I love Legos.  As I type that, I realize that I start my posts with those words a lot: "I love".  I think, though, that it's my passion for all the things I do in class that lets me know I'm in the right place.  I always have something to get excited about.  Today, it's Legos.

Legos are amazing.  You can use them to make almost anything.  I remember the first time I got a Lego piece that had a hinge.  It opened my building world in a new way--Legos with moving parts meant building airplanes with functioning cargo bays, rockets with a door for the astronauts, a drawbridge, and, with a bit of thrust on my side, a sort of catapult that worked.  I remember these different projects because through Legos, you get to imagine, plan, and construct a concept.  It becomes personal.

I can't bring my students to Rome.  It'd be neat, but it's also prohibitively expensive, so only a few would be able to go, even if I were in a position to design and carry out a student trip.  I also can't bring Rome to my students.  Not only is this also prohibitively expensive, I am pretty sure there are laws and regulations regarding moving large marble (okay, marble-faced) ruins between nations.

I can, however, have my students build Rome.  I would not even be the first person to do this.  Over the years it has become tradition to ask students to build a model of some part of Rome: the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the temples and aqueducts and streets (it's especially fun to build Roman streets using food!).  Building was a major part of Roman life and experience; Rome was always under construction in some form of another, much like cities today.  Romans were known for and proud of their engineers and architects.

Recently, though, thanks to a student's idea, I asked students to bring in Legos.  Any they would like to donate.  We didn't get a huge collection going (though now I know I want a huge collection, so it will happen in time), but we got enough to designate some Legos to each of five groups of students.  We had hit a section of the book that discussed Roman military camps, and students were not really diving into that particular cultural topic.  We needed a way to connect to the camps emotionally, or at least personally.

Legos make connections.  Almost all children play with Legos, which means there is automatically a positive emotional response to the nostalgic toys.

In the five groups mentioned above, I asked students to do their best to rebuild the Roman military camps they saw drawn in their textbooks.  They had a pile, or bag, or box, of Legos and their ability to convert concepts symbolically.  Each group worked together diligently, instructing, sometimes arguing with, each other to create the best representation of a Roman military camp that they could build with a limited supply of Legos.

It was fun, and each group came out of the activity with the ability to describe the camp layout to me.

We all know the past two years have been hard. I don't think I need to qualify that, or say "for some of us." Since I don't believe in the idiom "What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger," I will instead say "What doesn't kill you, changes you." And we are changed.

I could list the numerous mass traumas of the past two years, but I think I will save reflecting on those to individual posts. So, here, I am going to talk about the sharing, loving, supporting, and, yes, healing that was the surprise focus of this year's American Classical League Institute.

One attendee told me (I didn't take a quote, so this is absolutely paraphrase) "In past Institutes, it felt like there were camps, based on how people teach, etc., but this year it feels like we have all banded together into one group." I agree. That is not to say that every Latin teacher on that campus agreed about everything--obviously, or we're not Classics scholars--but that a common thread emerged from every session and meeting I attended. Our main focus was not on promotion of individual products and ideologies, but on sharing things that work, helping each other become better teachers, checking in to remind each other that our own health is also important.

The thread was Caring and Community.

Even the director of the Cambridge Classics Project (the illustrious Caroline Bristow) did not present about the CLC textbooks at all, but about a fantastic and inspiring class she taught last summer focusing on trauma, race, and misogyny in the ancient world, and ways to bring that discussion safely into our own classrooms. 

This was not unique--in the best way. This year I came away fully inspired, energized, and ready to work. I will probably do individual posts about the sessions I attended as I apply them to my classes--and honestly I need some time to think, reflect, and internalize some of the information before I use it. I always advise others to take one thing from a conference and implement it, and if that gets comfortable, then you can add another. I will be following my own advice!

​I am looking forward to next year's Institute in St. Louis already. I am immensely proud of the work we did, as a member of the ACL Board and as a Latin teacher coming together to be part of this community.
Let us continue to help each other heal and become a caring community of support.