Summer Assigned Blog Numero Dos

Latin is a polarizing sort of subject; either you love your teacher and the material or you hate it. This is a shame to someone such as I, being a staunch advocate of learning for the sake of learning. Nonetheless, there it is. There is no real impetus at the high school level to exceed in Latin because it's not 'required' for graduation. If you can't hack it, fine, whatever, I'll just fail and pass a year of Spanish and be on my merry way and not worry about Mr. Jones. This creates a simultanesously frustrating and satisfying classroom dynamic for me (until I find the Big Solution) in that I baby sit half my students while I really truly teach the other half. I witnessed this dynamic in my own high school Latin classes, and though it irritates me, I'm not going to starve my bright, willing students of the advanced knowledge and conversations I can provide. Ben likes to speak about those kids in the middle though, who will either be won over to the good side or fall into the clutches of the dark, and especially in my classroom more so than in most others it's extrememely rewarding to win over those in between students because I have precious few of them.

Shaun (name changed of course to protect his privacy) is one such a student of whom I am particularly proud.

Shaun is the most middle of the road but fun to be around student I've had thus far. Some days he'll work really hard, other days he'll joke around with the kids who just don't care, but we established a textbook rapport through our mutual love of sports. I stress my love of Notre Dame football in my classroom for exactly this reason; many of my male students who wouldn't give a damn otherwise have taken a liking to me specifically because hey, even if they don't understand my class at least they can chill for a minute or two afterwards to talk sports with me. Shaun will never look at a word of Latin again unless by accident and doesn't know the first thing about translating Latin sentences, but because I tease him about his beloved LSU and he teases me about my beloved Notre Dame, he struggled and gave me so much effort it makes me cry a little on the inside when I think about it. It's not easy to be in a ridiculously hard class and fight the good fight anyway despite having no hope of winning it when surrounded by a class that either completely ignores me or soaks in every word without effort, and so he really honestly in a very cheesy way makes me proud.

Now the kicker is this. I am as of right now (though I'm open to change my thoughts if convinced) vehemently opposed to changing grades to pass kids. Hell, I inflate their grades enough, if they can't manage to get a 70 average after I curve all their tests and give free points for showing up, then they don't deserve a little bending of the rules. Shaun looked like he was going to just barely fail with a 67 or 68 average, and a moral dilemma was in the works. In addition, he's a junior and a tremendously talents baseball player, and he just received a full athletic scholarship offer at Jackson State provided he made a 20 on the ACT and didn't fail any of his classes from here on out. I was in doubt, but lo and behold, he got that 20 on the ACT, and I was ready to concede a moral defeat by finagling his grades.

I didn't have to. I gave Shaun an excuse to take his final exam a week after my regular students did as long as he came in the final week of school for tutoring. (I hardly saw any of my students the very last week, it was more or less free time for all the teachers at my school.) He did, he aced my exam, and that 100 was just enough to lift him to a 70 average for the year. I guess this story more or less doubles as a success story, but nonetheless, when asked to write about one of my students, Shaun pops into my mind even before some of my favorite, extremely bright students.