Kim Johnson

Lukeion Faculty Interviews

What do you teach at The Lukeion Project?

I am the resident mathematician at Lukeion---the classicists make me welcome, even if I don’t always get their jokes!  I teach Logic and I have taught the History of Mathematics.  I also lead mathematical workshops, including Bizarre Ancient Numbers and Art and Math.

How did that subject first inspire you and what kind of education do you have as you develop and teach your beloved subject(s)?

There are two stories: first, how I came to study math and, second, how I came to teach at the Lukeion Project.

The high school I went to had Latin, and although I didn’t take it, many of my friends did. My senior year I took a class in Classical Literature, and based on that class and what my friends had told me about Latin, I planned on majoring in Classics and Philosophy in college.

Then came the reality of the actual college classes! My first philosophy class was about the theory of knowledge and how do we know things? It was a fascinating class, but I found that I was always missing something in my arguments. I got average grades on my papers, but I didn’t know how to make them any better.

I enjoyed my first Latin class very much. We used Wheelock and covered the book over two semesters. The grammar came easily to me because it was just like math!  But the nuances of vocabulary sometimes seemed out of my grasp. I wasn’t enjoying my chosen majors as much as I had anticipated.

Then in the second semester of my freshman year I took a calculus class. Every class felt as though I was going on a new exciting adventure. We were studying some of the most difficult topics in the first year of calculus such as the techniques of integration, but they seemed like a walk in the park. Doing my calculus homework was a joy. It was not that I always got the right answer but rather that I was able to tell by the work itself whether I was right or not. I didn’t need an instructor to tell me. I majored in mathematics and went on to get a PhD in mathematics.

Fast forward about 30 years when I discovered Lukeion from our local homeschooling mailing list. I wanted some good courses for my middle schoolers that I didn’t have to drive to, and Lukeion offered the high quality, interesting, and challenging classes I was looking for.  I listened to all three of my students as they took Witty Wordsmith, Barbarian Diagrammarian, and Latin 1 and 2, and I was extremely impressed with the way the instructors made the classes come alive despite not being on screen and even though students only typed responses in the chat. My kids would be yelling at the computer to try to answer questions---it was just as well that there was no audio! They were constantly engaged and therefore learned a lot, even during the relatively short weekly class sessions.

My son was happy to join Lukeion for Logic when it was first offered in Fall 2019 with instructor Michael Haggard. Unfortunately, that spring Dr. Haggard was unable to continue teaching, and I wanted to help. Although I had never taken a formal logic course, I had been following along with my son as he took the course. I had also taught a unit on Formal Logic in a Discrete Math course as I taught as an adjunct after receiving my PhD in math. I used logic in mathematics all the time both in creating arguments and in understanding and critiquing arguments that other people had made. To help Lukeion out, I volunteered to be a Teaching Assistant to one of the other Lukeion instructors. My thought was that I would grade homework and answer emails, both of which seemed interesting and doable.

The Barrs came back and asked if I would be willing to teach the class. I swallowed and said yes. There were a few 60-hour weeks as I learned the curriculum from scratch and prepared to teach engaging and interactive lessons, but the years of listening and absorbing the Lukeion method for online teaching made the format clear. In addition, the topic was fascinating. Although I was not familiar with the specifics, the principles were the same as those I used in math throughout my career. 

The in-person classes I had been teaching that spring were cancelled due to Covid. My kids were growing older and were becoming more independent.  It seemed like a good time to try something new. I was honored that Lukeion asked me to return the next year.

What do you wish everyone knew about this cool topic?

The history and development of logic is fascinating.  We study two branches of formal logic at Lukeion: Categorical Logic and Propositional Logic.  The formal study of Categorical Logic was founded by Aristotle when he wrote the Organon: not a book, but a collection of books about logic. A classic example based on Categorical Logic is the following syllogism:

All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

Although it may seem that this type of argument is inflexible and only useful in obscure philosophical arguments, it turns out that many of the arguments we make every day can be rewritten as syllogisms.

Aristotle’s logic was taught to students for millennia. Then, starting in the 1800s, mathematicians developed a new type of logic intended to unite the fields of formal logic and mathematics. One of the pioneers trying to formalize how mathematics worked was George Boole, the son of a shoemaker. He used mathematical ideas like addition and multiplication to combine propositions, revolutionizing logic.

Then in the 1930s, Claude Shannon added electricity to logic. When he was a graduate student at MIT he maintained an analog computer which used switches and relays. His great insight was that you could use the digital switches to encode logical arguments using Boolean algebra. Thus, in the most influential masters’ degree thesis in history, the modern digital computer was born.

How would this class help you if you are a student with limited time?

Some areas of study are obviously connected to logic. All mathematics, whether geometry and formal proofs or applications in finance or physics, relies on making assumptions and reaching conclusions based on reasoning rather than guessing. Computer science is literally built on logic. Both computer hardware and software rely on the foundation of propositional logic. If a student is interested in either of these two topics, logic will strengthen their skills.

However, logic is ubiquitous. Analyzing words and sentences in Witty Wordsmith and Barbarian Diagrammarian relies on logic. When you are doing a Latin translation and are figuring out how the nouns and verbs fit together in the sentence, you are using logic. When you write a thesis statement for history or literary analysis and you support it, your argument must be logical, or your instructor and audience won’t believe you. Even rhetoric, which also uses tools relating to emotion or character, without logic, your argument can be easily disproved. Being aware of logic, its structures and rhythms, can help students in all subjects understand topics and communicate their ideas more effectively.

In college, writing was not my favorite subject. If there was an awkward way to write a sentence, I would find it. I could have used Lukeion’s courses in my high school! However, I found that the logic I used in writing proofs and making mathematical arguments gave me power when writing papers. In essence, a paper is an argument. You are trying to convince someone that your conclusion is true. If you do this convincingly enough, your argument stands on its own without needing any teacher or professor to tell you whether you are right.

Tell us a cool story from your teaching experience in this subject.

One of the disappointing things about mathematics and logic is that you don’t need to travel to any foreign lands to study it, you can literally do logic anywhere and anytime. Its very transportability means that logic is everywhere.

In my class students complete a project called “Logic in Real Life.” Some of the places my students have found logic used are:

• Insurance documents: when is something covered by insurance, and when it is not
• Historical arguments: why did politicians and military forces act the way they did?
• Current articles: do the conclusions follow from the premises the writers use?
• Advertisements:  The conclusion of an advertisement is almost always, “Therefore you should buy our product.”  But does their argument make logical sense?
• Books: Characters make decisions based on logic, to some degree, or the story doesn’t hold together.
• Comic strips often use unstated premises or conclusions to create humorous or ridiculous situations.

Students find a huge variety of examples of “Logic in Real Life,” often relating to their interests. I love seeing how they take what they have learned in the classroom and apply it in real situations.

 

Math ...History?

A Course on How Humans Have Used Math Through the Ages

At The Lukeion Project, we offer a unique course which covers the history of math. Students considering taking a math history course sometimes wonder if the course is a mathematics course or a history course. As with most good questions, the answer is complicated. 

It’s a Math Course

In Counting to Computers (C2C) we discuss many of the topics mathematics students encounter from the beginning of their math career to the end of calculus and beyond. Despite covering so much content, because these concepts developed in a natural way over time we cover them in a format accessible to students in algebra or are advanced prealgebra.

At the “dawn of numbers,” the only tools prospective mathematicians had were their brains and their fingers. It took thousands of years to build up the tools to do calculus and computing. In C2C, we begin where all children begin, with counting. Even counting turns out to be not so simple! 

Over the centuries people have come up with many different number systems which have different characteristics and strengths. The Egyptians developed fractions, but they only used 1 in the numerator (with a few exceptions). Instead of writing ⅔ you would have to write ½+⅙. The two forms are equivalent, but the second seems much more complicated. On the one hand that seems like a lot of work for a simple concept! On the other hand, for solving certain types of division problems, Egyptian fractions were much superior to the our simpler fractions.

In another example of crazy counting Babylonians developed a base 60 system for doing arithmetic. At first glance, base 60 seems much more complicated than our good old familiar decimal system. Why would they make things more complicated? As it turns out, when we use minutes in an hour or degrees in an angle, we actually pay tribute to the Babylonian system. For all its faults, the Babylonian system was miles ahead of Roman numerals.   

Some of the problems we do in the course come directly from problem sets developed to train ancient scribes and mathematicians. We can do problems from the Ahmes papyrus (1650 BC) and decipher cuneiform tablets found in the trash pile from a Babylonian school. Fibonacci’s Liber Abaci, originally written to demonstrate Hindu-Arabic numerals to merchants used to cumbersome Roman numerals, becomes a source for puzzles for homework.

Gradually the math that we discuss becomes more powerful. Even students who are a long way from trigonometry can look at the ratios created by Hindu mathematicians to talk about astronomy, or practice interpolation to find difficult values for sine and cosine using prealgebra techniques. We don’t have to do calculus problems, but we can practice the methods of Archimedes which were precursors of those developed in the 17th century by Newton and Leibniz. The key to thinking about these more advanced concepts is that they developed gradually and not all at once. By following along with the history, we can do the math along side the ancient mathematicians.

It’s a History Course

C2C is also a history course. At its most basic, any history course is a discussion of past events. We discuss events in the history of math such as the development of zero and the conflict between Leibniz and Newton over the development of the Calculus. We show how the development of mathematical symbols over hundreds of years makes the calculations we can do easier and more powerful.

However, there is more to math history than just the events in the subject of mathematics. We discuss how world events led to the export of the modern Hindu-Arabic number system to Europe. The development of the printing press helped spread trigonometry across Europe and made it useful for the scientists discovering how orbits worked and how the stars seemed to move.  In addition, understanding cultures and their motivations makes clear why the mathematics developed by one culture differs from others. The differences in cultures michte explain why the Greeks valued rigorous proof, while Indian mathematicians were able to see  the concept of zero, and Islamic mathematicians developed the idea of algebra. When we study the origins and history of mathematics, we see that mathematics didn’t arrive full blown in an Algebra 1 textbook, but was a gift from many places and times.

In addition to the events in history, we discuss the character and biographies of mathematicians. The people who do math turn out to be as interesting as the ideas they discover. We discuss what is known about the biographies of great mathematicians and why they became involved in mathematics, from Hypatia to al-Kwarizmi to Leonhard Euler. The personalities and culture of these mathematicians influenced what they thought of as important, and therefore what mathematics they developed.

It is a Mix of Both

The power of studying history and math together is that, no matter your background or preferences, there is something for every student.  If you would rather read an article on ancient history than solve a single linear equation, this course is for you.  If you love math and can’t get enough of it but really hate thinking about people, places and things, this course is for you.

Here are two comments from past students, first from a more advanced student (post geometry) and then from a student who is closer to the beginning of her math journey.   

"The history was the most useful part, because while I knew quite a bit of the mathematics, I knew very little of the history of those who discovered it. The brief overviews of the mathematics in the form of the homework was also incredibly valuable, because it helped refresh and cement mathematical principles and even teach me a few new things."

"I enjoyed the connections between math and history and the new math concepts like calculus and logarithms."

Mathematics informs history, and history informs mathematics.  There is no reason to be satisfied with just one or the other when you can get both in one course!
 

Getting Yourself to Do Hard Things

Motivation From Within

Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project
 

Intrinsic motivation is the driving force of success. Intrinsic motivation helps us engage in a behavior because of the inherent satisfaction of the activity rather than the desire for a reward or specific outcome. It is the difference between working diligently to achieve a goal rather than working to achieve a paycheck, treat, bonus, or reward. Those last things are defined as extrinsic motivations.

Everything we do (or choose not to do) has effects on our life. Work earns money. Certain behaviors or beliefs might make our parents proud. Taking up weightlifting might make our appearances and abilities more to our liking. Finishing a long boring task will allow us to move on to the more interesting project.
Dr. Kou Murayama assigned a problem-solving task to two groups of participants. One group was told to master the material. The other group was tasked to outperform or “win higher scores” compared to their peers. Those told to win higher scores indeed did better on a pop quiz that day.  The group told to master the material performed better a week later. This second group’s goals were intrinsic, namely to fully “own” a body of knowledge for themselves. 

How do we convince ourselves to master a body of knowledge? How do we spark our own intrinsic motivation? 

Believe in your own ability to become intrinsically motivated.

This form of motivation is the strongest and most surefire way to keep going even when the going gets rough! Even on a neurological level, humans will stay on task longer if they believe they can complete the task for their own benefit. Intrinsic motivation works way better than treats, rewards, and paychecks.  It all starts with your personal belief that you can do a thing. This fact explains why small business owners are willing to work much harder (and longer) than employees. Intrinsic motivation pushes a person to dig deep.

Desire to be effective at what you plan to do.

It is so easy for some people to talk themselves out of everything good. Sometimes this behavior is modeled for us by others. Sometimes we’ve been through some life event that leads us to believe that it is better to hope for less and be surprised when there’s more. This can be a toxic habit, so it is worth trying to reprogram how you tackle life. Psychologist Tory Higgins, director of the Motivation Science Center at Columbia Business school explains, “The essence of human motivation is that we want to be effective. It’s what makes us feel alive.”

Setting goals and feeling effective for accomplishing them is a huge win in life. Start by believing you can do a thing and then do it. The nice side effect is that we will quickly understand how we can influence our own life positively. We don’t need to wait until somebody else “gives us a chance,” assigns us a job, or pays us to do something. Visualize and desire successfully doing/learning/mastering then set the goal, form a plan, then do it. This is what gives us a charge and makes us know we are going places in life.  

Be around other motivated people, avoid unmotivated people.

It is impossible to stay motivated to learn a thing or do a thing if everyone around you is telling you it is “dumb” or unimportant or (worse) unattainable. If you can’t avoid unmotivated or unmotivating people, associate with those who have their own vision to achieve great things. Sometimes this means you should look for friendships or get involved in organizations or clubs with similar views. If that isn’t possible, encourage yourself by finding motivational success stories and seeking good advice for ways to stay on the path to success.  

Share your progress with somebody.

Persevering to accomplish a goal is something to be celebrated! Having an optimistic accountability partner can help you arrive at your goal and celebrate once you are there. This same accountability partner can help you in the bad weeks when you’ve had setbacks. This person will be there to remind you that setbacks are temporary, and that victory is close at hand. If you are in a class to learn a body of material, sometimes that accountability partner is your educator or your class peers. In many of our classes, we educators will celebrate wins, namely people who set lofty goals get a nice shout out when they arrive!

Set specific and challenging goals.

Accomplishing goals is motivating. When you set a lofty goal that will take time and effort, don’t just look at the finish line. Set specific measurable milestones to push you along on your journey. Each will be its own motivation. Each contributes towards your momentum. As a student mastering a subject, your milestones might be individual scores on assignments or maybe keeping grades within a high range for all exams, for example. Each task is a manageable step up the staircase. You won’t be ready for your final exam until the end. This week, excellence task-by-task is just the right size for success.

Train your brain by being your own accountability partner.

Our internal dialog is often a big detriment to success at what we want to accomplish. We might say things like, “I’m not good at this.” Maybe we’ll think, “None of this really matters.” Sometimes we look at a far-off goal and start to imagine all the things that might-possibly-could-potentially stop us from success. Every time you have these inward discussions with yourself, retrain your brain. Become your own encourager, or at least avoid being your own nay-sayer. You put nothing at risk by framing ideas of great success for yourself, especially if you have set goals.  There is nothing to be gained by being negative toward future you.

Rigid Flexibility?

Why One Hour a Week is Plenty

by Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project

Modern conventional middle or high school programs have trained many of us to think that students must meet five full days a week to obtain a “good” education. Few evaluate how ridiculous this assertion is so let’s count the cost. Students spend on average from 120 to 180 hours—per subject, per year—sitting at a desk as the standard normal way to acquire any single body of knowledge such as basic chemistry, history, Spanish, or geometry. Home educators are told by most states that their child needs 120 to 150 hours of "seat time" to count a course as a credit (that’s for an academic year of one subject). Many states require a minimum of 180 days of attendance in school. On the traditional schedule, courses meet for five days a week for fifty minutes. To make things more dismal, these hours are now rarely garnished by things like woodworking, auto repair, art, music, home-economics, or even good literature as books have been condensed to short stories. Such topics have been phased out in most places.

Cubicle Life?

Is there something scientific about these numbers and calculations about “seat time”? Have education scientists determined that the average student truly benefits from 120+ hours of sitting to master a topic? Not at all. Worse still, most classes demand additional hours at home to finish assigned work so let’s add another 80 hours over the course of a year. What can an average person learn and accomplish in 200 hours per year?
Those that believe there’s some logic behind requiring 120-200 hours per subject per year often demand even more. Disappointing results on standardized academic tests in public schools urge pleas for more funding, longer school days, more special programs, more special aids, plus lots more homework. Most districts comply and try to convince taxpayers that adding more to the school day is the only solution. Not only do modern students sit far longer in classes than at any time in history but conventionally schooled students rarely have time for part time jobs, serious hobbies, volunteer work, family life, or much else, for that matter. Long days parked in physical classrooms and long to-do lists notwithstanding, disappointing exam results persist and worsen while a generation of young people languish dangerously.

Old School

A century ago, around 11% of high school aged students attended any form of continuing education and they only did so for about half to a third of the year. A school day consisted of a few focused hours in the morning and a few more in the afternoon. Educators would normally set students to their tasks and then go elsewhere to work with younger students who needed more feedback on basic skills mastery. High school students enjoyed enough autonomy that they could work through material at a pace that they influenced while time demands allowed them to remain essential to their family (and local) economy with full or part-time work.
Most adults today couldn’t get close to passing the 8th grade exams of a century ago. 14-year-olds demonstrated better mastery of subjects and better intellectual engagement in a wide variety of topics compared to today’s PhD students. Great grandpa who “just” had an 8th grade education was likely far better read and better prepared in math, history, and science than most youth today. Great-grandpa and great-grandma would be stunned by how long 15–18-year-olds are expected to sit at a desk while they accrue no clear benefits nor make any contributions elsewhere when, for all human history before now, this same age group would have already been undertaking adult responsibilities at near adult skill levels.  
Veteran home educators know there’s no logical reason why anyone needs to sit in school for 8 hours daily and still have more classwork to do at night. If you don’t educate your students at home, put yourself in that classroom seat. Imagine how much better you might function if, after getting your assigned tasks done for your day, you could move to the next project to free up your Friday, read a book, play an instrument, paint, play a sport, make some cookies, work on a 4H project, or simply be done with responsibilities the minute you have finished your own work. Sure, you might be a procrastinator by nature, but it wouldn’t take you long to improve your time management and ambition level, all to your benefit, because your reward for doing so was relative freedom each day to finish up and move on.
Cubicle workers know it is difficult to find motivation to do much out of the ordinary when stuck at a desk no matter how productive they’ve been. At least they have a paycheck for their efforts but why apply a cubicle mentality to education and expect better results? Our 16-year-olds are being asked to imagine their hypothetical “paycheck” which won’t arrive until age 18 or 22 or even later.

Why We Picked ONE Hour Classes

We began offering semester courses at The Lukeion Project in 2006 starting with Latin. Our goal from the start was to teach the way we wish we had been taught. Because we weren’t government funded nor sanctioned (whatever that means), people asked us why we wouldn’t just make all classes fun and easy! Why should we have high expectations and assign things like papers or the National Greek Exam?
At The Lukeion Project we wanted to be as effective as possible at our jobs because our business model was built on students successfully moving up to the next level of difficulty over a stretch of years rather than taking just one fun class. Why even offer Latin 4 if we were going to do a poor job at Latin 1? The answer was not going to be found in duplicating methods that were failing in schools.
Our long-time teaching experiences at the university level and as home educators had already demonstrated to us how a certain rigid flexibility was the best model. The bulk of new material and a bit of review can easily be covered in a single one-hour meeting weekly. Doing more than 60 minutes in a session is difficult for even adults. All new material for the week is covered in 60 minutes. Students who need more time to master a subject are provided abundant resources to help demonstrate and review key concepts. Meanwhile students who are quick to grasp material can finish the work and move on. All work is turned in during windows of time with a set-in-stone schedule.
Rather than cutting corners (as those who are accustomed to the 150-hours-in-a-desk might think), we have found a highly effective approach that demonstrably brings students to their desired levels of mastery with sufficient autonomy as reward. This develops executive function, time management, and maturation.
If subject matter seems easy to a student during a certain week, she can finish quickly with free time as an incentive. If the material is more challenging, she can take all four days in the assignment window to complete the task while reviewing the recording, working a few self-tutorials, using flashcards, and playing the review games. Both types of students move along at the same pace, but resources are available to support extra coverage as needed. Staying on a schedule keeps a student motivated to keep focus and momentum. One’s “seat hours” might be 30 for the academic year (one-hour live online each week) but actual involvement in subject mastery –review, quizzes, writing projects, discussion boards, translations, etc.)—might be anywhere from 90 to 200 hours over an academic year, as the student needs. Since our first full semester course in 2006, this system has worked beautifully.    
Repetitive review tasks after a concept is fully mastered is drudgery and feels like trying to remain focused while staring at products on an assembly line. Students who need more time to learn a subject will not have all the same needs as everyone else. One concept might make sense quickly, but other skills need extra attention and time to sink in. This is why, for many people, conventional school can feel like running in the wrong foot race all the time. Students at all levels and approaches benefit when they are given more autonomy.
In a single one-hour live session at The Lukeion Project, we move ahead into new material and usually have students engage in that material or review in a lively way. The online classroom allows all students to participate, not just the fastest and smartest, because everyone has a chance to type in answers. Technology makes it possible to record each session so students can review whatever flew by too quickly. The one-hour meeting pushes the limit slightly on the extent of standard human focus, but we keep sessions lively and illustrated to help cover the material while engaging brains.
One student needs a couple of hours. Another one needs five or six. At the end of the week, everyone has had the chance to engage the material with the enticement of having control of one’s own time. Home educated students do very well in this system. Conventionally schooled students will struggle more at first because they are not accustomed to enjoying any benefit from finishing their work after achieving competence. Given the chance, they always prefer autonomy and liberty. They catch on quickly.
How do we know our methods are successful? We have both our Latin and Greek students take national exams, not for our sake but to demonstrate to others that they are making excellent progress in ways that are recognized by “the powers that be.” 95% to 97% of Lukeion language students earn honors. In AP Latin and AP Lit., students enjoy a 100% pass rate and 50% earn a score of 5. Many of our classes are taught on par with college level courses yet our students usually excel while still having time to accomplish the other tasks that make life worth living.

100

The Lukeion Project in Retrospect

By Amy Barr of The Lukeion Project

This is our 100^th Sassy Peripatetic Blog! Sassy Peri began September 21, 2018, after a full decade (likely more) of people pestering us about starting a blog. Of course, we knew we should start a blog, but for the first five years of The Lukeion Project, we hadn’t worked out how to get a full night’s sleep much less how to add anything new to our workload. It took us another 5 years to catch up. Many of you may not know our story, so gather around. This is the abbreviated version.

The idea of The Lukeion Project was hatched toward the end of 2005 by two Classical archaeologists, namely me and Regan Barr, as we painted our daughter’s bedroom (pink and purple, if you must know). We had settled into very mundane lives after over a decade in the archaeological field, digging at places like ancient Troy. A financial crisis forced us to get creative about our future. As crises almost always do, we were given the chance to return to our roots, namely our passion for dead languages, Classical history, archaeology, and Classical literature. We wanted to teach they way we wish we had been taught. We wanted to take our students seriously.

When we began our small venture, we had to pick a name. We had no intention of becoming a full school or academy offering a comprehensive curriculum to all ages. We were well skilled in Latin, Greek, and related fields but had no intention of adding things like art, sports, and science nor did we have the patience of saints necessary to teach all ages.

As everyone should, we turned to Aristotle for answers. His philosophical hangout in Athens was known in Latin as The Lyceum. In Greek – as Aristotle would have used—it was called Λύκειον (Lukeion). Aristotle established his school in Athens in part of the temple to Apollo in 335 BC (he worked with what was available). He lectured there, led his students on walk-abouts (thus their name Peripatetics), and established the first European library in history. He had always been a book collector and then his student, Alexander the Great, helped by sending him crates of scrolls and copies of important works as gifts to his former tutor.

The word Project in our name was chosen because we didn’t want people thinking we were a full school nor an academy since our courses were meant to supplement the curriculum of our primary audience, home educated students working at the high school level.

When we first began classes in the spring of 2006 there was only one other online program out there. Most of their classes were still conducted by correspondence but a few had gotten high tech like our classes. This meant we were the first of our kind. Every big flashy online program that we see at conferences today first talked to us way back then about what we were doing and said, “hey, that’s a good idea.”

When we first went to homeschool conventions to spread the word about our classes, we spent half our time explaining what an online class was. Terms like webinar were not commonly understood. Words like blog, vlog, and podcast were still in the formative stages. The wizardry of having students synchronously join us online, hearing, and seeing material as we taught was also virtually unknown at the start. Our first online learning platform was for business meetings. It often had as much as a 7-second delay making online discussions a bit tricky. Such technology has now become so mundane that even 10-year-olds get irritable if our internet gets crackly or because we don’t let them play with the video filters in class.

In 2012 we successfully cajoled our archaeological colleague Dr. Sue Fisher to join us as she expanded our Latin program and then expanded our Classical literature offerings with her Muse series. Since then, we’ve added Prof. Baty (literature including AP/writing/rhetoric), and then Dr. Johnson (logic and more) who stepped in right after the sudden tragic passing of Dr. Haggard (logic/philosophy). Prof. Powell came on board last year to expand our Latin program further. Regan Barr (beloved teacher of Witty Wordsmith/Barbarian Diagrammarian) also directs our 8 years of Classical Greek plus Greek history, and Philosophy. I (Amy Barr) direct the large Latin program (also 8 years and expanding) plus Roman History.

The Lukeion Project has offered semester classes since 2006. As we now begin our 17^th year, we have had over 3000 (close to 4000) students, 100 blogs, hundreds of semester courses, and at least a thousand workshops. We’ll never win awards for fame nor size, neither breadth of influence nor endowments. We’ve labored to keep standards high (despite direst pressure to drop them low) and to keep tuitions low (despite direst need to increase them). We work without the safety net of government support nor impressive private capital. Our few faculty and staff are dedicated, humble, and talented beyond measure. there will never be enough thanks nor money to truly pay them.

Our rewards are less earthly and more eternal. Like Aristotle getting gifts from Alexander the Great, our former Lukeion students send back crates of greatness. Their lives have now spread into the stars at NASA, into the lights of Broadway or Carnegie Hall, into the classrooms of Ivy League schools, into excavations, laboratories, and libraries as doctors, lawyers, writers, scholars, linguists, dancers, artists, and (perhaps best) as moms and dads who delight in educating their own children whom we hope to teach—in turn—in the years to come.

The poet Horace (Odes 3.30) expressed our hope most fittingly in 23 BC:

exegi monumentum aere perennius

regalique situ pyramidum altius,

quod non imber edax, non Aquilo inpotens

possit diruere…

I have built a monument more lasting than bronze,

higher than the Pyramids’ regal structures,

that no consuming rain, nor wild north wind

 can destroy… 

Ultimate Answers to the TOP 4 Questions Students Ask Educators

Save Time! Learn These Academic Secrets NOW!

By Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project

During a lifetime career of lovingly and attentively educating students, we teachers hear some questions far more often than others. While we educators are known for saying, “there’s no such thing as a dumb question,” we also know that some questions have ulterior meanings and motives. I provide here in no particular order the answers to your biggest and most pressing academic questions, so you’ll never need to ask them in class.

#1 I got busy and forgot. Can you reopen my assignment for me? Will you give me feedback anyway?

"Sure. I had no real reason behind putting a deadline on that task. Do what you like! Not."

Most students ask this question because they’ve had time management issues to the point that things have gone off the rails. For some students this is truly a rare occurrence, and their heart is in the right place. They had one of those weeks. They hope to mitigate the damage.

For other students, time management is mismanaged more frequently. This issue will eventually spread to every class, every assignment, and cause long term trouble in one’s personal life once time is complicated by things like jobs and adult obligations. Some modern pedagogical approaches have given up entirely and now offer endless re-dos and zero deadlines. This approach has its merits for a few subjects but, especially for academic topics I have seen few benefits for anyone, student or teacher.

Decades of teaching (and parenting) experience confirm that simply having firm deadlines is enough to help most students develop the skill of time management now while things are less dire. Experienced educators know that 9 out of 10 students who ask for a please-just-this-one-time-only extension will ask for deadlines to be adjusted for the rest of the semester and forevermore.

Here’s the answer: No, you can’t have an extension because everyone is busy.

A good educator knows that once a student hits a certain age and maturity, she will never build better time management skills by constantly offering her more non-emergency extensions. The rest of the class prioritized an assignment enough to finish work on time so rewarding one person with a random extension is unkind to all, including the one asking for an extension. Your educator allocated a certain amount of time for grading and feedback on a particular task and, by asking for extensions, you are making unmerited demands on another person’s schedule. Many educators are generous to make that offer once or twice but most won’t continue to be charitable once a student turns it into a lifelong pattern.

Manage your time or it will manage you. 

#2 When are you going to grade my assignment?

"Let me check…hmm, yes. I’ll be done next Tuesday at 3:02 am."

Most students ask this question because they are at a loss for how to politely say, “Hurry up! I want to know my grade!”

We understand it can be frustrating waiting for scores. It is tempting to look at your educator’s job as somewhat limited to dealing with only your class and only your assignments. If you have that perspective, then it is easy to imagine your educator is leading a pretty cushy lifestyle. How long can it take to slap a grade on one essay, for goodness sake?!  

Here’s the answer: Nobody is as interested in finishing the task of grading assignments more than your educators!  

The best day of each semester is that one moment when we have everything done at last (the next moment we must start working on the new semester). Your educators spend all day teaching several classes but still tuck in grading sessions every spare minute possible. Toss in some lesson planning, research, writing, unscheduled academic crises, a few emergency college recommendation letters, a couple necessary faculty meetings, and an occasional desire to (gasp) take the weekend off…you get the picture. Your educators have plenty on their plates. Unless you think that something has gone seriously wrong with an assignment you turned in, tread softly. We are all working as quickly as we can. You’ll score more points by being understanding.

#3 Will this be on the test?

Most students ask this question because they want to know if they should bother to listen, participate, take notes or study the material at hand. Whenever students ask this question, your educators actually hear, “do I need to exert any of my own energy here with this stuff going on or can I go back to playing my game online?”

Here’s the answer: Yes, this will ALL be on the test.

Once you get to middle school and certainly high school and beyond, time is very limited in class. ALWAYS assume that what your educator is presenting to you or incorporating into a discussion is intentional. Will this exact material be on a “quiz”? Maybe! Since you are learning the material (not teaching the material) you’ll be delighted to hear that we educators usually have a plan in place to help you master a whole body of material! Presume that your job is to stay engaged during the whole class and to take notes to help you focus. It will never pay to try to calculate how little is necessary to pass a class. You’ll score more points and gain a better education by being attentive and engaged in class and discussions.

#4 Sorry I’m late, did I miss anything?

Most students ask this question because they are at a loss for how to politely excuse themselves for arriving late.

This question, if asked aloud, will cause your educator to grow incensed and, depending on how strong his or her filters are, it will get you any variety of responses ranging from a polite “come in please” to a snarky “we were sitting here silently waiting for your arrival to begin our work.”

The mother-of-all-responses to a student asking this question is a poem by Tom Wayman written in 1945 but so true today.

 

Did I Miss Anything?

Nothing. When we realized you weren't here

we sat with our hands folded on our desks

in silence, for the full two hours

 

Everything. I gave an exam worth

40 percent of the grade for this term

and assigned some reading due today

on which I'm about to hand out a quiz

worth 50 percent

 

Nothing. None of the content of this course

has value or meaning

Take as many days off as you like:

any activities we undertake as a class

I assure you will not matter either to you or me

and are without purpose

 

Everything. A few minutes after we began last time

a shaft of light suddenly descended and an angel

or other heavenly being appeared

and revealed to us what each woman or man must do

to attain divine wisdom in this life and

the hereafter

This is the last time the class will meet

before we disperse to bring the good news to all people on earth.

 

Nothing. When you are not present

how could something significant occur?

 

Everything. Contained in this classroom

is a microcosm of human experience

assembled for you to query and examine and ponder

This is not the only place such an opportunity has been gathered

 

but it was one place

And you weren't here

 

Laistrygonians, Cyclops, and Angry Poseidon

Welcome Adventurers! 

By Dr. Susan Fisher at The Lukeion Project

You may not be boarding a physical ship for ports unknown, but the beginning of a new school year is its own odyssey.

Plans are made, provisions are gathered, and expectations are set, by both you and your crew of parents, teachers, coaches, and even admissions departments for some. In this sea of new syllabi, schedules, and deadlines it can become all too easy to see your year as a set of boxes to check off or a race to the finish line. It is important to meet your deadlines - this will make your journey way more pleasant and productive – but your upcoming year is about so much more than crossing t’s and dotting i’s. This school year is about the journey as much as the destination.

One who understood this concept better than many was the late 19th – early 20th century Greek poet, Constantine Kavafys. Drawing on his Classical heritage, Kavafys wrote his now-famous poem, Ithaka, about the importance of the journey. More specifically, the importance of mindset for the journey.

Ithaka  

-- By Constantine Kavafys (Translated from Greek by Edmund Keeley)

As you set out for Ithaka

hope your road is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:

you’ll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare excitement

stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

 

Hope your road is a long one.

May there be many summer mornings when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind—

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

 

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you’re destined for.

But don’t hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you’re old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

 

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you wouldn't have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

 

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

 

You may have read that first stanza and thought, “Do I really hope this journey is long?” Summer and sleeping in is pretty fabulous after all. But do you really want the journey to be short, without enough time to soak up all you’re doing and let it impact you? Wonder, learning, growth all take time. Plus, there are roses to be sniffed and songs to be sung along the way and gathering treasures takes time too.

What might those treasures be that you will be gathering? Not likely ebony or mother-of-pearl, but perhaps new facts, new skills, new knowledge about yourself, your abilities, your hopes and dreams. These are infinitely more precious, I dare say.

Gathering these treasures takes work and perseverance. It often involves battling monsters seen and unseen as well. Your foes – your Laistrygonians, Cyclops and angry Poseidon – might be internet outages or ornery platforms. Or these monsters may rear their heads in the form of procrastination, perfectionism, a lack of confidence, or something else. These are the enemies Kavafys is writing about – the ones we bring along in our own souls that can sabotage our journeys.

Do not fret, brave adventurer, if you encounter any of these monsters, because you already possess the ability to defeat them. How? Follow the advice of Kavafys! Keep your thoughts raised high – higher than the to-do list and negative self-talk – and let the excitement of what you are learning and who you are becoming be your guides.

Like Odysseus, you will reach your Ithaka – the end of this year – and you will already be rich from the many things you have gained along the way. How exciting this adventure will be and we at the Lukeion Project are thrilled to be on it with you!