On Thursdays, I go to a 15-year-old girl's house and direct a Classical Conversations, Inc. Challenge I class. I've been working with this specific CC community since last January, when the previous director quit mid-year and a family friend recommended me as a replacement.

Challenge 1 corresponds roughly to 9th grade in the CC syllabus. By CC definitions I am not a "teacher", but merely a director/mentor/leader figure (the parent is the teacher). The student, M, is studying Algebra 1, Henle Latin 1, American Literature, economics, team policy debate, Apologia Physical Science, and reading Shakespeare (The Taming of the Shrew). It's quite a lot to chew through, but with only two people, our class day lasts about 4-5 hours (plus a lunch break in there).

Typically, a Classical Conversations Challenge group will have 3-12 students involved. The past year and its... unusual circumstances have left me with just the one, but we make the best of it. Her mom often pipes into our conversations with her own lively and thoughtful input, and occasionally her brother joins us for a specific strand.

Melissa asked for this, so here we go. This was today.

7:30 a.m. My alarm rings. I spare a moment of regret for being up till 2 last night but am awake enough to rise after a few necessary moments.

8:05 a.m. I had to do some prep for class that I didn't get in last night, so I'm a little behind. I down a little homemade granola with yogurt and dash out the door (as much as one can dash when carrying... probably 70 pounds in books?). It SNOWED AGAIN. I regret my life choices again but also the snow is pretty so yay.

8:09 a.m. The car is cold. The roads are actually decent, or they are by the time I get to the main highway. I still am cautious at the city limits, because the roads can be really bad right by the bay and I have been in a near-accident there which left me healthily scarred.

8:59 a.m. One 50-minute drive later, I am intact and functioning and cannot find the passage I wanted to use for devotions today. I spend perhaps 90 seconds flipping through the Bible before giving up and walking inside. The mom and I chat for a little while M and I get settled down, and she gets us both tea.

9:12 a.m. I brainstorm rapidly and decide to lead devotions from Amos 5:18-24. I choose this passage specifically because verse 24 is referenced in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech and that speech is our topic in literature today. We talk about the meaning of justice and how it relates to freedom and discipline, two key themes of Challenge 1. After I've exhausted my improvisational discussion repertoire, I close the devotion with prayer and we move into algebra.

This is a pretty average algebra day. It's neither of our favorite subjects, but I appreciate how much everything in math makes sense, and M is still working with the nice basic stuff. I ask her to tell me in her own words what she learned about during the week. We touch on a problem that she got wrong and then work through a simplification exercise.

9:33 a.m. We're done with algebra. Short strand, yeet. I get up to put creamer in my tea. W, M's brother, joins us for Latin per the mom's request, and she sits in as well. We actually have a very involved and enjoyable discussion/discovery time, and I'm reminded why normally these classes have multiple people XD

The main focus of Latin today is a reading about Hannibal, but I open up with a review of present active infinitive endings. I want the reading to focus more on hearing the sound of Latin and learning to pronounce than translation, but we end up stopping a couple times to parse sentences that people have questions about. It's just... super fulfilling. I could do this all day lol

After Latin, W leaves and M and I attempt a science experiment with sound and vibration. I forgot to bring a candle so we scrounge one up from the recesses of the family's basement. In the second part of the experiment, the rice refuses to move no matter how often the pot is banged above it. We conclude we are using too much rice. After several disastrous spills of rice, we succeed in elucidating some vibrations.

I lowkey hate science experiments.

We evaluate our experiment and what it has to do with sound and end up digressing pleasantly into thunder and lightning for a bit.

That's it for science today.

10:50 a.m.

The Taming of the Shrew is our "Reasoning strand" focus for the semester (the previous semester, M went through Traditional Logic 1). We spent the previous two weeks reading an abbreviated narrative of the play and talking about the times of Shakespeare and his contributions to everyday English. Now, we're moving into the play for real.

The workload for this is light — there's no home assignment, just reading the play aloud together in class. I begin by scribbling an outline of Act 1's events on the whiteboard and we dive in, alternating speaking parts.

Honestly? Shakespeare has never been my favorite. That said, I get a good laugh here and there.

M seems to do okay reading the language, but I worry she's not getting full comprehension. However, when we finish with Act 1 she narrates the content back with no prompting and quite a bit of animation, and seems to have enjoyed it. She's also jazzed about not having homework XD

11:36 a.m.

We break for "study session" a.k.a. writing out the coming week's homework in a planner. I usually try to put on some music for this but my laptop is inexplicably in a coma and I have to shut it down, wake it up, and wait for it to properly power on. I hop on Discord while it's doing its thing and share a line from Taming of the Shrew that absolutely killed me for somewhat obscure reasons.

By the time I get music playing, the mom has arrived and is getting lunch out for us. She says it's "just a bunch of leftovers" but literal HOME BAKED BREAD is on the menu??? I have a mighty need.

The mom and I dive into a delightful discussion over lunch about youth groups, denominations, theology, fellowship, isolationism, and so forth. It ends up with me giving her my dad's number to pass on to someone who might be interested in joining our youth group.

I have no idea how long lunch takes but after everything cleans up M and I go back to the couches and whip out "I Have a Dream". We both read and listened to the speech prior to class, and we analyze the delivery style, as well as dissecting our printed copies for metaphors, parallelism, and literary allusions. The mom joins us with questions and input, and conversation segues into discussion of M.L.K., Jr. and the circumstances around his life. We also relate it to the events of To Kill a Mockingbird, our most recent literature book.

Metaphor is the new rhetorical device for M's current essay, so we practice creating a couple metaphors related to the setting and characters of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Now it's on to economics and debate. We look at pre-1965 coins to see the difference and discuss inflation. The unfortunate joke that is the federal debt was not at first on the agenda, but M has a question so we jump ahead a couple weeks of material to touch on it a little. The mom has been around and continues to contribute from time to time.

We won't be doing an actual team policy debate, given the circumstances, but we have a topic anyway and M has researched some pro/con articles over the week, as did I. One of her articles overlaps with mine, but I email her mom the other one for more references.

M has a rhetorical assignment due next week, dramatic recitation/interpretation of a personally selected poem. To give her a visualization of other people doing similar things, I show her two videos (well, one and part of a second; the second was 10 minutes long).

https://youtu.be/whZqA0z61jY

https://youtu.be/mndfdkqxXS8

I remember in the middle of this that I had a video I wanted to share during our literature strand as well, so I pull it up.

https://youtu.be/l39CL0t-jyM

To close out the day, M performs an impromptu speech on a topic supplied by yours truly. She has 1 minute of preparation time and 2-5 minutes to speak, but her actual talk time is 1 minute and 10 seconds. Her mom and I provide assessment and break up afterwards into a discussion about mid-semester break. I pack my things up and head out with fond farewells.

3:00 p.m.

I'm driving peacefully along and realize that for the second week in a row I've forgotten to collect my second-semester tuition. This is not good because part of that check is supposed to go to CC as a director fee of some kind, and the aforesaid fee is due the 25th of January. I call the mom and she asks if I have PayPal. I do have PayPal. All is well.

3:30 p.m.

It's snowing something gorgeous and I record multiple videos of it to send to Melissa later.

3:35 p.m.

I'm home, once again intact and functioning. The rest of the day is kinda a blur without any definite timestamps? I know I successfully remembered to do a lot of minor things, like email my publisher and send Melissa the videos and practice a song for church talent show, and I also lounged around and read cringy old writing with my sister. We had fish and polenta for supper. I edited TC's excessive em dashes. I listened to a song that Gwyn recommended, hung out on Discord, and wrote this day in the life. None of this is necessarily or REMOTELY chronological. I feel like I had an intellectually productive day and don't need to accomplish anything after arriving home.

Signing off at 12:05 a.m., I remain yours respectfully,

Anne Shirley

I mean wait, what?

Byeeeeee