With over twenty-five years of teaching high school English grades nine through twelve, plus a senior writing and poetry seminar, several years of teaching art history, and eight years as boys’ soccer coach at the Mount Academy, I’ve been involved with hundreds of young people as a teacher, mentor, and coach. I’ve had the privilege to witness their attempts to clear many hurdles, whether in academics, athletics, or, most important, the challenges of character formation.

In each of my classes and extracurriculars, students had to accomplish a lot of work. Why? Because I knew they could and would enjoy the feeling of success from doing it. In eleventh grade English, they read seven novels and wrote a paper for each. In Advanced Writing they wrote memoir, profiles, poetry, argumentative essays, and research papers, all subject to peer review and revision. My soccer-coaching sessions were no less rigorous.

But there is another side to being a teacher that is just as important as good, hard work. After each novel and paper was completed, we made sure to have a blast.

Students in Tom Huleatt’s English class apply their shop-class skills to a scene from Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath at the Mount Academy. Photograph courtesy of the Mount Academy.

One of the ways we did that was through drama. After getting enough furniture, props, hats, and period clothing from our modest costume room, students formed groups of four or five to act out part of the novel or play just completed. This required five days: groups formed and brainstormed day one, practiced in days two to three, and performed in days four and five.

In tenth grade English, we read The Grapes of Wrath. We made a wall map of the American Southwest and marked the progress of the Joad family from the Dust Bowl to California. The students had adopted the last name “Joad” soon into the novel, so all were Joads and identified with the generous but long-suffering family. In class they addressed each other in full names such as “Travis Joad” and “Debbie Joad.” When the reading and writing was done, small teams of Joads gathered around a workbench in the front of the classroom, each group ready to take turns at replacing the connecting rod or “con rod” – in record time. Some in overalls, some in ragged denim and cowboy boots. Most had hats or ball caps of various descriptions. This was hands-on learning time.

The students had read about how Tom and Al went to a junkyard to find a con rod to replace the broken one in their modified 1926 Hudson Super Six, and after studying some rudimentary Honda rotary-engine diagrams, teams of four to five young Joads were ready to pull the mower’s piston, remove the “broken” con rod, and replace it with a new one. The other teams ran the stopwatch. The winning team would earn the coveted MVJ title – Most Valuable Joads.

Literature of this caliber helps us all to think, to consider other points of view, enabling us to understand ourselves and others better. Teachers need to encourage students to grapple with what is difficult and complex and to discuss this together in class. But teachers also need to provide enough fun. This is education at its best.