With the close of last school year, I completed my 30th campaign in education. Each of those years has been filled with joy and sorrow, challenges and successes, ups and downs and a ton of stories worth sharing. My (True) Life in Education Thus Far will detail 30 or so of those stories. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed living (most) of them!
THE IDES OF MARCH
OCTOBER 12, 2022
When I am asked to share one of my favorite teaching moments of my career, I am very lucky to have a ton from which to choose. I have loved being a teacher and an administrator and these 30 years have provided me all kinds of wonderful experiences, adventures, misadventures and moments, all kinds of joy. I am filled with so many terrific memories.
If pressed, I return to the story I am going to relate in this post if only because this was a teaching event and experience that I have never been able to recapture or recreate. Once it was over, it was over.
Early in my time at Regis Jesuit, I was teaching English One with two other teachers. We shared all of the sections of the course among us. Educational best practices were shifting in those years and the idea that all sections of a particular class should be very similar in terms of content and approach was gaining traction.
I always liked – and still champion – the notion that common courses should line up almost entirely when compared to one another. Teacher X’s class should be very, very similar to Teacher Y’s class. This is good for students and, at the end of the day, it is good for teachers. Students have like experiences and teachers have colleagues with whom they can design curriculum, assessments, activities and so forth. This has never seemed a controversial theory to me. I am ever surprised when I encounter resistance to it.
Regardless, in those years at Regis Jesuit, the two teachers with whom I was teaching English One felt the same way I did and we collaborated the hell out of that class. We planned together, wrote tests together, worked together. We were so lock step that we often gave the exact same homework assignments.
Upon approaching The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, knowing that all the freshmen were reading the same acts and scenes at the same time, I got an idea.
The works of William Shakespeare, in my not so humble opinion, are not intended to be read, they are intended to be seen. While Julius Caesar is not my favorite work by the bard, the third act is really something else and I got to wondering how our students might be able to see it rather than read it. I am sure I brought this up to my co-teachers and we brainstormed.
The resulting idea was a “wouldn’t it be great” kind of thing: wouldn’t it be great if we could surprise the freshmen with a performance of Act III? How would that work? Could we hire someone? How could we only do it for the freshmen?
We chatted and planned and something really special happened: we determined that we wanted the faculty to put on Act III for the freshmen class as a surprise. We asked our principal if we could schedule a class meeting and perform the show. He agreed, energetically. We asked our colleagues if they would learn roles for Act III and if they would be willing to rehearse and to perform for the freshman class. I do not remember anyone we asked telling us “no.” We asked if they would give up lunches and early mornings to rehearse. They did. We asked our drama director to help us stage the scene. She agreed. We asked, and our co-workers kept saying yes.
The act had about 15 speaking parts. Teachers and coaches from all over the building joined us.
When the day arrived, the freshmen were assembled in the gymnasium. A class meeting started with the Dean of Students beginning to discuss an agenda with the freshmen that was made up for the day… then our first actor interrupted from the back of the gym as Caesar himself saying: “The Ides of March are come.”
And we were off.
We were not professional actors. The staging was not perfect. Many of us never got “off book.” But it was wonderful. Our principal took a role. Our athletic trainer took a role. Our most veteran faculty member took a role. The entire school seemed behind the performance.
We did this two or three years running and the staging of Julius Caesar Act III is one of the highlights of my entire career.
I wonder how many of those former students remember this? I hope many.
It was magical.
