A few years ago, my eighth-grade class put on a production of The Odyssey, inspired by Emily Wilson’s 2018 translation. While it had become a standard part of the curriculum to perform a full drama (ninety minutes plus) complete with costumes, lights, sound, and three evenings of performances for the community, it was the first time we had adapted a script from a literary classic (previously, we had performed Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, and Our Town). It was also the first time I had ever done a deep dive into Homer’s poem, although we had always skimmed it in our Greek mythology unit, which my students love. Before long, it was clear that we had undertaken an incredible challenge: not only was the Homeric language challenging, but so too was the choreography of the Sirens’ bewitching dances, the singing of the Phaeacians, and the fabrication of a larger-than-life Cyclops. We invited local professionals from a nearby theater to help us bring Homer’s words to life. They pushed the students to break through their teenage self-consciousness and find the freedom to express their characters – whether a goddess or the old shepherd. And on top of all that, at my codirector’s insistence I ended up delivering an introduction in the role of the translator, Emily Wilson – putting me far out of my own comfort zone.

The girl who played Athena possibly had the most demanding role; she had started the year tongue-tied and introverted, a reluctant goddess. But through reading and studying Wilson’s translation in its entirety, sharing her opinions and ideas in her scholarship and rehearsals, Athena began to emerge – invisibly and visibly, quietly and boldly. Through embodying the goddess, my student found that she could speak with authority, that she had power, and a new character emerged. Even now, several years later, she is outgoing, even outspoken. Something similar happened with each of my students, and I soon found myself a fellow traveler with them (together with Odysseus) on a journey of self-discovery.

The author, center, and her students put on a production of The Odyssey. Photographs courtesy of Lisabeth Button. Used by permission.

But midway through rehearsals, it seemed like nothing was coming together. While the students had memorized all their lines (mostly), the magic of theater had not yet taken hold, and each practice felt like moving inanimate chess pieces around the stage. Meanwhile, we still were spending at least half the day in the classroom, diagramming sentences, writing essays about the Cold War, and bravely unpacking the mysteries of algebra. One evening, facing a large stack of essays to grade after a particularly frustrating rehearsal, I despaired about whether any of this would help my students in the long run. Yes, I was exposing them to a great literary text; yes, they were learning to hold themselves to a high academic standard; yes, they were spending most of the school day away from their desks; but to what end? Who was benefiting from our long hours of practice? How was asking my students to interpret these roles furthering their long-term education?

In Wilson’s translation, Homer begins the story with the command, “Tell me about a complicated man, Muse,” and continues, with what could also be a command for educators: “Tell the old story for our modern times.” Like Odysseus, educators are both on an individual journey and part of a greater story. By acknowledging our own complexity, and observing that of our students, we are reminded that there is always so much to learn about life and about humanity. The temptation to oversimplify our aims, seeking merely to educate good citizens, good workers, good consumers, good Christians, or good university students is understandable. Most of these are important, but reducing education to this ultimately falls short of the mark. Just as our seeking to learn as Christian disciples can never be static if we are to become more faithful, so too must we as educators, perhaps more than anyone, seek our own lifetime education. Old stories always need retelling for our modern times.

Working as an educator in the Bruderhof for the past fourteen years has provided me with a rich context to reflect on these questions, since we hold education to be one of the most important aspects of community life. Soon after its founding in 1920, the Bruderhof established its first school (whose principles, dissolution by the Nazis, and reconstitution elsewhere are described by Marianne Wright in this issue). I am grateful to have benefited from the ideas and examples of those who preceded me in this tradition – some of whom, my own former teachers, would become my mentors and colleagues.

Fida Meier with a granddaughter.

My first-grade German teacher, Fida Meier, began teaching over six decades ago as a teenager in the Paraguayan jungles. Her first classroom was beyond rudimentary – there were no textbooks or writing materials for the students, and only one chalkboard on which the teacher wrote the lessons to be memorized. The intervening decades brought material improvements, but more importantly, a deep reservoir of experience. When I first stepped into Fida’s classroom as a six-year-old, I saw her as a warm, grandmotherly figure, whose passion for learning was infectious and whose gentle but firm grip on the classroom inspired respect and gave us a deep sense of security.

A generation younger than Fida, Lydia Robertshaw taught me in sixth grade. She was a mother of seven children and divided her time between teaching the fifth and sixth grades and taking care of her own growing family. Her expectations were high, and her classroom a tight ship. And yet I felt the same security in her classroom that I had felt in Fida’s. Lydia had begun teaching in rural Pennsylvania in 1985, starting out with fifteen first-grade students and then moving into middle school and high school, where she has been teaching since 1996. She had discovered a zeal for teaching early on; as the sixth of twelve children whose physician father was often away on house calls, she often found herself helping with the younger ones. She told me, “I always had this passion to show my younger brothers and sisters how to make something, what the name of a flower was, how to fold a paper crane. I wanted to pass on to them anything that I had learned in art class or woodworking class. The fact that children are inquisitive is so gratifying, it keeps me alive – mentally, physically, emotionally. Year after year, it keeps me going, no matter how challenging, complex, or demanding.”

Lydia Robertshaw.

Bruderhof children from kindergarten through eighth grade attend school at their local community. Most schools range from sixty to eighty students. During the morning, students take academic classes in the core subjects of math, English, and social studies in their respective classes (with recess somewhere in between). For my seventh and eighth grade students, this includes algebra, grammar, writing, literature, Latin and Greek roots, and history – either of the United States or world history in the twentieth century. Then at noon, students attend community lunch with their families and fellow community members. While they enjoy their food, a classic children’s story such as Roald Dahl’s Danny the Champion of the World or E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web is often read, or on some days, classes will report about a recent field trip or tell the community what they are learning about. After lunch, the students return to school for either self-directed study or science (an introduction to leaves, trees, flowers, and animal tracks for the younger children, and basic physics, chemistry, and biology for the older ones).

Then the afternoon is spent in a variety of activities directed at other forms of education – free play in the woods for younger children, hikes in local nature preserves, service learning projects such as maple sapping or landscaping the community, arts and crafts, or sports and outdoor games. For the ten years that I taught seventh and eighth grades, my colleague was an expert woodworker, and our class spent hundreds of hours making post-and-beam constructions – using turn-of-the-century drills as well as chisels and mallets to create intricate porches and pavilions.

Unlike Fida and Lydia, I began teaching somewhat unintentionally in 2010 when the Bruderhof established its first high school, the Mount Academy. Having initially joined the staff as an assistant gym instructor, before long I was fully part of the faculty, enrolled in a vigorous mentorship program under several senior teachers. In 2012, Lydia became one of my new colleagues (and mentors), joining the staff to teach ninth-grade English. During those years, the Mount Academy matured to offer a challenging academic program, competitive athletics, music and the arts, vocational training, and opportunities for service and environmental stewardship. A few years later, I switched to teaching seventh and eighth graders, and Fida joined my list of mentors, answering my questions in lengthy handwritten letters.

Lisabeth Button’s students perform in The Odyssey.

Remembering some of Fida’s earlier advice was my first source of encouragement when the play rehearsals hit the shoals. She reminded me that the germ of progress often appears to observers as benign chaos, and that the initiative for self-direction, make-believe, and bringing characters to life was fostered by the free play so prized among younger children. She often cites Friedrich Froebel, a major influence on Bruderhof education, who said that play is “the highest expression of human development in childhood, for it alone is the free expression of what is in the child’s soul.” Fida fondly remembers her experience in kindergarten in Paraguay, taught by my own grandmother, Annemarie:

She sat on a log – a caring, watchful presence that made us feel secure, also, quite unconsciously, in the choice of play. If there was a conflict of choice, or someone dominating the play, she would call both parties to her to hash it out. Through free play, children are not only able to express themselves, but are also encouraged to work together with others, helping them to collaborate and see themselves as part of a greater whole. These skills, more so than any specific content, provide the springboard for future education.

Similar lessons were at hand when, a few months before the play, our class took our annual twenty-four-hours-in-the-wilderness challenge. After backpacking two and a half miles along the Fire Island National Seashore, the students were assigned individual “plots” on the Atlantic shoreline in which to spend the next twenty-four hours alone – observing their surroundings, making shelters to sleep in, journaling, and fending off fears of the dark and wild animals. While we graded their journals for writing and science, the more important lessons came through navigating the undirected hours, a test of ­endurance, bravery (for some more than others), and self-mastery.

And yet when we got on stage, their ability to play freely had become more complicated and stifled. They had just entered the teenage world, and they were trying desperately to discover themselves. For theater is not just about playing make-believe; it is truth-telling and an absolute belief in who you are – be it Hermes, Athena, or even Emily Wilson (a significant challenge for anyone). But that is what self-discovery and education are all about.

Alongside the process of self-discovery on the stage, I am regularly reminded that academics are just one part of a child’s development. One memorable story Lydia told me concerned a thirteen-year-old boy who failed to hand in his history paper on Count von Zinzendorf one Monday morning in April – a paper he had been excited to write, on an individual he had been eager to research. The incident taught her much about how children view deadlines and how they prioritize.

“After failing to deliver,” Lydia recounts, “I reprimanded him and received back an annoyed and frustrated glare from the most brilliant student in my seventh-grade classroom. His excuse? ‘But yesterday was the last possible day to plant my peas!’ Peas? Peas. How could I scold him now? His face said it all.” Count von Zinzendorf and Lydia came second to the family plot and its peas.

 

For me as a young teacher, this balance between demanding academic excellence and inspiring students toward lives of service has perhaps been the most difficult one to strike. Our school sets high standards, and my students rise to the challenge, frequently outperforming expectations (both mine and their own). I am often amazed how much information they retain about minor historical details. Years later, students have reminded me about Vladimir Lenin being buried in a glass coffin outside the Kremlin (“Have you gone to see it yet, Mrs. Button?”), or that Leon Trotsky was murdered in Mexico in 1940 with an ice pick (“We saw the original ice pick in the Spy Museum in Washington, DC! It still had his blood on it!”). Partly, this is because of the education they receive outside of the classroom, such as the overnight trip to Boston to recite Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride” outside his house and then dump tea into the Boston Harbor; the biennial trip to Washington, DC, to meet with our state representatives at the Capitol, tour the Pentagon and Arlington Cemetery, and explore the Smithsonian museums; or the day trip to New York City, where we visit the USS Intrepid and meet with veterans serving as tour guides on the Cold War–era submarine and then head across Manhattan to the United Nations headquarters to tour the General Assembly and Security Council chambers if they’re not in session. I am also convinced that my students’ ability to absorb knowledge is because of the educational community they are a part of.

This is good, and likely leads to better SAT scores and college admissions success, but where does service to others come in? As much as we emphasize academic rigor, our school also emphasizes the importance of service in the seemingly small parts of life – sweeping the classroom at the end of the day, cleaning the bathrooms, holding the door for the elderly librarian, being aware of those who are crossing the path ahead. I had been taught this years ago by Jonathan, a fifth-grade classmate with cerebral palsy, who could barely read or write and needed help walking, sitting, and going to the bathroom. Yet Jonathan was the leader of our class in his ability to easily connect with other people through his giant smile and uninhibited laugh. He was the first one who made me really understand that there are things in life more important than academic or athletic success – a lesson that I believe is important to pass on to my students.

Living at the Bruderhof, students have a glut of opportunities to contribute to the community around them. Every fall, the older classes in the elementary school at Woodcrest organize the community’s Oktoberfest – the students help to prepare whole pigs, which they then stay up all night around a fire to roast on spits; in the morning they braid fresh pretzels and prepare pineapples to grill; and they team up to create obstacle courses, haybale mazes, tricycle courses, and pumpkin-cookie decorating to occupy the younger children. It is the students who set up booths and arrange the activities, prepare and serve the food, time the obstacle courses and ensure that the kids on the trike course are safe, and help clean up the entire event, until the last haybale is returned to the barn, even though many of them are short on sleep after a night of roasting pigs.

 

Personally exhausted afterwards, I sometimes wonder if the Herculean effort was worth it. But I always come back to the sense of accomplishment that shows on their faces the next day when they come to school, perhaps a little bleary-eyed. Their sense of ownership makes the work a source of joy. These memories, too, gave me courage in the rehearsal doldrums. Despite the strenuous hurdles we have inevitably endured before showtime, a play always brings out the best in the students, because they know they have given their all in an act of service to others.

“Each child is a thought in the mind of God, and we should not try to mold a child according to our own ideas for his development,” wrote Eberhard Arnold. Lydia and Fida also emphasized the importance of reaching each student as an individual.

To this end, throughout their years in the classroom, Fida and Lydia have been among the first to try new pedagogic methods and stay current with developments in child psychology that pay special attention to the mental and emotional needs of children. As she reviews today’s literature, Lydia is often reminded of her younger brother, who “just about drove my parents crazy with his far-fetched and complicated experiments. Unsafe at any speed, he was a ball of energy and would arrive home from school in the late afternoon wanting to make the snowshoes he had seen diagrams of in a library book that day. And he wanted to make them now.” She recently encountered an analogy that seemed the perfect description for his brain: “A turbocharged mind – like a Ferrari engine, but with the brakes of a bicycle.” Lydia’s brother was certainly a challenge for any educator, but a rewarding one. “And guess what: at fifty-four, he is a successful and productive member of society and is still going at life as though there is no tomorrow.”

New developments notwithstanding, some things stay blessedly the same. Lydia reflects on how her grandson just did the same bean seed project that she herself did in first grade: “Try laying bean seeds in wet paper towels and putting them in a quart jar. Watch them grow and sprout into the most beautiful bean sprouts.” Or do it with pumpkin seeds, which “planted with Dad in April can still turn into that mammoth jack-o’-lantern in October.” These simple experiments, she notes, can show children “the biggest complexities of creation.”

 

The durability of these truths also crossed my mind as I sat before my stack of papers, pondering my role as an educator. In Homer, too, there are things that stay true over time. Some are pithy: “Young men often behave oafishly, but they may mature in time,” or “Poets are not to blame for how things are.” Others, like the value of loyalty or hospitality, need to be drawn out through reading – or living in – the text. I picked up my pen and began to correct my students’ papers, looking forward to what I would discover on the stage the next day.

In the end, the play was a success. The students not only had their lines memorized, but fully brought their characters to life in a way that surprised everyone. Afterwards, each student wrote a letter of appreciation to translator Emily Wilson, telling her what the process of bringing Homer’s words to life had meant to them. The girl who played Athena wrote, “What you said in the translator’s note about your eight-year-old performance of The Odyssey changing your life is real in a way for me too; particularly what you wrote about, ‘Homer’s concerns with loyalty, family, migrants, consumerism, violence, war, poverty, identity, rhetoric, and lies,’ because in a different way, this is very true still today.”

Wilson responded to my students’ letters with this message: “I am thrilled that you are using my translation of The Odyssey, including the translator’s note and bringing it to life with your own play! As you know, I was Athena in a school play when I was younger than you are. I hope you have as much fun with it as I did back then. I wish I could come and see you all perform. I hope it’s a magical experience that you’ll remember all your lives.”

The ways of learning “the old story for our modern times” are as various as the challenges that face Odysseus on his long journey home, and require the same pluck, courage, and determination – for both educator and student. That class is now setting out on their own voyages of discovery (in the past weeks I’ve been asked for advice on several college application essays). I trust that our lessons in service, initiative, excellence, and so much more will help them navigate the likely circuitous – but ultimately rewarding – path that lies ahead of them, a path that should, in Homer’s words, help them to “find the beginning.”