Intolerance at Home

This might be hanging on my classroom's "Corner of Humor" behind my desk now...

#FridayFunnies

Poetry Days

I decided today that I should start having a poem of the week. I already do several things to help vary the class routine: This Day in History, or This Day in Music as I've switched it to this year, Bow Tie Friday. Reading a poem aloud would be a nice change of pace, providing a solid moment of reflection and a celebration of the spoken word. And it has the added benefit of making me read more poetry..."though teaching, we learn," as Seneca said.

I haven't decided if it should accompany Bow Tie Friday or appear some other day of the week. Wednesday, a mid-week reminder in the midst of the stress of two more days of school! to pause and reflect? It isn't as if we don't have any regular observances of beauty at the school, each year students memorize a poem for the Fine Arts Festival and we started singing a Psalm or hymn every morning in the upper school to start our day.* Some of the rhetoric teachers also teach the students Psalm settings in their theology and literature classes. I don't have the musical credibility** to do that, but I'm good enough to find a poem!

Where and when to begin...

* Because everyone sounds great at 8 A.M. Considering warm ups in the car.
** You could probably read that comment as confidence; I would likely argue both.

Double Play

When another member of the faculty runs into your room right as sixth period is starting and he is suppose to waxing eloquent about the beauties of British Renaissance Lit. (or words or whatever he does over there), and whispers "do you want to go to the Phillies game tonight for $15?" you stop very suddenly and are forced to consider deep questions.

You stop and very quickly ponder the state of tomorrow's lessons, the piles of grading, the state of your soul, and what a lovely day it was outside and how you've been inside. And you say yes, and quickly dart off to frantically figure out that lesson about the Egyptian gods that has been stumping you all week (they are one complex bunch, let me tell you). And then you dismiss the children, shoving them into cars as fast as you can so you can finish printing that new quiz and writing assignment that will be substituting for real teaching third period tomorrow.

And then you go to the game, and it is dollar hotdog day, and it is lovely, and the Phillies win, and it is well.

And Wednesday ain't bad, either.

The Leaves Fall for Thee!

This morning, when I woke up, I was cold. Not terribly chilled, but just enough to be aware that the temperate outside was below...say 65º F.

I checked the weather over my coffe...it was 57º F. Pansy. But considering the last three months have been one stream of clothes-are-only-really-necessary-because-of-social-conventions weather punctuated at times by rain, I felt it. The last few weeks I've been sleeping without the A/C unit going, but avoiding and fighting the heat during the day and early evening. This morning I put on a sweater, knowing that a high of 72º would be just enough to fool the school's ventilation system and make things chilly. And so they were, although by lunchtime I was throwing open the windows and letting a gloriously pleasant breeze throw papers all across my classroom.

Fall means several things, really:

• The death of Man's most ferocious and eternal enemy, the mosquito.
• The conclusion of the regular baseball season, which is a mercy for my last-place Rockies, who are really only fighting the Cubs for second-to-last place this year. But exciting for the Washington Nationals and even Baltimore Orioles, so there should be some local excitement. 
• Fall Beers, including the marvelous Sam Adams' Octoberfest and Shock-Top's surprisingly delicious Pumpkin Wheat (and and and oh never mind).
• Sweaters (and other modes of reusing dress shirts that are overdue for the cleaners). 
• Better pipe smoking weather.
• Pretty leaves, eventually.
• And the start of school, of course.

I remember in middle school playing a tune on the piano that involved the lines "the falling leaves / of red and gold." It was a nice, pretty song, and I always think of it when the colors start to change. Last year the change came very late in the season (global warming or something), but already I'm seeing a few hints of red overhanging the brick sidewalks of town. Town is absurdly picturesque in the fall--not Rocky Mountain aspens but very delightful in their own right.

School is now in week three, things have not started as well as I would like, but we've had some good days. The lessons left over from this time last year are rather...minimal and disorganized, if found at all, so there is a lot of prep work still to be done. I'm realizing how blessed I was with some of my classes last year--they were very tolerant of my fly-by-pants-almost-dead teaching that first month and still managed to learn things that the current classes struggle with when I'm organized and prepared. Kudos to you, current 11th grade, for putting up with me. You'll go far in life if you can handle that experience.

Fall does bring with it a peaceful assurance of change, that school actually has started and it is okay now, that the seasons and times of life role on. Each falling leaf sings a little tune, praising the summer for its blessings and rejoicing in the fall to earth. In time new leaves will take their place, new students, new lessons, even new places...but tonight, 50º F and lessons on Egyptian religion.

They did not wear sweaters in Egypt, alas.

The Venerable Bede

The Venerable Saint Bede. Or is it Bedé? Or Beade? Or some sort of half-slurred strange Anglicized form in-between? Truthfully I have never known, and only bothered to look it up after students inquired into my (frequently flawed) pronunciation. Wikipedia seems to suggest something more along the lines of "Beed," which J. (who happens to be studying linguistics, so she should probably be counted as good authority) confirmed this weekend.

The funny thing about starting the school year is that everyone has to adjust. Students, who have been living in the school-summer cycle for most of their lives, don’t remember how to open their lockers, which books go to which class, and that response sheet you assigned Wednesdays. Teachers forget who has lunch duty and the secret to making the copier print double-sided, and which period on Thursday they don’t have due to choir (or they have it earlier and aren’t prepared; and in-service doesn’t help). Parents have to be retrained in the proper procedures of the dismissal pick-up line, hopefully sparing innocent or inattentive pedestrians in the process. And everyone has to remember (likely several times) why again they are here, getting confused and angry and flustered and laughing at all the mistakes—for the sake of learning and growing.

Gradually everyone settles into place, and that is well. Two lessons even left me feeling quite pleased and satisfied at the end of the day, which has been a precious rare occurrence of good luck (not planning) in my short career. 

The first lesson was on the Code of Hammurabi in 8th grade, a group I’ve never had before and am struggling to place as new 8th graders and not the 8th graders I promoted to 9th last year. Stealing an idea from the Veritas Omnibus (something I intend to do with great frequency this year), students broke into groups and passed judgment on various hypothetically court cases from Biblical and Babylonian perspectives. Needless to say, the dear souls were delighted to administer absurd punishments to Sam for letting his goring bull Ferdinand roam free, and to Tom for trespassing on Sam’s land. Etc. And then they invented some rather harsh rules they would like to add to the school, including lunchroom lashes for failed exams and dismissal line pillories for repeat behavior offenders. Clearly Christian mercy is something we need to be cultivating this year.

The second lesson was on the Venerable Bede, who I don’t know near enough about. Veritas has students read the entire Ecclesiastical History of the English Speaking Peoples, which is a bit more than I can fit in my schedule, but something to keep in the back of my reading list. Since I assigned Geoffrey of Monmouth’s A History of the Kings of Britain as summer reading, I thought it would be fun to spend more time in the vast amounts of English history. But…I am neither an Anglophile (see the English Dept.) nor an expert in English history, so the unit will not be as successful as hoped. Maybe next year, next week we’ll move on to Byzantium and the glories of Constantinople.

Regardless, I liked the lesson (despite my poor reading selections) and spent a good deal of time discussing why Bede wrote church history rather than national history. Last year, when we studied the Medieval period, students started to complain about how much the church kept popping up. Their conception and awareness of the church as a force in daily living is very vague, something still separated in their minds as church on Sundays and Christians the rest of the week. Bede provides a helpful focus for the beginning of the school year—for him, everything is related to the Incarnation and the resulting history of God’s people. Christ is the center, in the spread of the Gospel and in Bede’s entire conception as history: before the Incarnation and Annus ab incarnatione Domini. Such should be the spirit of the Christian student.

For things are not to be loved for the sake of places, but places for the sake of good things. Choose, therefore, from every church those things that are pious, religious, and upright, and when you have, as it were, made them up into one body, let the minds of the English be accustomed thereto.  – Gregory the Great to Saint Augustine of Canterbury, I.XXVII