I retired from teaching in 2008, after 33
rewarding years in the classroom. I’ve said this before: but I can’t name
five kids in all those years that I didn’t like (although I admit some were
easier to like than others).
Certainly, I found that great abilities were
sometimes masked and did all I could to bring talent to the fore. In days of
yore—before standardized testing spread like kudzu across the educational
land—one way to bring hidden talent to view was to offer students all kinds of
options in their work. You need not worry whether or not they could provide
answers to abstruse questions on a mandated test every spring. Rather, you
encouraged teens to develop an array of abilities.
You tried to foster a love of learning that
might be carried forward through life.
By 2008, I had been teaching Ancient World
History, as required by State of Ohio guidelines formulated to meet growing
testing requirements. We were required, in one year, to cover twenty-eight
centuries of world history (1000 B.C. to 1750 A.D.), from China to Europe to
Aztec and African lands. Students would be tested at year’s end and success
would be measured by answers to fifty questions on one test.
I told my principal at the time, I considered
this “educational malpractice.” Her hands, too, were increasingly tied and she
only grimaced in response.
I worried about the future of education in those
days. I worry even more, nine years removed. From what I hear from younger
teachers today the pedagogical kudzu has been impossible to stop.
So here’s an example of what I was still able to
do—barely—in the last years before I retired from teaching. I had re-read the Iliad a
few years before and realized seventh graders might actually enjoy a synopsis
of the story, if I could put it together right. I felt some would enjoy the war
story. I thought others would like the love story involved. I also believed
exposure to great writing might rub off and help my students learn to express
themselves with greater facility. I was almost certain the State of Ohio
wouldn’t include a question about Homer or the Iliad on any
spring test.
I just didn’t care.
It took long hours to put together a reading of
more than 6,000 words; but I was happy to put in the time for a good cause. I
had recently read Xenophon, too, because that’s what good teachers do. They
always seek to broaden their knowledge base.
For that reason, my synopsis started with a
quote from Xenophon about the fate of cities that fell to invaders: “It
is a law established for all time among all men that when a city is taken in
war, the persons and property of its inhabitants belong to the captors.”
*
The Iliad opens after ten long
years of war and students quickly realized figures in the story acted like
people they knew today. Agamemnon was petty. Achilles was a hot-tempered
killing machine. Paris is a handsome narcissist, Helen the ancient world
equivalent of a Victoria’s Secret model.
At one point, Achilles, face black with rage
over unfair treatment at the hands of his king, storms out of a meeting, but
not before calling Agamemnon a “wine sack with a dog’s eyes [and]…a
deer’s heart.”
From the first, students seemed interested when
we dived into the story; and I was sure my plan was working the following day
when I heard one boy say in jest that his friend was a “wine sack with a dog’s
eyes” while they waited in a cafeteria line for a lunch lady to pass them
slices of pepperoni pizza.
When students were reading, I told them not to
worry about all the names of Greek and Trojan warriors. I only hoped they might
develop a sense of the horrors of war, whether millennia ago or ten thousand
miles away in Iraq in 2008. In scene after scene, Homer describes the carnage
in vivid detail. The warrior Pedaios meets death:
…the son of Phyleus, the
spear-famed, closing upon him
struck him with the sharp
spear behind the head at the tendon,
and straight on through the
teeth and under the tongue cut the bronze
blade,
and he dropped in the dust
gripping in his teeth the cold bronze.
I felt scenes like that might stick in teen
minds.
To cap the unit I explained that we would soon
be putting together a comic play, loosely based on Homer’s story. It was an
idea I stole from my good friend and colleague Jeff Sharpless, whose classes
were also reading my synopsis. Eventually, Mr. Sharpless and I were able to get
fifty students to stay after school to practice for roles in the play, to make
props, and work on songs for a “Greek chorus.”
Mr. Sharpless and I both asked students to
complete several projects during a school year; and work on the play counted as
one. Naturally, not every student likes to perform and Amanda, a quiet but
talented young lady asked if she could do an art project based on the Iliad instead. Amanda
was a creative thinker, diligent in all her work, and I immediately give
permission to go ahead.
I was right—at the end of the year—and the State
of Ohio had nothing to say about Homer or the Iliad or the
carnage of war, ancient or modern, on the state social studies test. And, in a
world where measuring learning according to A, B, C and D tests was taking
over, no play could matter, and no art project either.
Still, I would have said nine years ago, and
still say today, a project like Amanda’s is what true learning is about.
Here are her water color drawings and
descriptions based on the Iliad by Homer. I think you can
probably guess her grade:
Agamemnon must give up Chryseis, asking for
someone else’s spoils. Achilles calls him greedy. This makes the king angry,
telling Achilles he must lose Briseis.
[Both men had taken beautiful Trojan women as
prizes during earlier fighting. Now to placate the gods, the king must give up
his prize. He takes Achilles’ woman in a fit of anger. Achilles, the greatest
of all warriors, refuses to help in the fight any longer.]
Helen decides to watch the fight. Priam tells
her, “I do not blame you. I blame the gods.”
[Priam is Troy’s king. Paris had stolen Helen
from Menelaus, Agamemnon’s brother.]
Paris leaps from the ranks of the Trojans,
wearing a leopard skin. Menelaus accepts his challenge.
[Paris and Menelaus have agreed that whoever
wins the fight can take Helen and the war will end.]
Pendaros shot an arrow from behind his friends’
shields. The arrow brushes Menelaus.
[This shot by a Trojan archer breaks the
agreement and a general slaughter begins again.]
Diomedes’ spear pierces Aphrodite’s hand and
immortal blood flows. He warns her to leave the battle.
[Gods and goddesses often intervene in the
fight; in this case the goddess of love is wounded!]
Odysseus visits Achilles. He offers the warrior
a cup of wine and goes over the situation. Achilles will not return to the
battle.
Patroklos, dressed in Achilles’ armor, throws a
stone at Hector’s chariot driver. The man’s skull caves in.
[Patroklos, Achilles’ dear young friend, tries
to save the Greeks as they are driven back by the Trojans. He dresses in
Achilles’ armor to bolster Greek spirits.]
Paris releases one of his arrows. The missile
strikes Diomedes’ foot, going through to the ground.
Odysseus and Diomedes capture a Trojan named
Dolon. They question him and he begs for his life. Diomedes severs Dolon’s head
from his shoulders.
Achilles mourns Patroklos. He calls himself “a
useless weight upon the ground.”
[Hector kills Patroklos in battle while Achilles
sulks. Achilles now vows revenge.]
Andromache [Hector’s wife] tries to convince
Hector to stay in Troy. He says he must not flee from the fight. Andromache is
heartbroken.
Hector and Achilles meet. Hector loses his nerve
and runs around the walls of Troy.
The spear of Achilles was driven into Hector’s
neck. The dying man pleads for his body to be given to his father for proper
burial. Achilles scorns his wish.
Achilles puts holes in Hector’s feet. He drags
the body around in his chariot.
Even after his revenge, Achilles finds no peace.
He paces along the beach at night.
[Priam sneaks into the enemy camp in the dark
and begs for the return of his son Hector’s corpse; Achilles relents.]
Hector is placed on a towering pyre of logs. He
is respectfully burned. This ends the Iliad.
*
And that is how you could teach, and how a
student could still learn, in an era before school reformers strangled true
learning in ropes of tests.
