1 A few years back YB went through its own personal epoch where we had this wonderful period called Greek Days.
2 I'm not sure whose idea it was, but I'm fairly certain that it came out of the English department. It was a wonderful idea in many ways.
3 What it was was a week where the entire school focused on teaching about the Greek culture and its influence on every subject in school.
4 You don't have to travel too far to realize the impact that ancient Greece had on most every subject.
5 In Drama, for example, it was no mystery to the students that it truly began in the 6th century B.C. and came out of celebrations of the death of Dionysus, the god of wine, drama, and being exceedingly silly.
6 At one point in our brief history as human beings, we had a small window of time in which we moved from barbarism to civilzation. Any moron could point to Classical Greece to see the moment in human history when thought and reason began to move into all aspects of existence.
7 Anyway, the school decided to do a full week in which we all came together and focused on this amazingly creative all-school celebration. P.E. had the Olympics, for example. Math had displays; as did English. The entire school was involved, some enthusiastically, some stubbornly, but all working together.
8 I could be mistaken but I'm certain that the brains behind the concept came from Andrea Ocamb-Winters, who was a visionary player in our English department back then.
9 I just remember that the WASC committee had visited and suggested that the school as a whole needed more interaction among the subjects, and needed to come up with some sort of cross-curricular interaction.
10 I always knew the importance of the WASC committee, the people who basically give the school its USDA choice stamp on the school. WASC is a group of people who come in and take note on what the school does and does not do and gives a one-year, three-year, or six-year stamp of approval to each school.
11 If your school scores high, it means it is taking active moves to de-compartmentalize and to move forward with a mission that is cohesive and clearly attempting to improve.
12 If you get a one-year, it means they are going to start dropping in to all your business and remind you that you haven't quite done it yet. A three-year accreditation means you have three years to come up with an action plan that meets their suggestions with a plan involving actions, people responsible for seeing that the actions take place, dates, and evidence that improvement has happened.
13 Pretty stressful for everyone. You wanted a six-year accreditation to take the pressure off, but few schools would get that. The pressure came down from the top, and nobody could hide from it.
14 Many teachers and administrators felt they were being watched and criticized. If you were the slightest bit insecure it could cause you to crash to your knees in tears of despair and pray to the gods for the WASC committee to go away and leave you alone.
15 I always saw them as one of the best things that could happen to a school, but I also wasn't on the committee that had to come up with the action plan. I knew immediately that in drama, for example, we needed to interact with our feeder schools, our colleges, the working public, and other schools in order to get high marks.
16 We had already been doing things they wanted. Our Fair shows were some of the best days we ever had. I used to contact some of the teachers at our feeder schools (J.W. Fair being our main feed, thus the name) and invite them to a morning dress rehearsal of our Fall and Spring shows. Our students would get out all day and literally go through the entire process of a show: makeup at 8 a.m., relaxing with coffee, donuts, and the excitement of a 10 a.m. performance for the middle schools, followed by a Q and A session with the schools, and an afternoon of going class to class in costume to advertise our own shows.
17 Likewise, Ponch and Shawna Fleming would interact with Fair and involve themselves in District festivals, CMEA festivals and all the rest.
18 In the heyday, we would arrange to get over 150 student tickets to AMTSJ shows, college shows, and at one point free tickets to the drama performances from other schools. I saw WASC as an opportunity to make these things happen for students.
19 The English department answered WASC with Greek Days, which was cross curricular in nature. To Drama, it was right up our alley.
20 We were asked to put on an all-day show to which teachers could bring their classes. The Theatre became an all-day performance, absolutely grueling to the students, but REALLY fun! I had different classes stage different scenes which usually culminated in one large piece involving everyone.
21 My two faves were a scene where we had a switchboard operator (Hermes) taking calls from all of the gods and goddesses. Hera, for example, would scream at the operator to be connected to Zeus, who was unable to come to the phone because he was secretly flirting with a goose. It was fast, swift, clever and fun.
22 The second involved a narration of the history of Drama which was acted out by kids in togas. Naturally we made it funny, with lots of Greek music and shouts of Opa! encouraged from the crowd.
23 It was a wonderful festival of fun, hard work, ridiculousness, and insanity, everything needed to give the students a fun time, and for the school to come together as a cohesive unit.
24 My recollection is that we were accredited with a six-year ride, unheard of back then, especially for YB, which somehow had a reputation for being a low-performing school even though I always thought we were always WAY better than our reputation.
25 Now a lot of this is sketchy; I'm going off a foggy memory, but overall, I always embraced Greek Days as a wonderful time for the entire school. Sure, some teachers thought it was intrusive, invasive and irritatingly off the curriculum. A lot of teachers would rather close their doors and be left alone.
26 I dove into this, read everything I could about Greece, drank Ouzo and listened to Greek music when not at school, and utterly loved the entire concept.
27 And when a teacher, or a number of teachers get excited about things, it instantly affects the students, who will often get just as excited. Long term, it works for everybody and helps a school become legendary.
28 I say all this because I just began an incredible unit on The Oddysey. I found two amazing documentaries about the golden age of Greece, on a National Geographic piece about Troy: Beyond the Movie, and a second a PBS piece called Empires:The Greeks, Crucible of Civilization, both of which are amazingly informative and a grand total of maybe three hours.
29 I again dove in and studied, figured things out, and came to class for the past two weeks excited and ready to rock. Not everybody buys into this stuff, naturally, but to me, it's the best unit I've created since JFK.
30 In one week I've learned more about the Golden Age of Greece than I ever have before. The stories are amazing and the entire thing has me listening to Greek music, studying (and teaching!) some of the most amazing epochs in human history, a period touching every area of education: science, mathmatics, literature, history, geography,art, music, drama, poetry, physical education, and on and on. Invariably I'll leave someone out, but every facet of education owes itself a bunch to this exciting, amazing age.
31 The lessons are a little over three hours, but an awesome investment for the students, who yesterday enjoyed witnessing the rise of human intelligence, the celebration of knowledge and culture, and the inevitable fall of the empire, culminating in the poisoning by hemlock of Socrates.
32 My students watched as this vast empire fell apart, and in its end, watched hopelessly as the angry masses turned all of the blame on that great philosopher, who took his poison with grace and dignity.
33 In the end, the film summed up all the contributions to mankind made in a short few hundred years, and it was aimed at the best and the brightest students.
34 I've let students write while listening to music from ancient Greece, and have slowly created a world set and ready to take them through The Odyssey.
35 I had one of my classes respond in writing and had words like "astonishing", "incredible", and "this is boring!" (there's always one!) coming at me from all directions, but about 90% of the responses were WAY positive and fun. I haven't had this positive of feedback since the halcyon days of JFK.
36 In some ways, the rise and fall of kings and empires is an ancestor to the story of JFK. Epic stuff, and a grand celebration and tribute to Greek days.
37 One administrator sneaked into my room and approached my department chair yesterday about why "...one of your teachers was showing a movie about Greece; I don't get the connection..."
38 Ah, poison by hemlock!
39 Hmmm. I guess knowing about Greece is unrelated to the greatest of all Greek legends.
40 My answer was, "Bring it."
41 How stupid have we become?
42 Had I been a new teacher, I probably would have come apart, fallen to my knees, or more likely, run into the office and put that person right in their place.
43 Now I just roll my eyes. Sorry it isn't going to bring test scores up and make you look good. Sorry that I brought some of the greatest thoughts and ideas of the ages to my students. Sorry I wasn't teaching students how to bubble in tests so we could bring our test scores up and make the school look better to the outside world.
44 I won't go on. Simple minds. At what point in life did it come to this?
45 Meanwhile, I'm about to embark upon The Odyssey with students whose worlds have already opened up beyond all of my expectations. You can't put a price on that, and I'm more excited than ever, and quite ready to hop on that ship and share that wonderful voyage while I still can.
46 Opa!
~H~
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