The Roman Shoe Project: A Guest Speaker from Left Field

At the beginning of the school year, our school district asked all teachers and students to take a RIASEC assessment. I had never heard of RIASEC before. In case you haven't either, it's a personality test based on the work of mid-century psychologist John Holland who believed that people are happiest when they have jobs that align with their personalities. I was none too surprised that I tested as a SOCIAL person, one who enjoys helping others and teaching. If you want to see the other categories and their matched careers, you can look here. Because Louisiana graduation rates are some of the lowest in our country, our district likes its middle schools to introduce careers to our students whenever we can. I must admit, I didn't seriously think about what I wanted to be until I was in college. I wish I had met an archaeologist sooner. It may have changed my mind...

That's the idea behind my principal's push to get professionals in our classrooms whenever we can - get kids thinking. So when I asked my Facebook friends who work with leather if they would consider to talking to my students, I got an unexpected surprise. My former colleague's husband runs a wonderful business called "The Glove Doctor." Chad Chenevert repairs leather baseball and softball gloves! And he was SO gracious to visit with my students to talk about his work.

Did you know that leather gloves can last for the entire career of a player? Did you know that they can cost 100s of dollars? Here's one you probably knew, but I'm just so out of this loop that I didn't know. Gloves are specialized based on the position of the player! It makes total sense, but I really didn't know that. You can probably tell that I love to learn about pretty much everything. In addition to all this cool information, Chad presented to the kids on the history of baseball gloves and even talked about leather tanning too. Then, he told the story of how he got into fixing gloves for his son's teammates and eventually for LSU players and even some professionals. 

After the kids asked him a million questions, Chad showed the kids some of the tools he uses to repair gloves and condition new ones. They loved this wooden mallet, used to break in new gloves. He also let them look at the different colored leather cord available for stringing gloves. Some players like to get their gloves strung in the colors of their school.

Overall, it was fascinating to see that the tools Chad uses to work with leather are nearly the same as the ones used by ancient shoemakers: awls, knives, needles. Chad's wife Michelle, a tech guru at my old school, made the above image for us using AI. The kids got the biggest kick out of it, but I thought it was perfect - even though the Romans would not have used baseball gloves, it's a great reminder of the similarities between ancient and modern leatherworking.

Asking working adults to spend half a day away from their work to talk to my students is hard for me. I honestly hate to do it because I know that everyone is busy, but I have never had an adult say that they didn't enjoy sharing what they do with the students. And the kids had a blast learning about this unique work. 

Thanks a million to Chad for being so generous with his time and knowledge. If you need a glove doctor, he should be your first stop.

The Roman Shoe Project: Baby Steps with BULLAE

With all the fascinating information out there about ancient Roman leather shoes, I knew that I would have plenty of lessons to share with my students. But, we needed to start small so the kids could learn how to work with leather and its traditional tools.

Our first project was making our own Roman bullae. These ceremonial necklaces were given to children at age 9. The archaeological record gives us numerous ones made of gold and goldplate, but a couple of Roman authors refer to ones made of leather. You can see our notes on these (and some pictures in this slide deck). Female students were happy to learn of the existence of the lunula, given to girls with the same purpose in mind.

My first step was to create a pattern for both shapes so that students could choose either one (you can see that pattern here). Although ancient children would not have had a choice, ancient children would not have been making their own leather bulla either so I figured why not? I had several students choose the opposite shape because they simply liked the way the shape looked. They also needed practice with tracing a pattern since most students had no sewing experience. For this project, we used thin-tempered (pliable) chrome-tanned scrap leather that is available from craft stores for very cheap (this bag is only $10).

From the get-go, I knew that I would not be teaching my students about leather-working knives because they are a bit too sharp for my liking. I don't normally shy away from sharp tools (my students are learning how to use awls, for example), but knives seemed a step too far. Thus, we've been practicing with scissors. And if you're using scissors in your classes, I hope you're training your students how to walk safely and slowly when retrieving these for use. Before we began this unit on leatherworking, I had each of my students take notes on the different tools and how to use them safely and then commit on paper with a safety pledge. Advice from someone who uses tools often in class - never skimp on safety.

After tracing the patterns onto leather, the students got to work on cutting them out. The next step was to learn how to use leather punches and awls to make holes where the bullae and lunulae would be sewn up around the edges. They folded the pattern over so that their holes would be in the same spots on both sides of the leather. Did they do this properly? Not in all cases, but this was part of the reason why I wanted them to practice on a smaller project first...before we use expensive leather for our shoes.

Next, the students had to sew their leather necklaces shut. Did students need lots of help threading needles and using thread? Of course. Did that stop me from doing this project? Nope. Some projects test my patience and that of my students, but is that a deciding factor? Nope. Students (and teachers) need to practice patience and resilience.

Last, the students chose special objects to put in their necklace pouches. One student chose a silver dollar his dad had given him for good luck. Another chose a crystal he had been keeping on his desk at home. I wish we had more evidence about what the Romans put in theirs.

All in all, this project was a good one to introduce the students to simple leather working tools and techniques. It also yielded wearable items! I see my students wearing them all the time as if they are super proud of them. As they should be.

Note to teachers looking to replicate this project, but without the tools or actual leather: former Latin teacher Ginny Lindzey has a great lesson on it posted on her Website in which she uses foil to recreate the bullae.

The Roman Shoe Project: Stepping into Hands-on History

I've been MIA from blogging for the past couple of months because this project has demanded my full attention. We have really been busy. Let me start from the beginning!

During the pandemic, I became a huge fan of watching online lectures by archaeologists. The Archaeological Institute of America offered (and still does) monthly lectures for free, and it was at one of these that I learned of the leather collection at the site of Vindolanda on Hadrian's Wall in northern England. Dr. Elizabeth M. Greene spoke about the Roman shoes that she has excavated through years of work there. She explained that the soil of Vindolanda is particularly anaerobic and preserves leather very well. Archaeologists have found hundreds of shoes at this site, once a fort and town on the edge of the empire. Some of the shoes, found in a waste area of the town, had been discarded by those moving on to other places. Some may have been lost. Some were found with their twin. I was intrigued by these shoes and the stories they might tell us.

Shockingly, the shoes look almost modern. It's pretty easy to see how they were designed and tooled. I immediately began thinking about how I could incorporate ancient leathercraft into my Roman Technology classes. In years past, the students have made their own leather bullae, or childhood protective amulets. They used small leather punches to make holes in scrap leather I purchased, and then they sewed the little pouches shut with twine, enclosing a special tiny object for themselves before putting on their necklaces. "Could we make shoes too?" I started to wonder.

In the summer of 2023, I was fortunate to receive a travel scholarship from the National Latin Exam. I designed my own trip to Roman Britain, and of course, Vindolanda was on my list. I wanted to see its famed shoes myself! You can peruse my collection of leather shoe photographs here.

When I arrived for my visit to the archaeological site, I was touched to see this sign at the entrance. It REALLY got me thinking about studying shoes. The old adage goes, "Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes." My students can learn deeply about the daily lives of the Romans we study by recreating their shoes.

Most information about the classical world comes from literature written by wealthy, upper-class male citizens. They had the time and resources to write about their lives. But what about the others? Women, children, enslaved people, craftspeople? I want my students to learn about them too. Hands-on history projects like creating leather shoes allow students a window into the daily lives of people whose voices aren't often heard in literature.

So, can we do it? The students will be learning about the sources of leather in the ancient world, about the tanning process, about the craftspeople who made shoes, and about the people who wore them. We'll then design and craft our own Roman-style leather sandals or boots before experimenting with their use in our daily lives. We'll be making "footsteps into the past."

This Year in Roman Technology: Celebrating the End of the Semester with Food Technology

When I told my students that we would be studying Roman food processing and technology, they were super excited. Teenagers like to eat! It all started way back a the beginning of the semester, and nothing went as planned.

Way back in August, after we painted, crashed, and then reconstructed little gardening pots to learn about potsherds in archaeology, we decided to recycle our pots for growing seeds. We had a plan in place to grow Roman herbs that we could use for our food unit in December. It all started with a book I had picked up in England when I visited in 2023 to do a self-directed tour of Roman Britain (see my Website here). Ryley's Roman Gardens and Their Plants intrigued me because not only were the illustrations beautiful, but they also contained information about the uses of each plant and their origins. I've also long been a fan of archaeologist Wilhelmina Jashemski's plant root casting in Pompeii. If you haven't heard of her work, look here for fascinating information about how archaeologists identified plants long gone from the gardens of ancient Roman cities. Before we ate Roman food, I wanted the students to have a little bit of information about how the Romans grew that food. What better way to learn than to do!

After a short presentation on Roman gardening (in which I told the students that to remain authentic to Roman methodology, I had saved my poop to use as fertilizer for our project - don't worry, they only believed me for a few seconds until I couldn't hold back a smile), the students used their pots to plant celery, parsley, fennel, oregano, thyme, sage, basil, etc. Here's where the plan went awry. A certain woodworking volunteer (who may or may not have been my dad) was supposed to deliver some raised gardening beds to our school. Unfortunately, he didn't get them to us in time before our little sprouting seeds died. Luckily, at this time in the year, my students were caught up in catapult design so they weren't too disappointed.

Seeds sprouting into Roman herbs

We picked back up with our food unit in late November in a lesson on wine production and tasting. Now...before you think I actually serve wine to middle school kids, just know that I tell them to tell their parents that. Just for a laugh. We use grape juice. I make mulsum (honeyed wine) by boiling the grape juice and dissolving the honey into it. Which reminds me...have you ever read Apicius' recipe for mulsum? The amount of honey needed boggles the mind and has to be wrong, but I digress. Recipes are a great way to introduce the students to the Apicius tradition.

After a lesson on wine production technology, the students taste the "wine," to which we add different seasonings found in Apicius: pepper, coriander, and toasted barley. The students really enjoy this experience because they think peppered wine will taste terrible. (It doesn't!) I grind the ingredients fresh in my classroom mortar and see if they can guess what they are by the smell. How many lessons do we teach where the nose and the tongue do the learning? Not enough!

Next up, it's Roman bread - so many archaeological sources for bread and grain grinding technology! And I can't write this post without thinking of the amazing Farrell Monaco, experimental food archaeologist, who has covered panis quadratus and many other ancient bread recipes and techniques. You should read her blog regularly if you're interested in exarc. For our lesson, we followed her recipe for Cato's grape must biscuits.

A ball of Cato's grape must biscuit dough

Since I wanted to have the kids create their own food as much as possible, I had to divide up the recipe into 25 parts per class. I'm glad I enjoyed math as much as I did in high school and college - I needed it! It was around this time that my classroom sink decided to be clogged which required us to take not one but two trips to the hall bathroom for hand-washing sessions. It's times like these that I'm grateful for our custodian, Mr. Chris, who is the G.O.A.T. anticipating what we need to make our classes work. Before mixing our ingredients, we studied the harsh conditions that enslaved people and animals endured in the grain mills. To see what grinding grain was like, the students ground different grains in mortars with pestles - not exactly like the ancient method, but the hardness of the grain was a surprise to them. We used a little of the ground-up grain in our biscuit recipe.

Grinding grain is hard work.

Our next lesson was all about Roman bread ovens and how they worked. We studied the Tomb of the Baker and ovens that were excavated in Pompeii. It was then time for the most exciting lesson of the unit: baking our biscuits in hand-made ovens. I learned to make these surprisingly effective cardboard ovens in Girl Scouts - they work SO well. The kids lined the inside of large copy-paper boxes with foil to protect the cardboard from heat. Then, we placed metal pie pans filled with charcoal underneath them. Over the charcoal, we rested the biscuit pans on recycled soda cans filled with water (for weight). If you've never seen one, take a look at this video. The simple technology in these ovens simulates the Roman ones easily. Parents helped to get the charcoal lit and ready to go while the students prepared their biscuits for baking. We had SUCH a good time! But we weren't done learning.

Baking Cato's grape must biscuits in our cardboard ovens.

Our last lesson was one I adapted from a participant in last summer's nerd camp: The Ancient Olympics and Daily Life in Ancient Olympia: A Hands-On History. I co-directed this K-12 Summer Institute sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities last July, and one of the best things about it was inspiring and guiding the teacher participants in developing their own hands-on history lessons. One of those participants, Catherine Daun of Cicero Preparatory Academy in Scottsdale, Arizona, did a wonderful lesson on Roman cheesemaking. I enjoyed it so much that I promised myself I'd use aspects of it in my Roman Tech class this year. It was a perfect addition to our food unit! Making the cheese was so much easier than I expected - basically, boil some milk and then add vinegar as a coagulant at the end. The curds appear as if by magic, floating to the top of the whey. After learning about Roman cheese-pressing technology, the students pressed their own cheese right in class before seasoning it and eating it on their biscuits. 

Squeezing some cheese

Now, I'm sitting here watching them take a short test on our food unit. They had to write about what foods and drinks they would serve at their own Roman dinner banquet. It was a scene! We now transition to our big experimental archaeology unit on ancient Roman leather shoes, starting in January. I'm almost too tired. Almost.

Can You Dig It? An Evening of Hands-On History and Archaeology

As a kid, I was obsessed with paleontology and archaeology. I kept a human femur in my bedroom and dug up the dental tools discarded by an ancestor behind my grandparents' hundred-year-old house. I collected road kill skeletons of animals whose lives ended along the busy road in front of my childhood home. I read the Childcraft dinosaur volume over and over again. After my dream of becoming an archaeologist was killed by my mother at the age of 10 (a famous story in our family), I became a teacher. And it's always been an unspoken goal of mine to get students interested in archaeology. Every August when I teach Roman Technology, I begin the year with a unit on archaeology. You can read more about that in this blog post.

When I became a Grosvenor Teacher Fellow with National Geographic and Lindblad Expeditions, I knew I would have a unique opportunity to bump up this effort even more. Thus, this year we are doing a book study of Mark Aronson's If Stones Could Speak: Unlocking the Secrets of Stonehenge, the story of an unlikely pair of archaeologists who make a ground-breaking discovery about this famous UNESCO World Heritage Site. Each time we read a chapter together, the students reflect on what they've learned in their National Geographic Explorer Mindset journal, that I created so that my students can document their learning about travel.

We are also planning a trip to Poverty Point, Louisiana's only UNESCO World Heritage Site. I wanted my students, many of whom have never traveled outside of Louisiana, to explore the world through national parks and UNESCO World Heritage sites. I've also been holding training meetings to get my students ready for travel - how to visit a museum, how to use your phone appropriately, how to travel on a boat or plane, etc. If you've never done these things, you need to learn. I didn't fly on a plane (not counting returning from my dad's military service in Hawaii as a 2-year-old) until I was 22. I want to be sure that my students have the most successful travel experiences so that they will want to continue traveling after this year. Our trips will be happening in March and April so expect more information on our preparation and experiences in a future blog post.

When my students learn new things, they get excited, and I like to harness that excitement by challenging them to act as "presenters" at outreach fairs. These fairs serve two purposes: 1. they validate the knowledge that my students have acquired as they practice sharing it, and 2. they work as outreach initiatives to younger children (and adults) - who wouldn't want to study archaeology or classics when learning how to play an ancient game or excavate a tiny archaeological site? I've done big outreach fairs for the past three years by partnering with our local Louisiana Art and Science Museum in downtown Baton Rouge for All STEM Leads to Rome. My students act as presenters at learning stations that center STEM activities from the ancient Roman world: mini-catapults, ancient ink, Roman tic-tac-toe, bridge designing and arch building, and arranging stone mosaics. The kids really enjoy it, and many use it to add service hours in organizations like Beta Club.

My fellowship with National Geographic asks that we sponsor a student-led outreach event so I thought that adapting this already popular and fun fair into an archaeology outreach one would be a perfect way for my students to show off their knowledge and get the community involved. Planning started in August when I asked our state Division of Archaeology to partner with us. If you're a classics teacher who hasn't already called your local division to visit your classroom, WHY NOT? Sometimes, they even have an archaeologist who is also a classicist. Classics has so much to learn from archaeology. Ask me for more info if you need it.

I also applied for an archaeology outreach grant from the Archaeological Institute of America. We received $500 from this organization which will pay for all our expenses. We'll also be able to reuse many of these items for our next event coming up in April. I thank them MIGHTILY for their support!

After getting our local archaeologists on board, my students requested what they wanted to showcase at the event. I wanted the activities to reflect the skills and jobs of archaeologists. So, In addition to tried and true hands-on history activities such as arch building, mosaics, oak gall ink and papyrus, and rota game boards, they added the following:

1. WHAT IS THIS THING? One of my students has a 3-D printer and printed dodecahedrons for visitors to handle. After giving them a little archaeological information about these mysterious objects, visitors were asked to guess what they were used for, write down their answer and phone number on a card, and put them in a box. We drew from the box for prize winners during the event. Visitors LOVED this activity.

2. POTTERY RECONSTRUCTION The students decorated little terracotta flower pots with black sharpie markers to mimic ancient pottery. We then broke them into sherds. The students helped visitors put them back together using tape.

3. UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITE MATCH The students picked famous sites that most visitors would recognize. We created a board for them to match up the pictures to the countries where the sites were located. Anyone who matched them up correctly got their names put in a box for a prize pick. Simple but effective!

4. ZEUS PHOTO BOOTH We had planned to have just a photo booth with National Geographic yellow rectangles to use for frames, but my students went harder. I had crocheted a Zeus beard last year to make the kids laugh, but one student asked if he could BE Zeus and pose with visitors. I thought this was a FANTASTIC idea and approved it. He wore an old toga I had made years ago. We combined the photo booth with a vintage National Geographic magazine giveaway station where visitors could peruse donated magazines and take one home with them to read.

Add to these activities the amazing booth that the Divison of Archaeology arranged. The education outreach director, Mrs. Josetta LeBoeuf, and her assistant developed two activities for this event. One invited visitors to create sand art to learn about archaeological stratigraphy - BRILLIANT, and very popular with the kids. In the other, they adapted the tried and true "dig box" excavation by using tiny boxes preloaded with "artifacts" (tiny objects) hidden in dirt and mulch. They spread plastic tablecloths on the floor so that messes were easily cleaned up afterward. It was AMAZING! They also brought along lots of free archaeology merch like pins that said "Future Archaeologist," coloring books, and fold-up meter sticks.

We held the event in our school gym from 5 to 7 PM, and we hosted about 150 people (excluding the 55 kids that participated). Our librarian also hosted a night of shopping at the annual book fair in the nearby library. Many families brought younger siblings and other random children. The prize giveaway really rocked everyone's world too. We gave a prize about every 15 to 20 minutes. I stood in the middle of the gym with my mic on and announced the winner. Everyone would clap and scream. The child would run over and give me a hug before proceeding to the prize box.

The final prize, an arch block-building kit, was given to a child who had completed our passport system. The students helped me design and fold special little book passports which you can see a video of here. This system incentivized attending all the stations. Each station had a spot in the passport book to get stamped. These also gave us a way to contact families who attended so we could get feedback from them about the event.

On the day after the event, my students and I spent time talking about how to improve it, whether we wanted to do it again, and what other themes we might incorporate in the future. They immediately seized on the idea of having a mythology outreach fair with a table for each Greek god and an activity related to that god. Students really do enjoy sharing what they learn. I was so touched to have a parent reach out and say that she was proud of her son for being Zeus and that this meant she was a queen now. LOL. A school board member attended with her children and raved about how impressed she was by the students. Feedback was very positive - all attendees gave us 5 stars. One said, "The stations all appealed to a wide age range of kids. There were lots of activities and the presenters were engaging and informative." Another said, "I feel like this is exactly the kind of event schools should be offering to the community: a variety of activities, accessible to all ages, learning while having fun, all of it hands-on and interactive. The presenters took their roles so seriously and were so impressive! The enthusiasm for the subject was palpable, and everyone seemed to have a great time." Here's to many more!  

Kids love putting together a Roman arch!

Writing on papyrus with oak gall ink.

Putting together a Solomon's Knot mosaic.

The merch table!

The magazine giveaway table

This Year in Roman Technology: Invisible Ink and Other Delights

Got your attention? Haha. Who wouldn't want to know how to make invisible ink? And we finally figured it out this month!

This month, my Roman Technologists learned about writing, not literature, but the physical practice of writing. Different tools, different inks, different surfaces.  

We started by writing on papyrus. And I know you're thinking, "But that's not very Roman." My definition of Roman Technology in the context of this class is anything used, invented, or adapted by the ancient Romans. And they used papyrus quite a bit. We didn't make our own this time around. If you're interested in doing so, you should check out Dr. Dan Leon at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who grows his own papyrus plants and harvests for this purpose. I got to try it out with him this past summer at my NEH-sponsored K-12 teacher institute. It was FUN and smellier than I imagined. (If we can get our little RoTech garden rolling - more on this in a later post - we will definitely be trying out some native species to use in class projects.) 

We tried out three different inks that the Romans may have used.

1. SEPIA: Pliny the Elder mentions squid sac ink although not entirely related to writing, more for dyeing. Although smelly, it's easy to purchase since it's used in fancy dishes like pasta Nero, and it's easy to thin out with water and use with a reed pen. The kids enjoy this smelly activity.

2. ATRAMENTUM: The Romans used this ink, made from lamp black and gum arabic, most heavily. It's easy to replicate with a little carbon powder and water. Caligraphers still use this ink today, and I was amazed (and horrified) to see how it's made - surely the Romans would have used a similar method to produce this ink?

3. OAK GALL INK: This ink is endlessly entertaining to teach students about especially when the galls needed to produce the ink can be found by the students themselves on our school's campus. The students had so much fun foraging for these tree growths, caused by a tiny, harmless wasp, under the shady oak trees that populate our lunch picnic area. Sidenote: I'm really proud of an article I wrote about oak galls that was recently published by Science Friday. You can read it here. When one of my students found out about this article, he told me that he would go home and tell his parents he knew someone famous! LOL

In addition to different ink types, my students also tried writing on wax tablets, and for the first time ever, we tried out ink tablets, tiny wooden tablets written on with atramentum and bound by leather cord, like the ones found at Vindolanda. 

Last, I made tiny plaster walls for each of my students to try scratching graffiti into. I poured plaster into small disposable plastic saucers and then I painted them with colors common in Roman times: black and blue. After learning about Roman graffiti, the students assumed a Roman persona and then used Roman cursive letters to scratch some graffiti into their tiny walls. Partner students then interpreted the message as best they could. The kids mentioned this as their favorite writing surface!

My personal favorite was making invisible ink. I knew that it could be done. Philo of Byzantium, an ancient Greek engineer of the 3rd century BCE, used the chemical process behind producing oak gall ink to write secret messages. In his Compendium of Mechanics, he describes how when at war, “Letters are written on a felt hat on the skin after smashing gallnuts and steeping them in water. When they dry, letters become invisible, but if ‘flower of copper’ (or iron) is ground in water like black (ink) and a sponge is filled with water, when (the letters) are moistened with the sponge, they turn visible.” This kinda sounds like gobbledygook, but I know what he means. Step 1 - My students wrote on papyrus with a weak oak gall ink solution. Step 2 - They added ferrous sulfate (crushed iron) to water and mixed. Step 3 - After the invisible oak gall ink had dried on the papyrus, they dipped their fingers into the iron solution and rubbed it over the dried invisible ink. Step 4 - They were amazed when the chemical reaction between the tannic acid in the oak gall ink and the iron combined to turn the invisible ink a dark black color. Fun times!! You can see the magic in this YouTube video we made.

We'll be showcasing our invisible ink in a couple of upcoming outreach events. And I've been asked to appear at a Shakespeare Festival coming up in the spring. Oak gall ink was widely used across Europe and early America into the 1800s. In fact, it was the ink favored by Leonardo Da Vinci and the founders of our country who used it to write the Declaration of Independence.

Here are a few of the oak galls we harvested during our foraging session under the oaks at school. There were SO many different types. Jim Bentley, a teacher friend I met through the Grosvenor Teacher Fellowship (with National Geographic and Lindblad Expeditions) is cataloging and photographing the galls that his students find in the oaks at their school in California. He shoots multiple images over time, and he realized that the larva his students found was alive. As I was telling me students this story, one of my students said that he thought a wasp was emerging from a gall in was holding in his hand. He was right!!! We put the gall on my desk and let her slowly emerge. She was soooo tiny and cute. 

Our adventures continue as we head into a unit on ancient Roman food production. We'll be making ancient Roman bread, cheese, and trying out some herbs we've grown in our newly-built garden. More on that later. We've been super busy this month preparing for our outreach event centered on archaeology, Can You Dig It? More on that coming soon!

This Year in Roman Technology: Catapults

I never really thought much about ancient Roman catapults, to be honest. Even with 7 years of college, two classics degrees, and archaeological study abroad in Italy and Greece. Catapults were never on my radar. That all changed when, on Friday, May 5, 2000 (I remember the exact date), I saw the Ridley Scott movie Gladiator. And if you've seen it too, you already know what I'm going to say. That first scene, right? OMG. If you haven't seen it, stop what you're doing and go watch it right now. It depicts the highly-organized, brute strength of the Roman legions attacking the "German horde" painted as an unsophisticated mass of dirty barbarians. A bit cliched, yes, but the weapons were unlike anything I had ever seen...or heard: the thump of the exploding pots of burning oil hurled by the giant onagers, the whiz of the huge ballista arrows, and the whoosh of the fiery arrows shot by the archers. The whole spectacle made me re-think the experience of war. Who considers the SOUND of war? Maybe I'm in the minority amongst Latin teachers, but I loved the movie, warts and all. 

Many years later, I read Vitruvius' description of a Roman scorpion in Book X of his De Architectura. I was fascinated, and cursory searches on the internet found numerous replicas based on his writing, the most descriptive being this one by Wade Hutchison and Steve Godfrey. As I was contemplating projects for the first iteration of my Roman Technology class, I very much wanted to work on catapults, but unlike Hutchison and Godfrey, I had none of the wood-working skills that are absolutely essential for such a project. I turned my attention elsewhere that year and forgot about catapults.

A year later, I was working in EBR Schools at the #BestMiddleSchoolInTheParish teaching Roman Technology, and I was selected for a STEM fellowship. Fellows got mentorship with a STEM teacher who helped us to develop projects for our programs. I was so fortunate to meet Heather Howle, a STEM teacher who had written her own curriculum and valued the idea of integrating history and engineering. Through her guidance as my STEM mentor, I learned that STEM teachers use catapults frequently to teach force and motion in physics. The aerospace industry uses them to launch and land fighter jets off aircraft carriers through a system called CATOBAR, an acronym for "catapult-assisted take-off barrier arrested recovery." (Watch here for an explanation of how this system works.) Thus, catapults are particularly relevant in today's real world, not just as a tool for learning.

As I learned more about catapults, I picked up some great ideas about how to teach them. One of the best catapult teaching units I've seen is by Vivify STEM, a two-woman team of Texas-based aerospace engineers turned educators. Here's a free one by Engineering with Paper (all you need is paper, scissors, and tape!) With these plans, I particularly liked that I didn't have to know wood-working to create devices that could be built by students and tested like ancient Roman ones. Unlike the real ones, these are safe to shoot with projectiles like q-tips, ping-pong balls, pencil erasers, and cotton balls. I always teach them in September because they teach students the basic concepts of the engineering design process. If kids have not taken a STEM class and/or were never encouraged to build with blocks as youngsters, they sometimes struggle with designing and building their own devices. Catapults are a low-stakes way to learn. 

This year's students are no exception. They have LOVED learning about catapults. We began the unit with an overview of the Roman war machine. Of course, I add lots of history and textual evidence. We read excerpts from Vitruvius and Josephus, for example. The students learned about different siege weapons of the Romans including onagers, ballistas, scorpions, siege towers, battering rams, naval rams, etc. This past month, I got stuck in a research rut learning about the Balearic slingers and the bullets of lead and clay that they used. Fascinating stuff, and of course, I'm trying to come up with a safe way to teach them about slinging!

During our STEM labs, we learned how to build two models (an ONAGER and a SCORPION) with my assistance, and then they tested them with different projectiles for accuracy and then for distance. The students practiced using tape measures, recorded data, and then reviewed how to figure averages. (Math teachers love me around this time of year.) Then, we took it to the next level, and they designed their own catapults to fire and test.

If you're interested in learning more, see my catapult lesson here. Let the fun and learning begin!