19 + 21 = Unforgettable

One of my best students used his phone in class.  I know.  We are supposed to embrace technology in education, but I found tears springing to my eyes.  This was one of my top students.  I have always loved how his mind worked, but for him to use his phone like this....  Perhaps I should explain.

It was the A.P. Latin class, and we were reading a section from Book 6 of Vergil's Aeneid in English.  The students had their Latin texts open, but each one had a different English translation from one of our bookshelves, and they were taking turns reading aloud.  

After Katie finished reading Frederick Ahl's 2007 translation of lines 562-586 in which Tisiphone explains to Aeneas what he is looking at in the underworld, Nicholas asked if he could share the rendering by Christopher Pearse Cranch that he had been following.  He was visibly excited, so I encouraged him to do so.  At the end of his reading, he talked about how much he loved Cranch's language, even stating that this was the most vivid and creative bit of writing he had read in the past couple of years.

And it was at that point that he took out his phone to photograph the pages, and I nearly cried.

Here was a young man so deeply moved by words that he had to share them.  Here, in one of the largest public high schools in Indiana, was a class with students that could share his joy and enthusiasm over the power and beauty of the written word.  But did you notice the most important part of this story?  It was the student who was moved and wanted to savor these words in the community of peers.  It was not the teacher forcing him to look at something and demanding, "Don't you think that's wonderful?"

It reminded me of the scene in Dead Poets Society in which Mr. Keating's (Robin Williams) students confront him with his old yearbook and ask what the society was all about.

KNOX
You mean it was a bunch of guys sitting
around reading poetry?

KEATING
No Mr. Overstreet, it wasn't just "guys",
we weren't a Greek organization, we were
romantics. We didn't just read poetry,
we let it drip from our tongues like honey.
Spirits soared, women swooned, and gods
were created, gentlemen, not a bad way to
spend an evening eh? 

So, yes, I became emotional when a 19th century translation elicited from my 21st century student a response that was unforgettable for us both.