Onthe first day of class, I could have easily droned on about notable ancient Greek plays, peppering the lecture with dates and quotes from people who died 2,500 years ago.
The result would have likely been a class longing for relevance from a teacher puffed up with self-importance.
Instead, I talked about how the Greeks believed their words held up the pillars of the universe; that if their prose weren’t expressed with enough vitality and passion those pillars, along with humanity, would perish forever.
Sharing that story invited my students to share their own.
Too often in school, we’re taught to memorize facts and events that have no context to our personal lives.
As a result, we become good company at cocktail parties but lack skills transferable to our everyday lives.
The lessons we tend to remember are the ones reinforced through personal experience, or have principles we can directly connect to our lives.
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