#failforward

Sometimes I fail.

I try to keep this secret. Not because I try to portray myself as a superhuman, able to juggle all my balls while balancing on a unicycle and reciting the first 100 numerals in pi. I just really hate failing. I don't like it. It's why I don't play chess.

Seriously. My dad always beat me when we played chess. So I stopped playing.

I've written before about the fact that what I do is hard, that it takes a lot of work to write my own lesson plans, a lot of energy to teach interactively and inventively, and a lot of research to stop using a textbook.

I rarely mention failing. But I do fail.

Sometimes a little.

Sometimes catastrophically.

And I fail in the classroom. Sometimes a little. Sometimes catastrophically.

Sometimes I get an idea and I think it's a really cool idea and I think my students are going to love it and it's going to revolutionize how they think about Latin and I explain it and I'm super energetic and my students are picking up on my energy and I want it to succeed and they want it to succeed because I want it to succeed and it. just. doesn't. It falls flat. In fact, I spend maybe thirty minutes untangling their Latin because instead of improving their understanding, I have instead tied their Latin knowledge into knots rivaling the Gordian knot that stumped all but Alexander the Great.

That is catastrophic failure, and I have known it.

And I usually keep it secret from you.

The wisest Jedi, Yoda is.
(You can get the poster here if you want.)

But here's the catch. When I fail like that, I generally apologize to my students. I explain my intent, and laugh at my result. I show them how to fail gracefully. And then I show them how to get back up and try again. I come up with a new approach, usually much more successful (after all, I definitely know how NOT to teach the subject now), and we try again, and we move on.

We celebrate my failures in class, we celebrate their failures in class, and we learn, and we move on.

I was at a presentation last February, and a woman sitting near the front used the phrase "fail forward." I think that is the perfect life philosophy, and definitely an important teaching philosophy. In developing a classroom culture, it is super important to teach students to value taking risks, and how will they value taking risks if they are afraid of failure?

And in sharing only my successes with all of you, how can I convince you to take risks in your own classes when I won't even trust you with my own risk-taking?

I fail. I fail all the time.

But I try to #failforward every time.

Using Stranger Things' Demogorgon: Connecting Pop Culture to Ancient Authors

This group really did a great job finding themes to compare.

The end of the semester is tough; not only are students exhausted and stressed by testing (both standardized and local), but it can be equally difficult to time the end of new material so that it's familiar enough to be worth testing.

This year I found I needed a filler day--so I created a short, light lesson based on the recent popular Netflix series Stranger Things. I wanted students to recognize and think about the echoes of the Greeks and Romans that we still see today, and though it's easy to point at architecture and art, I like the chance to focus on some popular culture and an unexpected (i.e., not military or mythology-based) reference.

So I researched the Demogorgon.

Quick background clarification: I am a geek and I love most things geeky, including table top role play games. Especially Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (hereafter AD&D), my introduction to RPGs and the reason I got to know my eventual husband.

When we were watching Stranger Things and the Demogorgon became a central concept and reference, I was inspired to research the Demogorgon in Latin to find out its declension (not to use in class, but just because I wanted to know--I am super cool). Because I knew there would be a Latin version.

Something you may not know, if you are not my special blend of Pliny the Elder and AD&D fan, is that many or most of the AD&D monsters were ultimately derived from Pliny the Elder, after taking a quick detour through medieval bestiaries. My favorite example of this, partly because the connection between the AD&D Monster Manual to Pliny's work is so unmistakable, is the catoblepas, an animal described by Pliny as a slow-moving land creature with a head so heavy it can't lift it, which is fortunate, since whoever it looks at dies immediately (Naturalis Historia 8.77). Pliny's catoblepas definitely inspired medieval imagination, and finally Gary Gygax, the author of AD&D's Monster Manual, found its description in a bestiary and brought it into the game he co-created.

The point of this sidetrack is that only a very few of the creatures featured in AD&D materials are original; most of them come from Classical and medieval sources.

I liked the connections between depictions this group found
and the summary of Boccaccio's description.

So I knew that the word "Demogorgon" existed somewhere in Latin. And I wanted my students to feel that connection that I am constantly making between my every day experiences and Classical resources. I wanted them to see how ideas are transmitted throughout the centuries and to trace their paths.

And I really, really enjoyed Stranger Things. So this was an excuse to bring it up.

What I ended up cobbling together (this could be done much better, but I did not have time, so it's a shallow, mediocre version of what this activity could be) was a description of Plato's Demiurge, Boccaccio's description of the Demogorgon, a 16th century block print illustrating the Demogorgon, the AD&D description of the Demogorgon, and images of Stranger Things' "Demogorgon." Then I put students in groups and asked them to find connections between the depictions, either one common thread, or a separate connection between each depiction.

This group chose to condense the
depictions into one concise image.

I heard really great conversations as I roamed between the groups--the kinds of conversations I was hoping for--and got some great results that I've posted here and hung in the hall.

This is a good, almost no-prep, lesson that could be used to change class routine or just because you and/or your students are great fans of Stranger Things. The handout is here (Demogorgon Handouts), and the only other thing you need is butcher paper for each group. I let them use markers, crayons, scissors and glue to help them organize and present their thoughts on the connections between all of these varied representations.

Hannibal Romae: a Strategy-based Game for the Latin Classroom

I was looking back at my recent posts and realized I never linked the article I wrote (in December) over the war unit I did with my students.

Here's a preview section of the article:

The game I made is strategy-based and loosely historical. I kept the rules relatively simple so students could navigate them in a short amount of time. It gives context and purpose to the readings: now students are reading about these ancient battles to learn strategies that they can use in the game. In groups of four, students are officers of a cohort. Each office has different duties (outlined in the instructions and materials I’ve linked below), and together the groups decide what action their cohort takes each session. Their actions need to be historically founded, and they can provide research if they suggest something I doubt is authentic. I require them to judge their movement based on the mileage key on the map of Italy I hang on the wall, and the class as a whole is fighting for the same end result: to keep Carthage out of Rome.

Not only am I having fun playing the brilliant general Hannibal and attempting to crush my students’ cohorts, I am watching students get excited and focus who often check out halfway through class. When we recently read a short passage from Livy in which Hannibal tempts a Spanish army to charge into a river and then demolishes them with his cavalry, one of my students–a student I almost always have to remind to be on task--immediately asked “Can we use this against Hannibal?” Not only was he paying attention, he was taking in the point of the passage and ready to apply it to a ‘real life’ situation! After I said yes, he responded, “Good. Because I really want to kill Hannibal.”

You can find the entire article at the Classical Journal Forum. Feel free to comment and question!