“Wisdom begins in wonder.” —Socrates

“All my life through, the new sights of nature made me rejoice like a child.” —Marie Curie

When the students arrived at school to find a multilevel wooden structure built in the middle of the commons one spring day a few years ago, they knew something was up. It started with whispers, but soon there were shouts and declarations: “It’s Lernvergnügenstag – I knew it!” I had spent most of the weekend in the school with my miter saw and impact driver, building the strange creation. I had even come up with a semi-convincing explanation for it, in an attempt to preserve the surprise as long as possible.

Arches in the Sagrada Família, Barcelona, Spain. Photograph by ronnybas / Alamy Stock Photo. Used by permission.

But while the students had no idea what the mysterious structure in the commons was for, they were right: today was the much anticipated “Lernvergnügenstag” (German: day for the joy of learning), an annual tradition at Trinity Academy, Portland, the small Christian middle and high school where I teach. For months, teachers had been preparing in secret, putting together presentations and activities to explore topics that fascinate them, from squid dissections to the Dead Sea Scrolls, Syriac chant to the work of Antoni Gaudí. As it turned out, Gaudí was behind the mystery structure I’d built.

Eight years earlier, as a newly minted mechanical engineer in a vocational crisis, I had flown to Spain to walk the Camino de Santiago, a five-hundred-mile pilgrimage to the tomb of Apostle Saint James the Greater in Santiago de Compostela. Before beginning the month-long hike, I went to Barcelona to visit the Sagrada Família, Antoni Gaudí’s unfinished masterpiece. As I stood in the nave of the church, marveling at its branching white columns and forest canopy–like ceiling, a thought occurred to me: in five years of engineering school, I had never once cared as much about engineering and physics as I did right then. How did he come up with this? I wondered. Why?

The questions continued to pour out, first as I toured the cathedral, and later in the museum below. There I saw something that broke my brain: the elaborate upside-down string models that Gaudí had used to design the cathedral above. The architect had taken the ancient idea of the catenary – a hanging chain that, when flipped over, provides the ideal shape for a stone arch – and extended it, replacing the chain with weighted strings, adding weights to represent towers, and hanging string catenaries from one another.

The author’s students practice using the catenary for architectural design. Photograph courtesy of Patrick Tomassi.

The fundamental insight of a catenary is that when a chain dips under its own weight, it forms a curve in which the tension forces on the links are balanced – each link perfectly supports the links below, and transfers force to the ones above. In a stone arch, the curve is flipped over and the tension forces become compression forces, but the ideal shape remains identical.

In Gaudí’s modified catenary, this insight continued to hold, but now catenaries could be used to design more complex structures. Gaudí’s design method allowed him to circumvent daunting calculations and build structures that no one before him had envisioned. This was always Gaudí’s method: look closely at nature and let it teach you its ways. “Nothing is invented,” he famously said, “for it is written in nature first.” His designs of roofs and drainage systems, arches and vaults, towers and columns all reflect this wonder before the natural world and insight into its marvelous design.

As I walked the Camino over the next several weeks, it became clear how deeply the Sagrada Família had affected me. My journal and photo album from the trip are filled with sketches and photos of plants – mostly thistles and wildflowers – and stone buildings. Following Gaudí, I had begun to look at the world around me with new eyes.

Two weeks into the pilgrimage I received an email from the principal of the tiny Christian school my younger sister attended back in Portland, asking if I would be interested in teaching calculus and science. I’m an engineer, I began to write in response, with no background in education. The email included an attachment about the philosophy of the school. It started with a quotation from Socrates: “Wisdom begins in wonder,” and went on to say that the main job of a teacher is to cultivate a sense of wonder in the students. My mind wandered back to the nave of the Sagrada Família. Could teaching be about conveying the experience of wonder I had there? I interviewed for the job the morning after I got home, and was teaching classes a week later. My plan was to try it for a year, but I haven’t yet returned to engineering.

The author gives an architectural engineering demonstration to his students. Photograph courtesy of Patrick Tomassi.

Everything we do in the classroom is shaped by the emphasis we place on wonder. We seek to cultivate that seed of wonder inherent in each of our students that is so often stifled in education, helping it to grow into a mature plant. And this can only be done by faculty members whose own sense of wonder has matured, and who model for the students what it looks like to be filled with a love of learning. In a sense, the teacher must do for the students what Gaudí did for me: look at the world with new eyes, and show the student why and how to do so. To facilitate this, several years ago we introduced Lernvergnügenstag. Students arrive thinking it is a normal school day. But at morning prayer, we announce that normal classes are canceled, and after the uproar the students get booklets describing the activities their teachers have been preparing. Students can sign up for whatever sessions interest them most. Teachers are encouraged to put on sessions that showcase their own interests, whether or not these have any direct relevance to academics. Over the years, we have had classes on topics ranging from pizza-baking to pickle-making, blackout poetry to linoleum block-printing, and from dance to urban design.

Ever since my visit to the Sagrada Família, I had wanted to try Gaudí’s catenary design approach myself, and show it to my students. So two years ago I offered a session called “Design a Building Upside Down.” After a short presentation on Gaudí and his approach, the students and I stood underneath the structure I had built and attached chains and strings to its pegboard roof. We designed arches and vaults, and saw how their shapes naturally changed as more chains were attached. Occasionally I would take a photo and flip it over so the students could see what the structure would look like if it were built. It was impossible to keep up with the students’ questions and insights. Soon my physics students were asking me to keep the structure up for a few days so we could use it in class, which I gladly agreed to do.

Students spend the entire school year looking forward to Lernvergnügenstag (and trying to figure out when it will take place). And when alumni are asked about their most memorable experiences at the school, it is often the first thing they mention. I sometimes wonder, though, whether they pick up on the real secret of Lernvergnügenstag: we don’t care whether they master linoleum block-printing or upside-down architecture; in being invited to participate in activities that fascinate their teachers, we want their own wonder and love of learning to deepen – an experience that will remain with them long after the particular lessons fade.