Randomday

We have a pest raccoon that has twice shown up in broad daylight now, to gobble Smudge's food on the back porch.  Steve has chased it off with a 2x4 both times, but it's probably living in our tall cedar trees.  We've been bringing in the cat food at night for awhile now, because there used to be three raccoons that would roam the yard after dark... but it's almost worse to have one who comes out in daylight.  Poor Smudge!  He's a total coward to begin with.

National Latin Exam results were announced yesterday!  At Cedar Tree we give the Intro version in 5th and 6th grades, the Latin 1 exam to 7th grade, and the Latin 2 exam to 8th grade.  It's a big deal, and the kids do well with it.  We had 2 perfect Intro papers in 6th grade, and over 80% of those Intro kids got some kind of certificate.  In 7th and 8th grade the tests are a little harder, but we still had 3 gold medals and 2 silver medals and a selection of magna cum laude and cum laude papers.  My hands couldn't keep up with handing out all the purple ribbons and certificates yesterday at the Grandparents Day assembly.  School-wide, 2/3 of all our students beat the national average on this test, and that's significant when you realize that probably a majority of students taking the test are in High School.

Quarta's class recited The New Colossus and did a skit about Ellis Island.

Latin Jeopardy was lively in 6th grade.

Chaunticleer crowed over the egg that Pertelote laid.  They are graduates of the Kindergarten chick-hatching project of 2012, (this year's 1st graders.)

The Auction signature quilt is on the machine and being quilted, at long last.  Maybe I can finish it in a week or so.

I made a grape pie for tomorrow.  A batch of granola is also toasting in the oven; I am trying some agave nectar in it instead of honey.

Quarta is away at a birthday party at a friend's house; Secundus is working down in Tigard again today; Daniel is nearing the end of an intensive production of Seussical far away in Pennsylvania, and so the only child at home right now is Tertia, who is quiet as a mouse, reading Harry Potter 5 or Star Wars graphic novels.  It gives me a taste of empty-nesting, and I don't like it!  By the way, Tertia finished reading Harry Potter 4 this last week, and was rewarded with watching the movie, mostly from behind her pillow.  Makes my blood boil when I hear about the academic papers proposing infanticide for children with Down syndrome.  And the bioethicists who think the general public is just too unsophisticated to appreciate their argument.

Speaking of well-educated fools... I was glued to the television along with everyone else in the country watching the great Boston manhunt yesterday.  (I don't know how I survived the 2000 election without cable news... Steve laughs at me, but I'm never going back!)  So glad they caught the guy.  I hear that he may have been an alumnus of the prestigious Cambridge Latin School, and a currently enrolled student at U. Mass Dartmouth.  Which begs a whole bunch of questions.  For example: why can't we take the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free... and teach them something other than how to become murderous, America-hating narcissists?

"I am afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving them in the heart of the youth."
 --Martin Luther

Sustainability; or, the Midlife Crisis of a Worker Bee

Koyaanisqatsi is a 1982 art film on the theme of the frenetic and suicidal pace of modern Western life.  I had to watch it in Intro to Film class in College.  It's worth watching, even if you are not an environmentalist or neo-hippie... and for the record, I am not.  I often think of it on days or during weeks like this, where there is no let-up of the stress and it is hard to see any positive results for my hard work.  Those blurry images rushing by, that impending sense of doom.  The 7th grader who lost the make-up final exam.  And this was even before Quarta got sick.  People at school were telling me, "well, she was lying down on the cot for awhile... she didn't want any lunch... but she went back to class."  Not until after Tertia's first orthodontist appointment and forking over a 4-figure down-payment for that whole process, and then she got sick.  So, it looks like Steve will be staying home with her tomorrow, because I sure can't.



On the subject of hard work, I consider myself a worker bee.  Definitely not a queen bee.  I dislike queen bees and their close cousins, the bossy and domineering types.  You may not know it, because I have been well-trained to be polite to everybody, but if you are the bossy, domineering, queen bee type, I am humming "Prima Donna" inside my head when you are around.  Seriously.  Long, long years of being in the chorus at work here.  Support staff, auxiliary teaching staff, yup, been there, done that.  I don't even rank high enough to process with the important high school teachers.  It doesn't bother me... except when it does.

It's probably a mistake for worker bees like me to go on vacation, especially to places like Disneyland.  We start to get ideas above our station, and resentment starts to build.  We start to do the math.  Like how my annual salary now, after 13 years of teaching, is less than half of what I earned when I was fresh out of college, also working at one of those jobs that could be described as a ministry -- so what I'm saying is that I didn't earn a whole lot then.  And if I saved every penny of what I earn now, my entire year's salary would be enough to pay for one third of Daniel's yearly college expenses (and he's at Grove City, remember, so that's a lot less than other places).

And yet, for what I earn, I'm being asked to put in an additional 20+ unpaid hours of grading, correspondence, or conferences during some weeks.  I have to somehow bring new students up to speed with the class and keep the stragglers from straggling too far behind.  Of course, my own daughter is not smart enough to be at my school, but other kids, the ones who average less than 40% on quizzes -- somehow I have to make sure they don't get discouraged.  I have to catch the cheaters, and there have been several of them lately, and follow up.  I have to make the class appealing and fun enough so that the students like it.  And then there are the smart ones whose parents want them to take the Latin SAT or AP test -- after 8th grade Latin finishes.  I'm not sure how to break it to them -- in one way I'm flattered that they think 8th grade Latin with me is the equivalent of a Senior AP Latin course, but I'm not really a miracle worker.  Eighth grade Latin at Cedar Tree means you are translating edited passages from Caesar's de Bello Gallico in the Henle Latin 2nd year book.  That's pretty darn good, but if you want 3rd and 4th year Latin and all that goes with it you would need to expand the program into High School.  And if I were going to teach such a program, I'd want about triple what I'm getting now, and the flexibility to take time off to take care of my kids when they're sick.  Maybe I don't need to sacrifice the best interests of my own family to teach, but it sure feels like it on days like this.

Where was I going with this?  These are my own, personal issues, born out of 13 years of very tough, very frustrating work, and triggered by a rough couple of days (that aren't over yet).  But I think Classical Christian Education has arrived at a turning point where, put very simply, it needs to grow up.  I know there's a clause somewhere in my employment contract that says I am not supposed to be critical of my employer, my students, or their parents.  And I'm not intending this to be a rant.  I like all these people, I love my work, and I think I'm good at it.  But it's not sustainable.  I would discourage my best students from considering a teaching career in Christian schools, because it simply doesn't pay enough to support even a young single in today's world.  At my stage of life, it's not really about the money... thankfully, Steve's job is stable and he is a good provider.  I taught several years for no pay other than my children's tuition.  (Yeah, I know, I'm a sap).  More positive feedback would be awfully nice.  More family-friendly flexibility would be ideal.  Health benefits, maybe even sick leave, less of the reflexive "blame the teacher" policy.  I already get a basket of flowers every June.  Realistically, though, the only concrete measure of my success is the paycheck I draw, and that will continue to be small.  Because charging more in tuition would mean fewer students.  I can do the math.

Oh well, I need to go to bed.  Maybe the space cadet will have found the missing final by tomorrow and I can get my grades in.

What I really need is the time to devote to some kind of stress-relieving hobby.  I hear knitting and quilting are really fun.

Sixth Grade

Source: pmmoncada.blogspot.com via Katherine on Pinterest

Sometime in late January, I dashed through the rain carrying my Latin basket, elbowed open the door of the G4 classroom, lugged myself and my gear inside, and breathed deeply. And then I noticed it.  The unmistakable smell of pre-teens who should start making daily showers a priority.  It had not been there the day before, but it was showing up, right on schedule.  Maybe a little later than usual, if my 12 years of teaching are any guide.

I have a special interest in this year's 6th grade class, because it's the one my own daughter would have been in, if she had been admitted to Cedar Tree.  But... well, that's a battle for another generation.  I have to say a profound Thank You to the teachers in the "godless" public schools, who have made her experience there so positive that I doubt I'd enroll her in a Christian school now even if I could.  And you have to know me, but that's saying something.

In my daily classes, I can't help but feel a little like the cobbler whose children have no shoes.  Especially in 6th grade - "Grammar 4."  These kids are so smart.  They have parents who love them enough to take great care and expense over their education.  But they are the most challenging class I've ever had.  For one thing, they are the largest class I've ever had: we started off the year with 18 kids.  We've lost three through the year, but at 15 they still tie the largest class I ever had before them, last year's 6th grade class.  And ... how to say this ... they constantly push me to wrestle with the issue of educational equity.  If my daughter, the one with Down syndrome, can't be in this class, it's hard to muster a lot of sympathy for the failing child who can't be bothered to study vocabulary cards or turn in homework.  It's hard to be patient when they start chattering and giggling - loudly - the instant I turn to write on the board.  And it's hard not to resent the expectations from some parents and students who think I should drop everything and be extremely responsive to a concern about, say, homework load... when the requests come at all hours, they presumably want the quality of the education to stay high, and I'm certainly not getting rich teaching 3 classes every day (my take-home pay, after tuition for my three "normal" kids, is enough to cover gas money for the month and not much more.  And I have absolutely no one to complain to about my own homework load).  I'm not saying that I'm right to be resentful, but I would sure appreciate not having quite so many opportunities to struggle with that besetting sin.

This year's 6th grade class seems extra young to me.  Last year's 6th grade class was the opposite, and I had very little time to enjoy them as children before they were all acting like teenagers, really obnoxious teenagers.  (They are so much better this year as 7th graders.  They've grown into their attitudes a bit.)  But with this year's 6th grade it's a much slower transition.  They need extra care and repetition and there are still quite a few who don't get it, or see why it matters.  Reliably there are about 3 or 4 students who get As on quizzes, but not so many A+s as there are in my other classes.  And there are a rather frightening number of them who fail quizzes, sometimes spectacularly.  I can always capture their interest by telling them stories from Roman history, but it takes a well-ordered mind in the first place to groove on Latin grammar.  It's a hard sell for them!

But there's something endearing about 6th grade.  They're still cute, although the time is limited.  I tell them at the beginning of 6th grade that when I'm finished with them, at the end of 8th grade, all the boys and about half the girls will be taller than me.  And all the girls will be very beautiful, and about half the boys will need to shave.  They giggle when I tell them this, but it's true.  I enjoy sharing 6th grade time with the 6th graders.  It's a hugely formative time in their lives, and it will be over all too fast.  And, if I have anything to say about it, they will know their Latin grammar very, very well.

Where Football Meets Classical Education

Joe Paterno was the football coach at Penn State since before I was born, and for about 4 times as long as I've been a Latin teacher (which is a pretty hefty chunk of my life, now).  Yet his name was only vaguely familiar to me, since I am a football agnostic, until his essay, "Joe Knows Latin," was featured in the Spring 2008 edition of the Memoria Press newsletter.  Unfortunately they've changed the archiving of that article so it is more difficult to obtain the full text.  But it's well worth the read... inspiring, even, for those of us teachers who face constant questions about the worthiness of our arcane subject matter.  You can read more extensive excerpts of the article here, but I'll be trying to find a link to the full article to share if I can.  It was after reading this article, partly, that I tried to become more careful about looking up the teachers who had influenced me and thanking them.  Because we never know when a great teacher may be taken from us, or for that matter, when old age and a shifting zeitgeist may render him a pariah.  (46 years followed by a quick trip through the tabloids to the ash-heap of history... how do we begin to process that?  Well, worse things happened to Cicero.)

I guess football is quite similar to ancient warfare, really.  Horrifying battle helmets, grotesque war paint, screaming throngs watching from the city walls, obscure mystical rituals before and after each play; and of course, the lively oral tradition of retelling the game afterwards for those who didn't see it.  Some heroes do indeed seem to be specially favored by the gods; and JoePa, as he was known, surely had a friend in Minerva, the grey-eyed goddess of strategy and warfare.  In an age when imperialism is frowned upon, capturing yardage and taking possession of the ball are more socially acceptable outlets for young testosterone than capturing hostages and taking possession of Gallic towns.  So I'll just pose the question and you can think about it: is studying Latin and Caesar's conquests good preparation for ... football?