18
What makes
for an exciting
laboratory
session, tutorial,
or seminar?
A class is exciting if
one or more students
walk away having seen
or thought something
unanticipated and
intriguing. A class is
outstanding if one or
more students and the
tutor do the same thing.
The paradigm might
be the moment in a
freshman math class
when a student recog-
nized, with an audible
sound like “oooh,” that
the formula “a squared
plus b squared equals
c squared” that he had
memorized in high school
actually referred to real
squares that he could
see on the blackboard.
Mr. Grant Franks, Tutor
J.D., Harvard Law School
Or, more recently, when
a student recognized
that, although she was
separated from Dante
by culture, religion,
language, and in a
dozen other ways, his
imagery reflecting on
the significance of
“
evil” still resonated
with her. Or when the
majority of a senior
math class actually felt
dizziness when they
realized how thoroughly
Einstein’s general relativity
intended to do away
with assumptions that
they had tacitly relied
upon since freshman year.
What happens
in St. John’s
classrooms that
wouldn’t—or
couldn’t—happen
at any other
college or
university?
What happens in our
classrooms is thereness.
Negatively, our students
are not scribes transfer-
ring debased versions
of lectures into notebooks,
nor passive spectators
of dramatic performances.
Positively, they learn to
Ms. Eva Brann, Tutor
Ph.D., Classics and Archaeology
Yale University
take themselves and
others seriously as
rational and feeling
beings, to be together
not as competitors
but as collaborators,
to lead the double
life of lone study and
communal inquiry.