Survive and Thrive in Online Classes

6 Top Tips to Make Online Learning More Effective

By Amy Barr, Wizened Sage of Online Education at The Lukeion Project

2020 was one for the history books. Those same books will, no doubt, mention the sudden demand for online education world-wide when teachers and students alike found themselves in unfamiliar territory. Educators sought to apply in-person teaching skills to an online world while students likewise struggled to adapt when every educational expectation changed instantly. Whole school systems stopped functioning. It was a mess for many people.

The unfortunate academic side-effects of the 2020 debacle will be inspiration for many volumes, no doubt. So why not get started here? 

Not all online education is the same. We fear people will begin to avoid online classes due to negative encounters with inexperienced educators. We recently had a parent comment that she loved how our classes didn’t consist of videos of the instructor rambling and drinking coffee like her child’s other classes. There are some fantastic tools and techniques to keep students engaged online. Not every program or educator is aware of these tools! 

Some students have few choices but to stay online—good, bad, or meh—for the foreseeable future. They may be faced with a future of not-so-great online classes combined with lots of not-so-great prospects for doing anything differently. So, as a wizened sage of online education, I offer 6 tips for making the best of any online education.

1. Be the boss of you.

*SOME* educational environments promote poor time management skills and poor executive function by offering too many reminders, too many try-it-again chances, and too few expectations that a student can succeed. When students move online, their instructor also moves to digital communication. Published due dates on syllabi, notes on screen, or weekly emails now require that little extra step. Students need to check what’s up next and how to do it because nobody plans to come to your desk to remind you. Your educator doesn’t have time to text you (in case you forgot to look at email) or call you to make sure you read your handouts. All of that is your job now.

If you, dear student, struggle with this sort of thing now you will also struggle in college, career, and life. Promote yourself to being your own boss. Make yourself do things you’d rather not do (study vs. social media) when you’d rather not do them (first thing in the morning rather than “later when I feel like it”) without multiple reminders and do-overs. You are in charge of you!1

2. Schedule ardently

Everyone should have time in their schedule to do pleasant things! All of us should stop and smell the roses (or whatever). One of the best ways of safeguarding the opportunity for doing what we enjoy, is to also safeguard the necessity to get work done when it should be done. I’ve written plenty about setting up schedules and sticking to them. The benefit of scheduling yourself is so you get things done so you also get to enjoy the fruit of your labor with some glorious unstructured down time! Give two students the exact same number of tasks: The stressed depressed student tends to be the one who never schedules anything for himself and who always just waits for the right mood to hit. 

3. Education is on a computer or not by a computer.

If you have an actual human teaching you online, remember that human being is … human. Communicate! Ask questions! Tell him or her you’ll be late (not just sleeping through class). Let him or her know you could really use a second review of that difficult topic covered last week. Say please and thanks. Let him or her know you enjoyed an especially helpful session or that you are thankful for the feedback that got you through a tricky assignment. When that very human educator forgets to post a link or open a quiz on time, be nice. Send a respectful email. Get to know that educator a little bit so he or she knows you, too, are working hard to have a good educational experience.

4. Accountability: you need some!

It never hurts to let somebody else know you have big projects coming up that will take extra time. It never hurts to let them know you have set the goal to study a certain amount each day, or you plan to dedicate time to reading during breakfast, or you have set the goal of completing X, Y, and Z before lunch every Friday. Whatever your goals are, share them with somebody else as an accountability partner. This can make goals (small and large) seem both more do-able and celebrate-able. When you have moved to online education, you can really benefit from setting more structure in place. Finding somebody besides the very-distant educator to share the struggles over goals, projects, or tricky tasks, may help you to stay on task. Plus they are great to help you celebrate success when it pays off.

5. Never assume there’s less work just because it is online.

We have lots of new-to-online people signing up this year. That’s great! Welcome! But we know some misconstrue a one-hour-per-week class as a one-hour-per-week time commitment. Online classes normally have a better economy of time usage. There will be a time to communicate information followed by the expectation that students practice and perform that information outside of live “class.” An online Latin 1 class will take about as much time as a brick-and-mortar Latin class (5 to 7 hours a week) even though nobody is making you sit at your desk at the same time each day. Expect to be about as busy in an online AP class as you would if you were attending in person. So take care you don’t overschedule yourself or your student! 

6. Learn how to learn. 

Most come through their educational years knowing how to be taught but they may not necessarily know how to learn. Figuring out what kind of trick questions your English teacher loves on pop-quizzes is a matter of learning how to be taught. Guessing how to “game” the system so your never work too hard in a class is agility at being taught not the ability to learn. 

Memorize a stack of biology concepts or Spanish vocabulary today and remember those words in a week. Sort through a half dozen philosophers and be able to explain them to a friend on Saturday. Master some geometry formulae but put them to real use when you build something for yourself. Decide you like to read through an impressive piece of literature and actually accomplish this goal. All of this is where the real stuff happens. 

Knowing how to learn is not a skill reserved for especially smart people or especially rich people or for those with tons of spare time on their hands. Master a few techniques to help motivate yourself when you’d rather nap. Come up with a method and reward system to finish 3 short writing projects, a discussion question, and a vocabulary quiz before dinner.

Learning how to learn will make any situation, online or in-person, better. Learning how to learn is about self-management, understanding how (and when) your brain functions best, and getting yourself to do the tough stuff when you really don’t want to do it. Know yourself. Some people are slow readers, some people don’t like math, some have a hard time paying attention to others talk. Everyone has something to figure out about themselves as they learn how to learn. It takes time. Don’t wait to be taught. Learn how to learn.

Handy Academic Essentials Tools

(From the Department of Shameless Self-Promotion)

By Amy Barr, Lively Classical Guide at The Lukeion Project

Let me tell you about a new thing we'll be doing in June! While finalizing the schedule for the next academic year, our clever Lukeion instructors were standing around the online watercooler recently. After covering an assortment of important topics like how many students hate raisins but would happily jump out of an airplane (at least according to their answers in class polls), we turned to the topic of how to best equip high school students for life. Nope, no weird social engineering goals here, but we did observe that most of our students could use lot more support and instruction using certain academic tools.

When my three now-adult-kids were prepping to start college after admissions formalities were finished, they were required to take placement tests in various academic skills. Depending on results, they might be expected to take remedial courses or complete a few tutorials to bring them up to academic speed in time to begin their first semester. Thankfully they placed well, but I learned a few things about what we can do to better prep our college-bound students.

Some placement subjects are predictable. Students are tested on competency in writing, English, and grammar skills and even typing speed. They are examined to determine proper placement in math and other academic topics that are commonly lacking for new college students. They are also tested on academic essential apps., namely MS Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.

These program/app placements are not just a push for students to buy them (at most universities, students are given access to these either for free or at a huge discount). Instead, these apps are the primary means of communication a student will need at the college level. If they don’t have these app skills, they will need to develop them quickly and early.

First and foremost, students must carefully format every document that is ever submitted at the college level. If a student turns in research work in the humanities, they’ll need to know how for format in MLA style sheet most of the time. If they work in the sciences or other fields, again, they’ll be expected to format all their work carefully according to assigned style sheets. Most writing projects at The Lukeion Project require extremely specific formatting to get students accustomed to methods they must employ when creating written projects.

On average, 80% of even our brightest college bound students are clueless about using good formatting methodology in MS Word. We can tell you stories for hours about how students have variously (and hilariously) misinterpreted how to perform basic formatting tasks in assignments. Often parents -- who often have no formal training in Word -- "helped" students make those formatting mistakes. Don't even get me started about how "double spaced" has gone off the rails more than once! Suffice it to say, it is never too early for a student to learn how to use this app effectively. A student needs to use Word as early in middle school as possible.

Second, most degree programs today correctly require students to take at least one semester of public speaking. We agree! The art of persuasive presentation and communication is important enough to us that we offer two semesters of Rhetoric at The Lukeion Project. No matter what you plan to do in life, the need for being a persuasive and clear communicator is inevitable. One can say they “dislike public speaking” all they please but clear communication is an absolute must for most. Learn early how to present information clearly and effectively with MS PowerPoint.

Third, the need to organize information or data is fundamental in every field of study. MS Excel provides a highly flexible way to organize information and even compute data. Most young adults could really benefit from the ability to track monthly expenses or school bills in Excel, but most young college students can also use that same program to organize research notes, keep track of a study group’s progress in a semester project, or follow a series of data sets in their biology program, chemistry class, or statistics course. It can be a very handy tool indeed and reasonably intuitive once you get started.

This summer through The Lukeion Project, students can register for a “boot camp” in each of these three programs/apps. Naturally all three of them will be a benefit to use right away in high school, but certainly these apps will be absolutely necessary in upper-level high school and college. Students need to have their own access to these apps on home devices to participate in the courses, but each boot camp will take a student through many of the most important rules and methods of using these tools now and in the future. Adults who need these same tools are also invited to join us. We won't blow your cover!

We decided to add a fourth Academic Essential Bootcamp to the summer workshop list: The fundamentals of College Writing is a four session class designed to give the fastest foundation to collegiate writing requirements available. If a student somehow never had time for our Skillful Scribbler (late middle school/early high school) or our semester courses Composition/ResearchWriting (11^th or 12^th grade), this little short workshop will get a student started for his or her first college tasks without (hopefully) needing a trip to the writing lab right away. Most underestimate how much more writing preparation is needed to achieve calm success in college assignments. This is a great last-minute patch to help any late-high school through early college student.

Student Email Etiquette Primer

Communicating in the Email Age: How Does One Get the Instructor to Answer Emails? 

-- By Regan Barr at The Lukeion Project, The Sassy Peripatetic #30

The subject line read “Welcome to Greek History – Instructions Attached.”
Clearly, someone had hit “reply” on an email that I had sent out several months ago. I was going through my morning office ritual, which begins with wading through 75 or more emails that had filled my Inbox while I was sleeping. I kept scanning until one email caught my attention. “Help! I can’t get into my quiz!”
I immediately jumped on that email. Here was a student who needed my help, and it was time-sensitive. The subject line might be a little over-dramatic, but it did its job; it clearly communicated the nature and urgency of the content and the frustration of the student who sent it. I opened the email, found out what the problem was, and shot back a response that the problem had been fixed.
I continued scanning. There’s another one with a months-old subject line: “Welcome to Greek History – Instructions Attached.” “That’s odd,” I thought, but it certainly didn’t look like a priority, so I kept scanning. By the time I encountered that same subject line a third time, I decided that I was dealing with one of two situations: either someone’s email was malfunctioning, or someone didn’t understand this new-fangled invention called email. I reluctantly and begrudgingly opened the email. “Why aren’t you answering me? I CAN’T SUBMIT MY RESEARCH PAPER! I’ve tried for hours and I sent you a message last night. Now the deadline has passed!”
Well, perhaps using a subject line that was 3 months old wasn’t your best move.
This kind of debacle (complete with accusations of blame, emotional distress, and crushed hopes and dreams) is far too common. Sometimes laziness is to blame, but sometimes people really don’t understand email etiquette. If you don’t want the recipient to completely ignore your email, or worse yet, be irritated by it, you should follow some simple email rules:

1. Always include a RELEVANT subject line.

This is more than just being courteous; it’s also the key to getting the recipient to open your email. Now I know that some people don’t understand this because they only get three emails a week, but gone are the days when people eagerly watched their computers awaiting the “You’ve got mail!” notification. Most people aren’t sitting on the edges of their seats hoping for an email from you. Instead, they’re rolling their eyes at the deluge of email garbage that assaults them each morning when they sit down at their computer.
Instructors, bosses, clients – people who wade through lots of email every day – usually approach the laborious task of email wrangling by focusing on two questions: what needs my immediate attention? and what can I delete without even opening it? An inappropriate subject line can land you in the second category, no matter how important the content of your email.
Those who are new to email are thinking, “Well, how rude! I can’t believe someone would delete an email without even opening it!” The rest of us, however, do it dozens of times a day just to maintain our sanity. Rude is expecting others to perceive the importance of an email that has a deceptive subject line.

2. Always IDENTIFY YOURSELF.

The email read “Mr. Barr, our electricity went out in the storm while I was entering my homework. Can I submit it a second time? – Frodo Baggins.” I was surprised to learn that I had such a famous literary character in my class, so my response was, “Although I’m very fond of hobbits, I’ll need to know who you actually are before I can answer.” The reply floored me: “Well, my mom says that I can never use my real name on the internet.” That makes re-setting homework very difficult.
When sending email to family or close friends, you often don’t need to identify yourself. I know and recognize any email that comes from a family member or close personal friend. But when emailing someone who receives dozens or hundreds of emails a day, like your teacher, your boss, or a customer service representative, give them everything they need to immediately gain some context. I ask my students to give me their full name, class, and time: John Doe, Greek 2, 10:00 am.
When you fail to include vital information, the result is usually a good deal of delay. If I’ve got nothing better to do, I might wander through my class rosters or wade into the student database on a quest to discover the identity of the mysterious sender. But here’s the thing: I ALWAYS have something better to do. My response is usually, “who is this, what class are you in, and which homework assignment are you talking about?” Several hours are usually lost while we play email tag – a game that most instructors really don’t like very much.

3. Always INCLUDE DETAILS.

“Mr. Barr, I can’t see the class recording.” There are many reasons why this might be the case. Here are a few that immediately come to mind: there’s a cat between you and your computer screen; your contact lens prescription is out of date; your computer monitor is turned off; you don’t know the password for the recording; you can’t find the recording link; you’re getting an error message; your power is out because of a storm… should I go on?
There’s simply no way to help this person until I’ve got more information. A lot of time would be saved by simply including that in the first email. If you’re getting an error message, please include what that message says in your email. If your cat is in the way, you’ll have to be creative and solve that one for yourself.
Failure to follow these three rules will result in frustration, wasted time, missed deadlines, and lost opportunities. Perhaps even more important, your recipient may become very irritated. That’s not something you want, especially if the recipient is your boss or your teacher!

More Keys to Memorization

Quid dicam de thesauro rerum omnium memoria?
What shall I say of memory, the repository of all knowledge? 
(Cicero - De senectute)

by Amy E. Barr

Homer, many would argue,* was the composer of the Iliad, an epic describing the almost final days of the Trojan war. I say “composer” nor writer because it is unlikely he had the luxury of being able to write down those 24 books of Greek poetry in dactylic hexameter since the Greek alphabet was still on the drafting table. Even if he was able to enjoy a beta test on that new Greek alphabet, he was blind, so there’s that.  Homer also composed and recited the Odyssey, the tale of Odysseus’ struggle to get home, in much the same way: all from memory. Both epics are 24 books written in meter (an arrangement of long and short syllabus) rather than rhyme.
*It is common for some to sneer that the Iliad and Odyssey were written by committee and perfected gradually over time rather than composed by Homer. First, I hate people that sneer but, second, I’ve never seen a convincing argument for how a committee would be able to write a better epic than a single author. These sneering types probably actually enjoy committee meetings. I bet they are the ones that regularly schedule them on Fridays before holidays. 

My point is this: Homer composed and recited and then MEMORIZED very long epics. As one might imagine, the need to memorize these epics (and others from this same early period) lasted quite a while until that Greek alphabet finished up the GoFundMe period and eventually launched. Even then, memorization continued. As an educated Greek or Roman person, one memorized parts, or even all of these epics, plus plenty more.

Memorizing fast amounts of information used to be standard. What happened to us? I think we forgot how the brain can do amazing things! While there are plenty of techniques you can use to memorize large quantities of information, I recommend two that everyone can use right away: writing and sleeping. Sleep is a fabulous study aid as long as you are not sleeping through the block of time scheduled study.

Rewire Your Brain Every Day 
Daily study alternating with other normal activities and a full night's sleep is the best stress-free way to soak up something complicated like Latin. I’ll use Latin as my example because I am a Latin teacher. These techniques work for anything complicated.  Try this: Spend about 8-12 minutes on vocabulary right before you go to sleep EVERY night. Your brain will work on it all night for you while you get some quality snoozing done. First thing in the morning, zoom through your deck once more. You’ll find your retention is pretty good! Your brain chewed on those facts for you all night.
Next, look at a chart of endings or forms that you taped to your bathroom mirror, just think them through while you are brushing your teeth. Then make yourself write them out quickly on a piece of scrap paper from memory. When you are riding in a car, spend 10 minutes flipping through flash cards or getting to know some noun or verb endings. Short study periods. No late-nighters.

LONG CRAM SESSIONS ARE A WASTE OF TIME
Cram sessions (when you sit for extended periods trying to ‘cram’ knowledge into your brain right before the test) don’t work. This rule is true for any complex body of knowledge like math formulae or points of history or scientific names for seaweed. Break up your study sessions into short periods (20 to 30 minutes) that are never longer than 45 minutes to an hour. Even on a day off, do 15 minutes of study (I like a ton of homemade flash cards or reading the chapter), but do this especially before you go to bed. I recommend that you involve as much writing and rewriting as possible. Got a stack of principal parts to learn? Tell yourself you can go to bed after you’ve written them all five times each.
People who play instruments are already familiar with this mastery method which is why musicians tend to be really good Latin learners. “Music makes you smarter” because it teaches you how to learn. Constant practice and repitition does the job in music and in language.

Use all your senses
You might be surprised to hear this, but I’m not a proponent of approaches that have you mindlessly chanting Latin all day. Most of those Latin learning systems don’t teach you much except for how to make an hour boring while your dog or cat looks at you funny. There IS, however, something to be said for employing multiple senses to memorize things. So chanting (or drawing, or writing, or listening) can be a great tool depending on your learning style. Most of us benefit from the simple act of writing things out because slowing the brain to carefully compose letters on paper is a big boon to mastery.
Just like you wouldn’t lift weights with only one arm, why study only one way? Work out different parts of your brain by using all your senses to memorize. Get creative:  Read, write, draw, doodle, pronounce, even act out your data list. Some attempt to write a story in Latin each week using that chapter’s vocabulary correctly. This technique can be done for most subjects.

Some create a pictorial system for flash cards, drawing a doodle for a term to help cement a concept visually. Others enlist a study buddy who is willing to help wflashcardssh cards on a regular basis. 
Remember, study some every day, write things out, and get a good night of rest. Your brain will double your efforts for you!

Roman Ghosts

Ave atque vale dis manibus

By Amy E. Barr

There’s a crisp feel in the air, your neighbors might be decorating their yard in zombie themes, and most people are planning on at least a slight uptick in sweet treats soon.  Now is the right time to serve up a seasonally appropriate topic of Classical ghosts. While Classical cultures generally enjoyed their occasional specters, it was the Romans who adored their ghost stories.

Now to clarify, I’m not talking about current Roman hauntings like this story from Hadrian’s Wall or this group of Roman soldiers sighted in 1953, York. The Romans themselves enjoyed ghosts of all sorts very much. They were also careful to tend their ghosts to keep them happy.

One of the best examples of ghosts with the most was the assortment from "the very helpful" di manes category that Vergil includes in the Aeneid. In book 1, we have Dido’s dead husband telling her to grab the gold and clear out quickly to found the city Carthage before her creepy brother could catch her. In book 2, we have a very grisly Hector telling Aeneas to wake up and leave Troy. Soon after that Aeneas’ (recently dead) wife, Creusa tells him to get a move on, thank you very much. Not satisfied with earthly specters, Vergil visits his hero to the di inferi and the fabulously eerie underworld (book 6), where Aeneas has an awkward conversation with recently dead Dido. Fortunately, Aeneas has a more fruitful exchange with dear-old-dead-dad who encourages him in fine Stoic fashion to follow his fates. Aeneas also runs into his freshly deceased helmsman who is in need of a nice burial.

That’s a pretty good body count! Clearly, Vergil considered ghosts to be the best way to advance a plot and hold a Roman audience. The Romans had certain rules about the type of dead person who might appear in dreams. Only friends and loved ones could pay a visit while you snoozed. When they did, they usually had dependable advice which should be immediately believed. Thus, Vergil describes these sorts of ghosts as extremely reliable sources of information.

Historian Pliny the Younger wrote this chilling ghost story, complete with rattling chains and a haunted house. This one serves as a good example of how properly level-headed Roman philosophers can help even an old dead guy, all while getting a great bargain on a house. My Latinists might want to try to translate this story from the Latin by visiting here.

Don't worry! Only improperly buried folks felt restless (and extra spooky) which made the Romans incredibly focused on the details of a proper burial. If you tended your dead well, the Romans reasoned, they would keep an eye on the whole family and even offer occasional advice. The friendly types were referred to as Di Manes. One would inscribe a memorial to them as dis minibus (or D.M., for short) which you can still see inscribed on even later Christian gravestones. The di manes were your friends and family but belonged to the larger category known as the di inferi, “those who live below.” 

February rather than October was the normal month for Romans to attend family graves which were all placed on the roads outside of town limits. If you ever visit Pompeii, be sure to take the path out of town to the Villa of the Mysteries to get a good look at the rows of Roman grades still in place there.

Old fashioned Diagramming, New Fashioned Comprehension

Do a little Google or Bing search and you’ll find a blog lamenting a sad plummet in basic grammar skills among modern English speakers. More times than not, the writer will opine that texting and tweeting are clearly to blame for the whole mess. After all, nobody is refining writing talents with “tnx ttyl omwh.” Any parent of a phone-owning teen must expect to master such mysteries quickly or miss the fact that your son just said, “Thanks, talk to you later. On my way home.”  I’m expected to respond with an appropriate emoji and count myself lucky that my teen remembers to text me when he starts his drive home. Is this playful form of communication to blame for the collapse of communications in the modern world? I say, “No!... At least not most of it.”

My middle school had three 6^th grade English classes. Students were assigned randomly to one of the three. My teacher, it turns out, was on the verge of retirement. He insisted that he finish his career teaching grammar the same way he had always taught it. I remember that he explained this to all of us as we were handed some primeval old textbooks. The other two classes were taught by much younger educators who welcomed the state’s largess of shiny new workbooks and “cutting edge” language arts methodology.

All three educators were unknowingly participating in an accidental experiment that would be years in the making. Two taught English “by immersion.” This trendy “new” method meant students were given stacks of worksheets and tasked with circling nouns, verbs, and other important tidbits in random paragraphs. A job well done meant students knew their parts of speech.

My teacher taught sentence diagramming.  OHHH, sentence diagramming was SOOO last decade! 

The other teachers openly scoffed at him for it. He didn’t care. 30 awkward 6^th graders were marched to the chalkboard to diagram sentences. By the end, we were fiercely competitive grammar tigers asking our teacher to throw us tougher and tougher challenges. Rawr.

That teacher retired soon after and sentence diagramming was no more. Language arts had modernized.

Fast forward to high school. Students were sorted into language arts classes once again but this time, with very few exceptions, the honors English program was populated by students from that old middle school sentence diagramming class.  Look at the top of the graduating class! Most were from that same middle school group. Most went on to some challenging college programs.

There is no mystery here. There’s a qualitative difference (to say the least) between learning to passively recognize what a noun looks like in random paragraphs and learning how the gears of English work, right down to the smallest mechanical elements. This is like the difference between a person who buys a watch because it is lovely and a person who is a watchmaker.  One recognizes beauty and can point out a few appealing features. The other can build the watch for himself or describe how another craftsman (Dickens, Longfellow, Shakespeare, Dickinson) built an even better masterpiece. Learning to diagram sentences makes you a watchmaker of English, not just a casual observer.

Over the next several months we at The Lukeion Project will be rolling out the first part of the print version of our celebrated Barbarian Diagrammarian™ program, which we continue to offer as a live synchronous spring semester class each year. We designed the Barbarian Diagrammarian™ program almost a decade ago when we discovered that most incoming high school students starting our Greek and Latin program needed help with English before they could hope to succeed at Latin or Greek. Very few had ever gone beyond being casual observers in their native tongue.

It isn’t enough to know the difference between a noun and a verb! What’s the difference between transitive and intransitive? Active and passive? Direct and indirect object? Adverbs vs. prepositions? Aspect vs. time? Dependent clauses introduced by subordinating conjunctions vs. relative clauses introduced by relative pronouns? Now considered advanced grammar, these foundational ideas used to be standard knowledge for middle school.

We are developing a multivolume self-paced program that will allow anyone, especially our middle school students, to become English masters. Expect our signature Barbarian Diagrammarian™ quirky style but now new and improved because story-telling and fantastic illustrations are the spoonful of sugar that will help the grammar go down. We brought a trial version of Volume I to our conferences this last summer and were thrilled to see students grab the book like it was a tasty new epic as they connected instantly with Leland the Barbarian and his buddy, Lambert. 

We’ll keep you posted as we get closer to pre-orders. For now, you should know there are only 6 seats left in our 2:15 PM ET Barbarian Diagrammarian spring 2019 semester class, so the Department of Shameless Self-Promotion says you should register right away or miss out.

3 Things your High-schooler needs for College Success

These Things May Not be What you Expect

Amy E. Barr

Everyone who teaches classes for The Lukeion Project has also taught (or is even currently teaching) at the college level. When we say our classes are college-prep, we don’t just mean they are a tad demanding and look good on a transcript. From the first day of our first semester-class, we have been preparing people to flourish in challenging academic environments. This includes everything from managing time well, to learning how to successfully self-advocate by communicating with instructors, to writing a properly analytical research paper.  

Through the years, Lukeion faculty periodically gather at the water cooler and have collectively grumbled and harrumphed about the following skills that are absolutely 200% necessary for best success in college:

1. Successful students know how to fail well. 

This is not to be confused with "fail a lot." 

Ask any modern collegiate professional and they’ll likely put this issue high on their list as well: Academic stakes have become so high and so expensive that many students and their parents feel they can't recover from even a minor academic failure!
Each semester a few of our students predictably withdraw immediately after earning their first low quiz score. Sometimes this happens at the very start of the semester. Worse, it even happens when most of the semester has already passed...sometimes after two semesters have passed. "Failure just isn't an option," they opine. But failure is always an option! Failure is also normal. Your student needs practice experiencing failure and productively recovering from it.
Giving up after a bad week or two was so rare a decade ago we used to be able to remember specific details. For example, I once had a student who quit Latin after the third semester because she scored a 96% instead of 97% on a weekly quiz. It was the first time she didn't earn an A+! Her mom withdraw her from the class, fully supportive of ending her daughter's Latin studies due to this "failure." Certainly, such extremes are rare but becoming less so each year. Such students will meander through 7 years of middle and high school without suffering, surviving, and growing from a single failure. They will have developed almost no life survival skills. Even the smallest failure will eventually bring a catastrophe of epic proportions.

The qualities needed to endure a setback and return stronger are summed up as “grit.” Students must know how to have a bad week or two and still land on their feet. Second chances, no firm deadlines, and daily do-overs may seem like a great way to keep your kid happy but, be careful! Persistently protecting a child from failure will do the worst type of damage. Shielding kids from failure will never develop confidence, self-esteem, or resilience but rob them of those things most cruelly.

2. Successful students have lots of practice in academic writing.

In elementary school, even the most hesitant writer can be induced to produce when assigned creative writing projects. Limericks are tons more fun than book reports so creative projects rule the day. 

Too often students are never transitioned to academic writing until very late in their high school years, if ever. Aside from a rare few classes in college, students will never again be asked to produce creative writing projects. Lab reports, academic essays, research projects, literary analyses, and peer critiques are on their college schedule. Students won’t be taught how to write these things in college. If they don't know what they are doing, they will be assigned to a remedial course (code for “expensive class that doesn’t count toward graduation”) or they will require long hours with a tutor at the writing lab. All of our literature courses, history, and Latin 3 and beyond (including Transition), have academic writing requirements to help grow these necessary skills. 

3. Successful students have good time management.

Help students move toward independence by quitting your job as manager early in the teen years. There are plenty of job openings available in mentoring. Mentor was a character developed by Homer in his epic, the Iliad. Athena, disguised as Mentor, helps teenaged Telemachus safely cross the bridge to adulthood with timely words of advice. The modern idea is no different. A mentor does not manage the phone, calendar, and computer while handling every detail of a child’s life. Instead, she offers timely guidance while the young person does the hard work of navigating life himself. 

Parents must let adolescents do the legwork and heavy lifting now while there’s a safety net in place. Let your teen make his own arrangements with employers, pack leaders, teachers, and tutors. Let him coordinate his own details to find rides, attend a class, or practice a sport. When illness strikes, let her ask for make-up extensions on her own--even when she has the sniffles and doesn't feel like writing that email. 

The biggest obstacle to practicing this skill is the well-meaning parent. If you are an excuse-maker (“he didn’t finish because he was tired”), a second-chance giver (“please let her take the missed quiz”), or an extension-granter (“he is pretty busy, so you should give him extra time”) you’ll likely have a student who struggles with time-management issues. Your teenager will expect extensions and second chances from everyone if he has always gotten them from you.   

So Your Child wants to Be a Classics Major…

What's Next?

Amy E. Barr

"To study Latin is to encounter face to face the smartest, funniest, most beautiful minds that have ever lived."
—R. J. Teller

“Have her take Latin,” they said. “It will be good for her,” they said. Now 4 years of Latin and a couple years of Greek later she wants to be a Classics major. Is she going to be living in my basement for the rest of her life?

Ok, nobody has ever phrased it just this way, but I can read it on your face when you visit me at my talks at homeschool conferences. What’s in store for a student who has become so passionate about Latin or Greek that she wants to major in it? Is this something you should encourage, or should you press hard to steer your student toward a nice reliable S.T.E.M. degree or maybe Communications? I often have students who eagerly desire to continue studying Classical languages but the "more knowledgeable adults" in their lives have told them they must concentrate on more “lucrative” college-prep choices. Is Classics really such a bad plan for college?

While, like all academic fields, a future in philology offers assurances of neither luxury nor lucre. Classical languages and a Classics degree will surely take your student down some amazing roads. Fortunately, I ignored my mother’s grumblings when I decided to be a Classical archaeologist and philologist. In these crucibles, I discovered a practical passion for teaching paired with hundreds of glorious adventures in Mediterranean archaeology. I needed both.

As we finish our thirteenth year of teaching live-online at The Lukeion Project, we now have students who already pursued in full or in part, continued college and graduate level education in philology. They are now professional writers, lawyers, professors, historians, archaeologists, lawyers, parents, police officers, videographers, and creative professionals, to name only a few. Since you don't personally know our students, you can find lists of notable people online who were Classics majors who went on to make significant contributions to the world. That's great, you say, but what do mere mortals “do” with a degree in Classics?

Lukeion students enjoy an advantage. They often know before college begins that they wish to either major or minor in Classics (sorry, not sorry). Most people won’t have the opportunity to even try Latin or Greek until college, normally as late as their junior year. Can you say 6-year undergraduate degree?

If you want to pursue Classics, you can earn a BA in Classics. Most of these are more interdisciplinary and include Latin, Greek, or both plus history, culture, art history, archaeology. If you earn a BA in Classical Languages (working toward proficiency in both Latin and Greek) you'll spend more time on just the languages. These undergraduate degrees equip students to teach at the pre-college level or to go on to graduate programs in religion (Greek), Medieval Studies (Late Latin), Archaeology, Philosophy, Ancient History, Art History, or Classics (both languages).

If you earn the BA in Classics, are you stuck with getting a graduate degree that specifically deals with Latin and or Greek or will the degree prepare you for other things? Classics has consistently been viewed as one of the strongest liberal arts degrees a student can earn. Classics majors are trained as skilled communicators in writing and speech plus they have been taught to think critically and express themselves analytically. Classics majors are naturally suited to graduate degrees in law, sciences, medicine, communications, journalism, and so much more. Ever heard of Jerry Brown, governor of CA? Raymond Teller of the famous magic team Penn and Teller? Ted Tuner? J.K. Rowling? All these famous communicators are Classics majors.

Want more? Go here.

5 Best Ways to Memorize Tricky Things

Everyone Can Have this Superpower

Amy E. Barr, The Lukeion Project

"To observe attentively is to remember distinctly." ~Edgar Allan Poe

Being able to memorize tricky things is better than a superpower. Only a few people get to have super powers and super suits, but nearly anyone can learn how to memorize tricky things. Sure, shape-shifting and mega-strength will make you more popular at parties, but memorization skills can take you from a mild-mannered denizen of dull to a rocket scientist, brain surgeon, brilliant botanist, or illustrious archaeologist.

Stylish modern pedagogy (a fancy term for teaching techniques) has turned a pouty frown towards this old skill, to the detriment of all. Teachers are taught to promote using “tools” instead of boring old-fashioned memorization. “Why waste brain space on memorization,” they argue, “if you can learn to master tools like computers and search engines?’

Can you imagine Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot asking the inspector to wait a few minutes while he checks his smartphone for information? Can you imagine your surgeon needed to pause every few minutes during a life-saving procedure to look stuff up online? What would have happened to the Iliad and Odyssey if Homer had not been able to memorize all those lines of epic poetry he'd composed in his mind?

This time of year at The Lukeion Project, we have our Witty Wordsmith, Latin 1, and Greek 1 students coming to--for many--their very first big memorization challenge. Most survive admirably. Others? Not so much! 

Fret no more! Here are the top FIVE ways to start memorizing tricky things right now:

1.  Repeat it

This seems like an obvious first step but if you are new to memorizing things you may be unaware of how MUCH repetition is needed. It takes, on average, 8 exposures to a new vocabulary word before you recognize it at all, much less with speed. Parents: If your learner sits down to a digital deck of vocabulary cards once and performs poorly on the quiz, there’s nothing wrong with your child’s brain but there is something wrong with her methods. It takes 5 to 10 repetitions with a hand-printed paper deck of flash cards that can be shuffled, flipped, and shuffled again to get the job done.

2. Sense it

Gone are the days when chanting alone helps anyone but the small minority known as audio learners. Audio learners were once the majority in the screenless, computer-less, YouTube-less days of yore. Visual learners rule today, and they need to use more senses, especially the ones that employ their eyes. If you have something to memorize, draw it, write it, speak it, illustrate it, journal it, demonstrate it.

3. Teach it

If you are a homeschool parent, this one should be obvious. If you have been homeschooling for a while you know how much you are learning (we’ll say “re-learning”) from all those years of being a passive listener in a school desk. Teaching tricky things to others will force you to learn those tricky things quickly. If your shy little thing doesn’t want to teach it, have him journal it, write out an explanation as if he were sending a letter to a student.

4. Shuffle it

Ever notice when you want to alphabetize things you find yourself singing the Alphabet Song? When our students learn Latin or Greek, they must learn a lot of information that is initially presented in chart forms such as the endings of a noun or the forms of a verb. We call these paradigms. Many learners can reproduce a paradigm perfectly but utterly fail to recognize the various components of that paradigm when translating an actual sentence or recognizing a word form joined to another Greek or Latin stem. Always turn the various parts of each chart into separate flash cards to aid the student in rapid identification outside of chart form. Students must recall the individual parts of a paradigm to make use of those parts. Therefore, we don’t promote a ton of those cute memorization songs. Students can learn a zippy tune but none of that helps if they can’t pull apart the smallest pieces of the puzzle.

5.  Visualize & vocalize it

Rapidly build your brain’s storehouse of tricky things by associating visual cues with new words. This can be as basic as making all nouns in your deck a certain color while prepositions are another. Artistic students might draw a little doodle. Anyone can pair a visual idea of a word or grammar concept as they memorize it. Don’t leave out SAYING the word to yourself even as you visualize it. In the first assignment of Latin 1 the textbook includes a Latin sentence with the Latin word labor. You would be surprised by how many students send me a distressed note complaining this word is not in their vocabulary list and they have no idea what it means. I invariably tell them, “say it aloud and see if that helps.” It always does.