Happy Anniversary to my Roman Technology class! Six years in, and I'm still in love. Here's the story.
Six years ago, my former school was encouraging its teachers to incorporate STEM into their classes with the help of a STEM coordinator. If requested, Betsy Minton would help any teacher come up with a plan to integrate STEM methodology into our curriculum. As a language teacher, I found the idea intriguing. Despite the fact that I loved teaching Latin, if I'm being honest, I had grown bored with teaching language. Caesar was one of the Advanced Placement Latin exam authors I was teaching that year, and every time I read about his soldiers building a bridge across a river in record time, I pined to create a lesson in which students would actually try something like that. I used to show my Latin students episodes of a Nova series called Secrets of Lost Empires. These featured archaeologists, engineers, and historians employing experimental archaeology to recreate a Roman bath or the canvas awning of the Colosseum using the tools and processes of the ancient Romans. I decided it was time to try something different.
With Betsy's encouragement, I designed a class called Roman Technology. In its first iteration, I made it an upper level Latin course for students looking for an alternative to taking AP Latin. I had five high school seniors that were willing to try ANYTHING. One of my favorite lessons was reading and comparing the concrete recipes of Vitruvius and Pliny the Elder in the original Latin, and then actually mixing, setting, and testing our very own version of the stuff. After that first lesson, I was hooked, and I was never going back. You can read an article about that original iteration of the class here.
Mike Tyson once said, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." During the first year of my Roman Technology class, I took a right hook. Midway through the year, the headmaster of my school decided that the large and popular Latin program I had worked to grow would be phased out. Although I never got a real reason from him, I think it had to do with the difficulty of scheduling students into three different languages at such a small school. He offered me a job as the school's educational technology coordinator teaching other teachers how to use things like Google Docs and Canvas. I said no. After 24 years at that small, private school, I left for a job at a local large, public middle school, Glasgow Middle, my current school. And it's been a GLORIOUS time with AMAZING students, diverse in culture, age, background, and abilities.
My new job was supposed to be part-time. The school hadn't had an in-person Latin teacher in a few years so their program was dying out. To make it a full-time position, my principal asked me to teach mythology and adapt the Roman Technology class for non-Latin students. The rest is kind of history at this point. We've built sundials, archery bows, catapults, kilns, looms, roads, gromas, and ovens, mixed makeup, bread dough, and concrete, designed ships, shadufs, aqueducts, and dice towers. And more. I can't even remember the whole list any more.
I've presented on lessons from this class at so many conferences now that I've lost count. Countless people ask me when I'm going to write a book about it! (I wish I had an offer and the time.) In just the past year, I've had nearly a dozen people ask about how to introduce a STEM-based classics program in their own schools. If they take my advice, Roman Technology classes will be offered from California to Maine in just a couple of years.
I'm having an absolute blast designing and teaching these lessons...and sharing them with the world. I hope you've gotten some enjoyment out of them. Happy Anniversary, Roman Technology class - I love you! Here's to many more years of hands-on history learning!!
Check out my Website for Roman Technology lessons and much more.
