Classics in the Classroom - Chapter Seven

When I was in Jr. High and High school I loved to read, but when I was in a particularly ornery mood and I just didn't feel like doing work, my favorite complaint was, "Why do I have to read this? It doesn't apply to my life at all!" Jago also encounters this problem and offers a lesson from Julius Caesar in which she tells students to consider who would be a better president: Brutus, Antony, Caesar, or Cassius. I love this activity because she asks to students to back up their choices with examples from the book by looking at rhetoric, character, and the various lives of the characters. This allows these students to choose real world leaders in their own lives. And in a time when so many politicians can talk around an issue, manipulate the words, and spin rhetoric as easily as a spider spinning a web, students need to be as savvy as possible.


Jago lists skills students need to know for the standardized tests:

• Close reading of the text
• Character analysis
• Drawing inferences
• Application
  
• Evaluation

These skills are obviously useful and necessary for everyday life, and providing tests and activities in the classroom that push students to learn them is vital. Jago suggests one type of test that involves answering questions with a well developed paragraph. She then goes quickly through the answers, grading on content. Then she does something I really love, she picks out exemplary answers and then she has stuesnt read the model responses in aloud in class, so students whose answers were sub-par can review their answers and learn what's missing. One of my professors did this and I loved it; peer review and learning from other peers is a really great tool.

I want to end this blog entry with a quote from Jago that I believe ties in well with students wondering how the text is applicable to their lives, "...students discover the heroic dimension of their own lives." How great and wonderful is it that a text written years and years ago can still be applied to a students life and can show that student something about themselves? I guess that's one of the amazing things about classics; they hold a mirror up to our lives and help us discover the "heroic dimensions" of our lives.