I taught Latin today.
And I shared some Vachel Lindsay with Fifth Hour because they merited it. Every class requested it. As I explained to Sixth Hour, my first goal is to engage the subject at hand: in this case Latin. If the students allow me success, if they will allow themselves success by tolerable, if not exemplary, decorum for an hour, I will allow them a few minutes at the end of class engaging poetry.
I LOVE LATIN CLASS! So much of the language of most legal citizens of the United States of America is rooted deeply in Latin, one who knows no Latin can translate a lot of it just by recognizing common spellings associated with modern language. If I were in high school today, I’d take Latin myself. I took Spanish instead and that’s okay too. Knowing what I know of Spanish, I can also “ballpark-close” translate a lot of Latin.
The students who come to Latin class are the brightest I encounter system-wide, and I am not kidding. But I discovered today there are two extremes of student society which are the greatest impediments to learning: the least able students . . . . . and the most able students. The least able — more accurately stated, those least-successfully inculcated with the belief that learning nets tangible near-term and long-term behefits — envisage no positive outcome to their efforts to learn. Soooooo, they don’t try to espedite connecting to what they are resigned to accepting as their grim future by paying what they understand is only “lip service to the man” (that would be me) since they ain’t gonna go nowhaya anyhah and ’sides, I don’t offa dem nuffin but aggrivation.
The other extreme are students who radiate what I once called “the polished silver dollar cat-that-just-ate-the-canary smile of confidence.” They know they can do the classwork, and whatever they don’t accomplish during a hour with a substitute grownup, they can make up the next day after citing “pointless chaos” generated by “the other students” who kept the class from getting anything done. There was a time, early into my sub days, when I would have said simply, “To blazes with it. If you don’t care to focus, we’ll do study hall the rest of the hour.” Not any more. The students are worth more than that. Even though I don’t have the Illinois certificate, I am a teacher. I am worth more than that.
I didn’t pick up the telephone the first time the sub teacher service called. WHY? Because I am obsessed with completing my aviation history book for Arcadia Publishers. By the second time the phone rang, I had read the State Journal register, completed my email correspondence and was about to leave the house for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library to work on MY BOOK. I answered the phone at 9:30, agreed to go in, and from the moment I arrived, was glad I had.
I’ve been in the system awhile, so students recognize me. Virtually every class I encounter asks me about poetry: my own, sometimes, and Vachel Lindsay’s every time. In Sixth Hour some students I showed a movie to last fall remembered a chant I had spontaneously created at the end of that film and engaged a class in speaking in unison I had forgotten the chant, but they reminded me: “DON’T give IN to the CON!” It’s important for sensitive old geezers like me not to sell my favors too cheaply. I promised them we’d do “the song” toward the end of class. It was a large bargain for them. Almost too much.
The teacher had left no lesson plans. THAT’s a first for me for seven years. When I arrived in class a little after 10:00, the regular “in house” sub showed me the lesson plan book and advised me to go from there.
I went a step further following the bell at the end of second period and the arrival of the next class. I asked a student who struck me as a natural leader to lead the class on the basis of what the teacher had noted in her lesson planner book. The young lady did a sterling job because she knew the routine, the other students knew and respected her, and I stayed mostly out of the way.
So it went for the rest of the day. Some leaders led less effectively and I helped ride herd on them. In every class we engaged Latin at least 50 of the 57 minutes and shared poetry until the bell rang. Sixth hour was the greatest challenge, but once the “leadership triumverate” directed them to quiety copying a translation they transcribed to the blackboard, they were fine; hence the late reward of “DON’T give IN to the CON,” and that’s how some of them “marched” out of class when the bell rang at 3:10.
It had been a decent day, and I was content driving home.
This would have been the perfect time to take a few long hits on the Carlo Rossi, but I didn’t. I recognized I was a mite fatigued, so I napped a little. Arose, ate dinner, checked my email and wrote the first poem I’ve written in close to a year.
It’s for a poetry reading I’ve been asked to emcee later this week. I promised the organizers I would write a new poem, and I am a man of my word. Sat down at the desk at 7:00 and completed five-line stanzas by 9:10. I will post it here next week. It’s a draft. I will twak this thing until the big event. And afterwards, I will tweak it some more. I’m okay with it as it is, but the audience is worth more than a first draft. So am I.
I am strong. I carry a beard.
Live long . . . . . . and proper.
