Tuesday, 10 October 2017

How I Got Middle Schoolers to Read Great Books Again

The American Conservative:

 I’ve always enjoyed children and books, so four years ago I left my job as a whitewater rafting guide and applied to teach English at a little Catholic school in the mountains of North Carolina. I bought a blue suit jacket from Goodwill, brushed up on my St. Thomas Aquinas, and bid farewell to my leaky shack and shaggy-haired neighbors on the Nantahala River. Miraculously, the parish entrusted me with 42 souls between the ages of 12 and 14. They told me I would begin at the end of August, offered an annual salary of $19,000, and extended to me a glorious amount of freedom. In asking me to educate the students, they didn’t shackle me with drawn-out and dreary national standards. That autumn I began a new journey, the most eye-opening adventure of my young life.



Cont....   

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