A Future Not Our Own

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I wrote a dozen letters of recommendation for seniors this year, more than In years past. Fortunately, most of the students who ask me for a letter are students whom I have gotten to know well, because I taught them in multiple Latin classes over their career. And while I of course mention all their achievements in my letter, I try to keep it future-focused: why am I so confident in this young woman's future success? Yeah, she's done good work in high school, but what about her specifically makes me think she will do well in college and beyond? That can be a tough question to answer, not because of the individual student (there are plenty of nice things to say about all our students), but because sometimes I feel woefully unprepared to recommend them for a future that I can't easily imagine.

My father has spent 35 years at the same company, working his way up the corporate ladder. Lately, he has unfortunately received several reminders that the loyalty he's shown over those three and a half decades isn't reciprocated. And for my students, odds are pretty good that they will not be working at any one company for 35 years. The days of finding a job right out of college and retiring 40 years later with a pension are over, and have been for a long time. (Unless somebody gets a job at a Jesuit high school–those people tend not to leave.)

I think this uncertainty is what makes me so wary of those who push a more utilitarian approach to education, advocating for business or computer programming classes over history and Latin. In my advocating for the humanities, it's not that I'm against studying any of those more "useful" topics, I just don't have nearly the certainty that others seem to about what actually is useful, let alone what will be useful in ten, twenty, thirty years.

Given that none of us can tell the future with any certainty, many have advocated for the importance of teaching skills like problem-solving, collaboration, critical thinking, and clear communication. In my mind, those skills can be taught in a variety of ways, but a humanities education, precisely because it is so broad and all-encompassing, is better-suited for that than the alternatives. I know, I've said all this before, but as I've been thinking about my students' futures, I can't help but reaffirm that.

When I sit down to write these letters of rec, I spend a lot of time trying to imagine each girl's future. Which ones will be doctors? Teachers? Politicians? And then I go back and review the time they spent in my classes. How did I ready them for those (or any other) careers? There are always things I wish I could have done better: more time writing, perhaps, or in-depth analysis. But generally speaking, I feel comfortable that I've done what I can in Latin or World History class to prepare them, and can find stories to illustrate that.

I sometimes joke with them that I will write about the time(s) they farted in class or how annoying they were as freshmen, but fortunately for them, I can generally remember stories about when they have shown passion, grit, creativity, and humor. I feel confident they were at least as well-served practicing those traits in my classes as they would have been in a business class, but I won't really know unless they come back and tell me in twenty years.

There's a prayer that's popular among teachers in Jesuit schools, that contains the line, "We are prophets of a future not our own." As I wrote those twelve letters of recommendation, and then again at graduation as I send our seniors off to college, that line rings particularly true.

→ "Multitask Masters" →

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When I call out my students for being distracted in class, the most common response is, "I'm multitasking!" I generally point out that multitasking is a myth. This article from Maria Konikova at The New Yorker gives me the science to back that up.

Strayer believes that there is a tiny but persistent subset of the population—about two per cent—whose performance does not deteriorate, and can even improve, when multiple demands are placed on their attention. The supertaskers are true outliers. According to Strayer, multitasking isn’t part of a normal distribution akin to birth weight, where even the lightest and heaviest babies fall within a relatively tight range around an average size. Instead, it is more like I.Q.: most people cluster in an average range, but there is a long tail where only a tiny fraction—single digits among thousands—will ever find themselves.

I taught about 80 students this year, so according to this study 1.6 of my students are actually capable of multitasking.

Testing

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I don't like writing tests. I know, I won't get any sympathy from my students who don't enjoy taking the tests I write. But I constantly struggle with writing a good assessment, and in my more generous moments, I give credit to the folks at College Board and ETS who write huge, national tests for a living.

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"Should I take AP Latin?"

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It's that time of year again, when my Latin students are registering for their courses for next year. At my school, Latin is just one language offered, and the school requires only two years of the same language. Thus my colleagues and I spend a good amount of time convincing the students to continue their Latin career.

We hate to make an argument from utility. Sure, we're happy to espouse those pitches when the students are in eighth grade, choosing between Spanish and Latin, but they are all pretty shallow arguments.

  • "Latin will help your SAT and ACT scores." Sure, Latin students do score better on standardized tests. Maybe that's because Latin helps (it certainly doesn't hurt), or maybe it's because the type of kids who choose to take Latin would have done well on their standardized tests anyway. And any English teacher worth her salt can teach non-Latin students some helpful word roots in about a week of lessons.

  • "It's a great idea if you want to be a doctor or a lawyer some day." I nod patiently when parents suggest this, because I don't have the heart to tell them that it will take a lot more than some Latin roots to be a good doctor. Yes, knowing Greek did help me pass Anatomy in college, but I couldn't tell you the last time I met a doctor who actually knew Latin. I would argue that studying Latin can make one a better doctor or lawyer (as evidenced by this piece in Harvard Magazine claiming that Classics majors had the highest success rate in law school), but not because they know what quid pro quo means.

  • "Latin is the root of the other Romance languages." This is one "practical" benefit of studying Latin that I'm not ashamed to use. Studying a language in high school is really a way to get introduced to another culture and language, and thereby be a better citizen. To really learn a language you need to go live with native speakers. And while my Latin students probably won't do a semester abroad at the Vatican (I teach all girls, after all), they almost certainly will study somewhere outside the US at some point in their college careers. Alumnae often come back and tell us they are studying French, Italian, or even German, and how thankful they are that they took Latin as an introduction.

So if our pitch to sophomores and juniors considering dropping their Latin study isn't about the utility of learning the language, what is it?

(N.B. This pitch is really a composite of numerous rants from both me and my colleagues. We think alike though, so any instances of plagiarism are really just because it's hard to tell where one of our quotes ends and another's begins.)

It's fun.

OK, this is subjective, but really, it is.

It sets you apart from the thousands of college seniors applying to the same prestigious schools.

OK, this argument may be utilitarian, but it's true. Every year the seniors in AP Latin will come in and tell us that they were asked in their scholarship interviews why they chose to take four years of Latin. Why were they asked? Because it sets them apart. At the top-flight public and private schools to which our students are applying, GPAs, test scores, and National Honors Society memberships are what it takes just to get their application considered. But studying something relatively unique tells that admissions officer: "Here is a student who values a rigorous education and learning for its own sake."

In one class, you can learn more about Western history, culture, and literature than in any handful of electives.

If a student likes history or literature or philosophy or government, they will enjoy AP Latin. I might quibble with the contents of the AP syllabus, but reading Vergil (and yes, Caesar too) is a perfect entrée into those topics. There's a reason why I still enjoy reading the Aeneid, even fourteen years after I was first exposed to it in high school. Every student has distinct tastes, and I do wish the AP syllabus gave us more freedom to explore the breadth of Latin literature, but there really is something for everybody, from the student who geeks out about literature (and Latin definitely attracts literary types), to the one who loves reading about ancient warfare, to those who have always enjoyed a good mythology story.

It's useless.

Latin is not useful. There, I said it. But that's precisely why it's still worth studying. I used to hate the argument that Latin should be studied because it "trains the mind." That argument was often used as a defense of a Classical education that was far too elitist. But as technology changes the nature of learning, there's something to be said for focusing on skills over content, and I think Latin is a great place to hone those skills. Why is it that Classics majors are successful law students? Again, there's some self-selection going on there, but still, plenty of very educated people go into law from other fields. What makes Classics different?

I think it's obvious to anybody who has studied Latin that the type of skills required to succeed are vital, in any field. On the one hand, there are some very "left brain" aspects of studying Latin: the language is very orderly, with a clearly defined logic to it, not unlike math. Critical thinking and reasoning are essential to translating any language, but especially Latin. At the same time, there's a creativity required to read Latin, beyond simply the mechanical skills. (Perhaps that's why there's not yet a good computer translator for Latin.) Reading Latin poetry in particular requires not just the logic and reasoning skills, but a creative and nimble mind to see the whole picture from those component parts and really feel the breadth of emotion being presented. I could spend twenty minutes in class on the language, content, and complexity of just these two lines from Book VI of the Aeneid:

nec minus Aeneas casu percussus iniquo

prosequitur lacrimis longe et miseratur euntem.

What other subject engages so consistently these different skills and multiple intelligences?

It's hard.

Taking a fourth year of a language, any language isn't easy, and AP Latin is no exception. With all apologies to President Kennedy, we choose to read the Aeneid next year and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

Each of my students has lofty ambitions. Whether they want to be a doctor, lawyer, businesswoman, or mother, they're going to face their share of challenges. The best way for them to prepare for the rigors of life is to challenge themselves as much as they can. And AP Latin–generally a small class with students they know well and a teacher they've had before–is a great way to prepare for life. A lofty statement perhaps, but true.

There's an insidious trend we've noticed among our students lately, especially the older students. They are so worried about their GPA as they apply for college that they feel pressure to take "easier" courses. Why take AP Latin, where they might work hard to earn (gasp) a B, when they can take Underwater Basket Weaving and not risk losing their precious 4.0 GPA. As I told a group of students last week, if they expect to eventually take Organic Chemistry or apply for an Ivy League law school, they can't be scared to try something mildly challenging now. Some day, whether in college or in real life, they'll be challenged. Life ain't easy. And that college professor or boss probably won't care if they succeed or not. If they screw up, they're replaceable. AP Latin gives them a chance to practice that resilience they'll need later, in an environment that actually supports them. Seems like a good deal to me.

So does this pitch work? Well, it works often enough that I'm still employed. My colleagues and I try to instill these values in the students all throughout their career, but every year they still need some encouraging. I've been doing this long enough that I know not to take it personally if they opt out, but I can't help it feeling like I've let them down somewhere along the way if after three years of Latin they don't see the value in the fourth year of study. So we continue to try and summon our inner Don Draper and pitch them, hoping they'll trust us.

Aeneid I.203

Aeneid I.203

"Show Your Work"

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On a recent episode of Let's Make Mistakes, Mike Monteiro chatted with Austin Kleon, whose latest book is called Show Your Work! The title is itself a reference to something Mike Monteiro wrote about design:

This isn’t magic. It’s math. Show your work. Don’t HOPE someone “gets it”, and don’t blame them if they don’t — convince them.

While Monteiro and Kleon are talking about designers dealing with clients, I think this fits in with my recent theme of teaching as creative work. I can think of myriad ways in which this applies in education.

The most obvious connection is with teachers in the classroom. I know I have fallen into the trap of simply telling students that something is important and then hoping they will agree with me. My best lessons are always the ones where I show them precisely why I think they should value the topic as much as I do, whether that's the genitive case or Plato's allegory of the cave.

Really though, I think it's teachers that need to be told to "show your work" more often. Too often, I think we teachers like to cultivate an image of teaching as a black box, where the craft is simply too complex to try and really explain. Good teachers simply "get it," and bad ones don't. There may be some truth there, but it leads to lazy thinking, and we (myself included) could stand to be pressed more often to show our work.

  • "Boys and girls just learn differently." Show your work.
  • "This novel is much better for sophomores than that one." Show your work.
  • "These two classes need to have the same tests." Show your work.
  • "Our school culture is really student-centric." Show your work.

Those are all statements I've heard and/or made, and I'm not saying any of them are wrong. But too often we teachers feel so strongly about things on an emotional level, that we never step back to really think about why we feel the way we do, especially at a private school like mine where accountability is often self-imposed. Every time the accreditation process begins again, most of what we are told boils down to exactly that: "Show your work. We trust that you are doing good things, but you have to show your work." That's an important part of the accreditation process, but should also be a regular part of how we think.

What Monty Python Can Tell Us About Teaching

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My friend and colleague sent around this John Cleese video on creativity. I had seen it before, when Merlin mentioned it on Back to Work, but he inspired me to watch it again with a mind to education. It's still a brilliant video, and I will wait while you go watch it (you can read the summary, but it's worth listening to the talk).

Teaching is a creative profession. I have always thought of it that way, though I don't know if that's the way my colleagues or people outside the profession consider it. Teachers may not call themselves "creatives" like pretentious designer-types, but I cannot think of a better general-purpose adjective to describe what we do. Here are some items from my to-do lists past and present:

  • Come up with a lesson plan to help adolescent Americans recognize the importance of the Romantic poets, their place in nineteenth-century Europe, and their significance today.

  • Devise a game to help Latin students practice noun endings and the usage of the dative case.

  • Convince Student Council that their idea of a dance theme could get us all excommunicated.

  • Create a rubric for student presentations on World War I, knowing that some students created videos, others wrote a paper, and still others made a comic book, and they all have to be evaluated fairly.

  • Email a parent who is concerned about her child's grade. The email must be honest (the child hasn't done any work), but also positive ("Your daughter is great at...") and avoid placing blame on the parenting.

There are a lot of ways to accomplish all that, but I think "creativity" certainly helps.

So, Cleese gives five factors to help operate more creatively:

  1. Space

  2. Time

  3. Time

  4. Confidence

  5. Humor

I think all of those apply to a school just as much as to somebody writing Life of Brian (though to be clear, I'm not nearly as good a teacher as Mr. Cleese is a writer and actor, and don't want to imply otherwise). Let's take them one at a time.

Space

Teachers need good space to work in. That is as practical and obvious as it is important. The classroom is one thing, but I'm really thinking about the space to prepare what will happen in the classroom. At my school, we do not have the space for each teacher to have their own classroom to use for prep periods, so we all have shared offices. In one building, those offices have cubicles, and in the other there is a more open floor plan. Both spaces are useful, and I think ideally teachers would have both kinds of spaces available to them. Quiet office/cubicle spaces when necessary, but without sacrificing the ability to work alongside others and share ideas.

Time

Teachers need an adequate amount of non-teaching time, with no other responsibilities but to plan and give space for this creativity. At some schools the faculty teach four periods in a seven period day, others it might be five. Financial considerations aside, the more time given for teachers to be in their creative space (see above), the better the work they will produce.

Time

Here, Cleese means not just time to be in a creative space, but taking the time to really sit with a problem and not simply go with the first solution that presents itself. Cleese gives a good anecdote about one of his Monty Python co-writers, who would never come up with ideas as original as Cleese. The difference? Cleese would continue to sit and wrestle with the challenge, taking the time to be uncomfortable with the problem. I know in teaching, I have that same impulse to hurry to the first solution to a difficulty, rather than sit with it and be discomfited for a bit longer. Whether that's in lesson planning or at a meeting, how often do we allow ourselves to be uncomfortable? Teachers, as much as any professional, face difficult questions at work. How come we often assume the answers to those hard questions will come easily? It takes a certain humility to really use this approach. I'm all for meetings having specific, stated outcomes. But maybe the agenda shouldn't say, "Solve x problem", but rather, "List all factors in problem x, and then begin giving possible solutions." It's not a cop-out–as Cleese says, decisions do have to be made effectively, but the most creative solutions often take time.

Confidence

Cleese says it perfectly:

Nothing will stop you being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake.

I know that I became I better teacher when I stopped being afraid of making a mistake or "looking stupid" in the classroom. I've had plenty of bad ideas–some of them became good ideas with a little tinkering, others will never be mentioned again. But without a doubt, losing that fear leads to more creative lessons.

Humor

I think this was my favorite part of the whole talk. His description of the distinction between "serious" and "solemn" would be great for any teacher and administrator to hear. Teaching is serious work. We have been entrusted with these children, and have lofty goals of turning them into brilliant, modest, polite, professional, friendly, loving, and generous adults. It's kind of a big deal. But doing serious work does not require constant solemnity. In the classroom, humor is an important part of what happens. Every year I get chastised at least once by a neighbor for too much laughter coming from my classroom (this year that happened when my class only had seven students in it–oops). I'm apologetic, of course, because I don't want to disturb anybody. But I'm not sorry. I laugh at myself all the time. The students certainly laugh with me and/or at me plenty. And I laugh with and at them too. You can't spent 40 hours a week in a classroom with teenagers and not find some humor (even if they don't understand many of my jokes). But the real lesson here, I think, is for the adults interacting outside the classroom. Too often, I see adults try to shut down difficult conversations with a false solemnity that accomplishes nothing. As Cleese says, "Solemnity serves pomposity." If there's no joy in this work, then what are you doing here?

As he says, "Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating." It's easy as a teacher to get distracted by the drudgery of what we do, but at the core, it is creative work, and I find it most life-giving when I can operate that way. I love that his suggestions give a way to formalize and focus on that side of my work–and provide an excuse to keep making jokes at the "wrong" times.