actually went home and thought about it! And for a long time! So we ended up discussing it for the first 1/2 of class. The teachers who were visiting were completely shell-shocked and scarcely stirred the entire time. I don’t think they had ever seen a group of 8 high schoolers work so hard at a question before. It was a beautiful sight to see:)