Does “the 18th of April” ring any bells for you?
Years ago, in a graduate seminar in education leadership (full of would-be superintendents working on PhDs at my well-respected university), our professor entered the room, struck a dramatic pose and said…
“On the 18th of April” (long pause, class attentive)
“In seventy-five” (long pause, dead silence)
“What?” (gray-haired Prof scans the room)
In a small voice, I say,
“Hardly a man is now alive
who remembers that famous day and year.”
(another pause, Professor smiling, nodding)
I clear my throat and say…
“It’s the one that begins ‘Listen my children…’”
(blank faces)
“and you shall hear…”
(still nada)
“of the midnight ride…”
(a couple of people are getting it now)
“of…?”
(muttered) “umm, Paul Revere?”
Prof points to me and says “Don’t answer!” Then he asks: “Who’s the poet?”
When nobody–not one of the 20-odd people in the room– could answer, or would even try, he lets me tell the class. Longfellow.
“When did you learn that?” he asks.
Fifth grade. And I only know an abridged version. But still.
I learned “O Captain, My Captain” (speaking of anniversaries) in 8th grade.
And the prologue to “Romeo and Juliet” in high school. Still with me, along with memorized King James scripture, lots of Cummings, Dickinson and Frost and an embarrassingly large cache of song lyrics.
Why aren’t we using poetry to teach history?
Well, two roads diverged in a yellow wood…
And we chose easily measured standardized test questions.
Teacher in a strange land 
I definitely remember that poem. But since it’s my birthday, that might have something to do with it.
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Happy Birthday, Sheila! Were you born on the 18th of April in ’75? Let’s go with that…
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Sure, why not?!
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Loved this! A fellow teacher and I share a birthday: April 18. Working in Massachusetts, we almost always have it out of school. As teachers of English and Social Studies, we are also thrilled to have a literary, historical birth date.
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Thanks for commenting! Having the 18th of April off! Cool! The only day Michiganders have off is the first day of deer season.
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Hats off!! And Hands on Hearts!!
Here’s to the schools and teachers of yesteryears, including those who taught in OneRoom schools, who instilled in their pupils, K through grade 8, the enrichment and lifelong appreciation of poetry, music, art; All of the knowledge and experience they gained in early education to carry into adulthood and enrich their lives.
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Here in Massachusetts, it’s Patriot’s Day. There are re-enactments at Concord and Lexington of the shot heard ’round the world. It’s a Monday holiday now, but that Monday is nearly always also Marathon Monday, and there’s a Red Sox home game at 11:00. You can cheer the runners and also root, root, root for the home team.
My kids attended a public school steeped in tradition, founded back in colonial days. John Quincy Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Ralph Waldo Emerson are among the alumni, as is Paul Joseph Revere, grandson to the silversmith and rabble rouser. Several times a year, students are require to participate in Declamation. They must memorize and present a spoken piece first in front of their class, then the winners in front of their entire grade, then in a whole school competition.
It’s a terrific preparation for public speaking and appreciation of poetry and history. Like so much in education, my kids are now grateful as grownups for an activity they did not like back in the day.
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Ah, when I was still teaching, I didn’t teach to the standardized test questions. From 1975 to 2005, I never taught to the test. I taught Romeo and Juliet. I taught Of Mice and Men, and a lot more. Poetry, short stories, essays, and I taught my students how to think, fact check, debate and write.
I taught my middle and high school students how to analyze the characters in the stories we read together and talked about, based on how the characters dealt with conflicts. And my students had to prove they could do that through essays. Lots of essays linked to the books, stories and poetry I had them read and respond to.
Dear God, that was a lot to correct, explaining why my work weeks often ran 60 hours long or more. I think essays and creative writing takes more time to read and respond to than any other work my students turned in.
And I was dumb enough to let students who wanted to improve their grades, write their essays over after they got the work back with my comments explaining the grade they had earned.
I forgot her name, but there was one student who wrote her essay over several times to go from an F to an A+. After that, all her essays earned As, with no need to do them over.
I wonder if there was any link to my method of teaching, ignoring those senseless useless tests, and the fact that my students always outscored all the other students throughout the district in the same grades on those standardized tests I never taught to.
One year in a department meeting, a VP put up an overhead chart showing the results of one of those stupid, useless standardized tests for every English teacher in the district by grade level. The teachers’ names had been replaced by numbers.
One column soared above the others. A Mount Everest surrounded by foothills. At the close of her presentation, that VP revealed who that teacher was. Guess who. She also said those results were the same every year going back as far as they’d been keeping that data.
Still, no one, teachers or administrators, ever asked how I taught. I wonder if they just assumed I was teaching to the test when I wasn’t.
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I’m continuously surprised at what students don’t know, and since I’m tail end of my career That has started to carry over to younger colleagues.
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