Pomodoro, Jesus, and Rocky

 

How on earth could a timer that looks like a tomato, Jesus Christ, and the fictional southpaw boxer from Philadelphia named Rocky Balboa find their way into the same blog post?  A recent professional development session at my school had me pondering this very thing.

The Pomodoro Technique

The Pomodoro Technique is a strategy for time management that has been around since the 1980s.  The basic idea is that you set a timer, which may or may not be in the shape of a pomodoro (Italian for "tomato"), work on your task for that amount of time, take a break, and then set the timer again for your next task.

This is a great strategy and one that the learning coach at our school, Jeff Buckner, presented to us during one of our faculty Teaching & Learning sessions.  Many of our students struggle with time management, and this is an easy strategy for them to implement.  Of course, this isn't just for students, and as I began thinking about how this could play out in my own life, my thoughts turned to Jesus and Rocky Balboa.

Our Favorite Characters

Ezra Pound recalled the following anecdote, apparently a favorite of William Butler Yeats.

"A plain sailor man took a notion to study Latin, and his teacher tried him with Virgil; after many leassons he asked him something about the hero.

"Said the sailor:  'What hero?'

"Said the teacher:  'What hero, why, Aeneas, the hero.'

"Said the sailor:  'Ach, a hero, him a hero?  Bigob, I t'ought he was a priest.'"  (Homer:  A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. George Steiner and Robert Fagles, 1962, pp. 17-18)

This anecdote well expresses the reaction many people have had to the characters of Achilles in the Iliad and Aeneas in the Aeneid.  If you prefer your heroes to be sword-wielding, spear-throwing warriors, the kind that yell out that their commander is a "bloated drunk with a dog's eyes and a rabbit's heart" and fight a river...yes, a river...then Achilles is your guy.  If, on the other hand, you want your hero to be the kind of person who suppresses his own feelings of pain as he inspires his troops and will do whatever it takes to fulfill his duty to gods, country, and family, then you want Aeneas.

For years, I was an Achilles kind of guy, and for that reason I did not enjoy all that much teaching Vergil's Aeneid.  At some point that changed, but I still gravitate to characters that leave it all out on the field, even if doing so does not lead to victory.  In addition to Achilles, I absolute love Diomedes in Book 5 of the Iliad.

Thus toiled the chiefs, in different parts engaged,
In every quarter fierce Tydides raged,
Amid the Greek, amid the Trojan train,
Rapt through the ranks, he thunders o'er the plain;
Now here, now there, he darts from place to place,
Pours on the rear, or lightens in their face.
Thus from high hills the torrents swift and strong
Deluge whole fields, and sweep the trees along;
Through ruined moles the rushing wave resounds,
O'erwhelms the bridge, and bursts the lofty bounds;
The yellow harvests of the ripened year,

And flatted vineyards, one sad waste appear,

While Jove descends in sluicy sheets of rain,
And all the labours of mankind are vain.
⁠So raged Tydides, boundless in his ire,
Drove armies back, and made all Troy retire.  (Iliad 5.110-125, Alexander Pope translation)

I love Rocky Balboa, giving it all, even when he loses to Apollo Creed in the first movie, and my favorite opponent of his is probably Clubber Lang, whose grit and determination, even though he loses, are simply brutal.  Yet I sometimes wonder.  Are these the models that should inspire me the most?

Front-running

Prefontaine and Bowerman

In the 1998 film Without Limits, University of Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman (Donald Sutherland) is having a planning session with long-distance phenom Steve Prefontaine (Billy Crudup), who does not agree with his coach's philosophy of running.  After stating flatly that running any other way than all out and leading for the entire race is little more than the excrement of chickens, Pre explains.

Pre:  What else do you call laying back for two and a half miles then stealing a race in the last two hundred yards?

Bowerman:  Winning!

There is a great part of me that thinks as Steve Prefontaine did.  I am a highly driven person, and like Achilles or Diomedes or Rocky or Pre, I want to hit hard and give it my all.  And then there's Jesus.

Pomodoro Paul?

Jesus took time away from the demands of ministry to pray.  He got up early and separated Himself from the hustle and bustle of life to spend time with His Father.  He was never in a hurry and even stopped to address the needs of an unknown woman who had suffered from bleeding for twelve years while on His way to heal the son of the synagogue leader.  He famously taught His friend Martha not to be stressed out over things of lesser importance and to focus on what truly mattered.  And despite His seemingly slow and deliberate pace, He accomplished all He was sent to do.

What, then, is my takeaway from the Teaching and Learning session at our school?  I know myself well enough to acknowledge that I am wired for action.  I will probably still declare those lines about Diomedes translated by Pope when I am in my golden years and with as much thrill and excitement as I read them today.  Yet I want to reach that time and fulfill all that God has called me to do, and therefore it's not so much the action-adventure heroes that are my models for how to live, however much I may enjoy reading and watching their exploits, but Paul.  Paul was a hard-driven sort of person, shown first in his zeal for his faith searching out Christians to have them punished.  Yet once his life was transformed by his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, he approached life a bit differently.  Still passionate, although for a different mission, he would say go on to say, "I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."  (Philippians 3:14, ESV)

Passion and drive are good, but they must be balanced with rest and restoration.  Fulfilling the call of God is more important than the thrill of any high adventure moment along the way.  I imagine that if tomato-shaped timers had existed in his day, Paul might have found value in the Pomodoro Technique.

Prepared For Adventure

Aeneas Fleeing From Troy, Pompeo Batoni, 18th century

Undique convenere, animis opibusque parati,

In quascumque velim pelago deducere terras.  Aeneid II.799-800

These lines from the second book of Vergil's Aeneid describe the refugees fleeing from Troy to Aeneas with the hope that he could lead them to safety and a new land.  The lines are literally translated as "They assembled from all quarters, prepared in mind and in resources, for whatever lands I would wish to lead them on the sea."  This is the perfect description of the ideal classroom.

Make no mistake, a teacher is a leader.  The Greek word from which we derive "pedagogy" is paidagogos, which is a leader of children, and whether you understand education as a leading from the darkness of ignorance or a leading into the light of knowledge, it is an enterprise that requires leadership, and it is the teacher who serves that chief function.

Yet notice in these lines from the Aeneid that the people have come to Aeneas animis opibusque parati, prepared in mind and in resources for whatever lay ahead.  We often focus on the student preparation of bringing materials to class, notebooks and writing instruments and such, but too rarely do we even consider the preparation they need in their minds and spirits.  

I have written before about the quality of being docile, which is far more than merely being quiet and demure, but is the disposition of mind and spirit that makes it possible to learn.  How, then, do we help our children develop that essential disposition so that when they enter the classroom, they are actually prepared for the adventure of education?

First, they must eat well and sleep well.  A body that is malnourished or deprived of sleep will not be able to sustain the rigors of the educational journey, and if there is one of these two essentials that we tend to neglect, it is sleep.  Young people must get uninterrupted rest, which means no phone or computer activity once the lights have gone out.

Young people, and indeed all of us, are imitative creatures.  If the adults in their lives are curious, they will learn to be curious, too.  Share with the young people in your life the questions that you ask about the world around you.  Invite them into your speculations and discussions.  Soon, they will be asking questions of their own, perhaps questions you have never considered.

Read.  Read to children when they are young.  Read with them as they grow older.  Share with them the books you are currently reading.  Express to them your excitement over an article you have read or a book you hope to get.  They will value what those around them value, and if it is nothing more than a steady diet of electronic entertainment, we should not expect them to become the deep, reflective people they have the ability to be.

When children come to class prepared in both mind and resources, there is no telling to what lands they can travel and what they will discover along the way.

Something Better

Heu, regni rerumque oblite tuarum!
Alas, you who are forgetful of your kingdom and your affairs!  (Aeneid 6.267)

As we read this line yesterday in our AP Latin class, I was struck by how appropriate it is for many of our students.  Teachers will be quick to think, "Ah, yes.  This is indeed a great line about students who fail to study and do their homework."  Yet I would say there is more here than just that.

Let's start with some context.  In the Roman poet Vergil's epic Aeneid, he tells the tale of a Trojan hero who sails from the burning remains of Troy with his family and friends.  This band of refugees flees across the Mediterranean en route to new homeland in Italy.  Blown off course by storm of divine origin, they land in Carthage where the hero, Aeneas, meets Queen Dido.  An affair begins, also prompted by divine machinations, and Jupiter finally sends Mercury to tell Aeneas he must leave and get on with the business of establishing the Trojans in a new home.

All of us, like Aeneas, become distracted from our true mission.  This is true for the ancient hero, the modern adult, and the child in the classroom.  Many of us may rail against the temptations of technology, but let's face it.  There is a lot of fun stuff out there!  I was on the moon when the lead singer/lead guitarist of my favorite '80s hair metal band retweeted my tweet about their new album recently.  Imagine, then, the challenges our students face when it comes to a choice of:  a) study for the quiz or b) text a friend while listening to music and updating Facebook.

Yet if we are simply offended that they have failed to do the work that we have assigned and if our response is solely from the perspective of "you should do this work because it's good for you," then we have missed something greater, something better.  I am reminded of the scene in Braveheart in which, just after the battle of Stirling, William Wallace has been knighted by the Scottish nobles.  They want him to declare his allegiance for one of the clans in their bid for kingship against the cruel English monarch Edward the Longshanks, and the room erupts into arguments and accusations.  Wallace shouts in reply, "You're so concerned with squabbling for the scraps from Lonshanks's table that you've missed your God-given right to something better."

Education, including the hard work of study, is about helping students discover the glories of creation.  Think about it.  Snow, quasars, atoms, the Fibonacci sequence, dactylic hexameter poetry, democracy, verb formation, hypertext markup language...are you kidding me?  The world is an amazing place, filled with natural and human-invented wonders that stagger the imagination, and education introduces children to such a place.  But wait!  There's more!  Education is also about helping students discover and develop their gifts for making their own contributions to this miraculous world, this marvelous play called life.

Coming back, then, to missed homework assignments and the failure to study for quizzes and tests, we see that not doing such work is not just a dereliction of duty, but rather a missed opportunity.  Mercury reminds Aeneas that in his distraction with Queen Dido he has not just forgotten his duties, he is missing out on the kingdom destined to be his.  A missed assignment, while seemingly nothing more than a workbook exercise not completed, is actually much more.  Because homework and paying attention in classs and group work and class participation are all part of education, students who fail to be fully engaged are ultimately cheating themselves of their right to something better.  For Aeneas, the destined kingdom lay across uncertain waters.  The kingdom for our students lies all around them.  It is theirs for the taking, if only they will.