Just for Fun: The Comedy of Errors Audio

When my children were younger I introduced them to Shakespeare by reading them several of the prose renditions (of Shakespeare’s plays)  by Charles and Mary Lamb from their collection Tales from Shakespeare, first published in 1807.  They very much enjoyed the stories, which are literary achievements in their own right, and were better prepared for the study of Shakespeare himself in their later education.  Here is an audio recording of The Comedy of Errors by Charles and Mary Lamb.  Gather your young ones around and see if they don’t enjoy it as mine did.

Comedy of Errors

The Lighter Side of Education

Not all that classical educators do is grave, somber and serious.  What we do is important, but that should not make us self-important.  In fact in my book, one mark of a good teacher is that she laughs a lot.  And why not?  The classroom is a funny place.

So anyone who has taught children for any length of time will find a good deal to laugh about.  Here is an episode from my headmaster days that set the entire staff laughing.  Colleen, our first grade teacher came bursting into my office with her hand over mouth, trying unsuccessfully to hold back her loud guffaws. She relayed the following… She had been teaching the class that week about the second coming of Christ during the Bible class.  During that same week, a construction crew was completing a job installing new brick outside and had reached Colleen’s second story classroom window.  Now the construction crew had placed thick, protective plastic over the window and also raised the scaffolding level with the base of the window.  Just a few minutes after discussing the second coming,  a student suddenly pointed to the window and shouted, “Look, it’s Jesus!”  Sure enough, there was man with a long beard striding across the air in front of the second story window.  Another student shouted, “And he’s smoking!”  And indeed he was.

If you have a comic classroom story–let’s hear it.

Breaking News–Headventureland.com

You heard it here first…On Monday Classical Academic Press will officially launch a substantial new website called Headventureland where students can creatively practice their Latin, Spanish, Greek and other subjects by means of vocabulary games (FlashDash), videos and bilingual readers. This site has been over six months in the making and is growing week by week. I encourage you to check out the site and and pass it on to others you think would enjoy it. And BTW the site is completely free.