Day 33: Barbarian Freshmen
I'm four days back in the groove, and it's been interesting. My classes have been awesome - more on that in a second - and I feel like I'm a normal human being, at least between the hours of 6 AM until about 8:30 PM. Then, it seems like a switch is flipped, and I crash. It's mostly the lack of sleep due to our new early mornings, but I go from feeling vibrant and excited about life to drained and draggy.
I've been successfully pumping at school twice a day, but the addition to my evening routine of washing and sanitizing pump parts and bottles, putting together Spartacus' bottles for daycare, packing my lunch, laying out clothes, showering - moving stuff I used to do in the morning to the evening to free up the getting-ready time means "getting ready for bed" now takes over an hour. I haven't adjusted to this yet; in my past life, I got ready for bed at 9:45 and was in bed by 10.
Now, it's more like 9:45, in bed by 11...up at 5. I need more than six hours of sleep to function, but I'm just not sure where to fit it in when I get home at 5, have two or three precious hours to spend with my baby before he goes to bed, try to see my husband, play with poor Annabelle who hasn't adjusted to now being home 10 hours a day alone...it's no wonder we've eaten out or ordered in nearly every night in the last week - when on earth are we supposed to go grocery shopping?!
My little freshman world history class is super squirrelly (to which they answered, "We're not squirrels!" and then giggled at their joke). I honestly can't vouch for any of the material they learned the first six weeks, but they did a really nice job with their six week project over a biography they got to choose. They had the choice to write speeches, make posters, sculptures...and they're cool. It's a creative bunch, even if they are super chatty. I guess they're just freshmen, and I'm not used to that. This week I planned to cover the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the middle ages in Europe. My husband lent me this awesome book called A Mighty Fortress: A New History of the German People. Its first chapter details some of the Barbarian tribes (the Goths, Visigoths, Franks, etc) and their interactions with ancient Rome in the third and fourth centuries AD, including some of the crazy soap opera-like betrayals between Roman-trained barbarians and the Senate. They have done lots of Cornell notes over the textbook, and needed to have some motion, so I had a few students in my study hall period with nothing to do fashion swords out of cardboard paper boxes, and gave the freshmen some role-playing.
Their favorite was the story of Galla Placidia. Let's see if I can get the characters straight...Galla was the daughter of Roman emperor Theodosius I and half-sister to Honorius, who ended up being emperor for a short while. She grew up in the household of Stilicho, a Vandal leader and military commander ("magister militum") of the Western Roman Empire, and was betrothed to his son Eucherius.
Meanwhile, this Frankish general named Arbogast who basically was in control of the Western Roman Empire but couldn't take it in name because he was a barbarian so had to do it under the name of Valentinian II; after plenty of tension, Valentinian was found hanging in his quarters with Arbogast claiming it was suicide. Theodosius (Galla's father) ended up going to war against Arbogast with the help of Alaric I, king of the Visigoths, and his buddy Stilicho at the battle of Frigid Forest. They beat Arbogast, and Alaric, who lost 10,000 of his men and rather expected a generalship, basically got snubbed by Theodosius. In return, Alaric turned his back on Theodosius and ended up invading Italy, where he was stopped by former ally Stilicho. Theodosius died, and his young son Honorius became emperor, with Stilicho as regent. Alaric invaded Italy again, and lay siege to Rome, cutting off the grain supply. He eventually forced the Roman Senate to pay a bunch of gold to the Visigoth tribe. Rumors had it Stilicho was involved, so Honorius had him executed. In retaliation for losing the gold, the Roman Senate approved soldiers going out an massacring a bunch of peace barbarian tribes within Roman lands, which caused tens of thousands of barbarians to join Alaric's army.
Alaric lay siege to Rome again, sacked it well and good, and on the way out his brother-in-law Athaulf kidnapped Galla Placidia and married her, and she gave birth to a son Theodosius, who died as an infant. Athaulf died not long after (murdered while bathing), and Galla returned to her brother Honorius as part of a peace treaty with the Visigoths, and married Constantius III; Honorius was childless after he divorced his wife, so Constantius was named an Augustus (emperor) and Galla an Augusta - unheard of in that time. When Constantius died, Galla basically became empress of the Western Roman Empire.
We didn't role-play that so much as I gave kids different names in the story and pointed while I told it, and every so often gave one of them a sword to stab one another. I reassured them they would not be tested on that - I'm not even sure I got it all right - but that the point was that Rome was plagued by a lot of political infighting, and issues of loyalty and racism between native-born Romans and barbarians. Since many commanders in barbarian armies were originally trained in Rome, it was easy to turn their tactics against them. All of this contributed to the decline of the empire.
It felt like a wasted day to me; a day of sword play to get the jitters out, and a crazy soap opera that confused them and me. But the next day, we had conversations like this:
Me: "Tell me about how military weakness contributed to the decline of the Roman empire."
Student 1: "Well, a lot of barbarian commanders were trained by Rome, so they used Roman army tactics against them."
Student 2: "But if they already knew the tactics, wouldn't the Romans see them coming?"
Student 3: "But weren't the Romans, like, super racist against the barbarians, so they wouldn't think they'd be able to be beaten?"
Student 4: "Yeah, and there were a lot more barbarians. They were overpopulated, which was why they kept invading Roman land - to get more resources."
I was pretty impressed with the connections they made from our day of sword playing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Spartacus has done really well at daycare so far - I can't believe how fast three months went, and now we're getting into our new routine. My little peanut has gone from 5 pounds, 13 ounces, to a whopping 15 pounds - I can't get over the amazing changes -
I've been successfully pumping at school twice a day, but the addition to my evening routine of washing and sanitizing pump parts and bottles, putting together Spartacus' bottles for daycare, packing my lunch, laying out clothes, showering - moving stuff I used to do in the morning to the evening to free up the getting-ready time means "getting ready for bed" now takes over an hour. I haven't adjusted to this yet; in my past life, I got ready for bed at 9:45 and was in bed by 10.
Now, it's more like 9:45, in bed by 11...up at 5. I need more than six hours of sleep to function, but I'm just not sure where to fit it in when I get home at 5, have two or three precious hours to spend with my baby before he goes to bed, try to see my husband, play with poor Annabelle who hasn't adjusted to now being home 10 hours a day alone...it's no wonder we've eaten out or ordered in nearly every night in the last week - when on earth are we supposed to go grocery shopping?!
My little freshman world history class is super squirrelly (to which they answered, "We're not squirrels!" and then giggled at their joke). I honestly can't vouch for any of the material they learned the first six weeks, but they did a really nice job with their six week project over a biography they got to choose. They had the choice to write speeches, make posters, sculptures...and they're cool. It's a creative bunch, even if they are super chatty. I guess they're just freshmen, and I'm not used to that. This week I planned to cover the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the middle ages in Europe. My husband lent me this awesome book called A Mighty Fortress: A New History of the German People. Its first chapter details some of the Barbarian tribes (the Goths, Visigoths, Franks, etc) and their interactions with ancient Rome in the third and fourth centuries AD, including some of the crazy soap opera-like betrayals between Roman-trained barbarians and the Senate. They have done lots of Cornell notes over the textbook, and needed to have some motion, so I had a few students in my study hall period with nothing to do fashion swords out of cardboard paper boxes, and gave the freshmen some role-playing.
Their favorite was the story of Galla Placidia. Let's see if I can get the characters straight...Galla was the daughter of Roman emperor Theodosius I and half-sister to Honorius, who ended up being emperor for a short while. She grew up in the household of Stilicho, a Vandal leader and military commander ("magister militum") of the Western Roman Empire, and was betrothed to his son Eucherius.
Meanwhile, this Frankish general named Arbogast who basically was in control of the Western Roman Empire but couldn't take it in name because he was a barbarian so had to do it under the name of Valentinian II; after plenty of tension, Valentinian was found hanging in his quarters with Arbogast claiming it was suicide. Theodosius (Galla's father) ended up going to war against Arbogast with the help of Alaric I, king of the Visigoths, and his buddy Stilicho at the battle of Frigid Forest. They beat Arbogast, and Alaric, who lost 10,000 of his men and rather expected a generalship, basically got snubbed by Theodosius. In return, Alaric turned his back on Theodosius and ended up invading Italy, where he was stopped by former ally Stilicho. Theodosius died, and his young son Honorius became emperor, with Stilicho as regent. Alaric invaded Italy again, and lay siege to Rome, cutting off the grain supply. He eventually forced the Roman Senate to pay a bunch of gold to the Visigoth tribe. Rumors had it Stilicho was involved, so Honorius had him executed. In retaliation for losing the gold, the Roman Senate approved soldiers going out an massacring a bunch of peace barbarian tribes within Roman lands, which caused tens of thousands of barbarians to join Alaric's army.
Alaric lay siege to Rome again, sacked it well and good, and on the way out his brother-in-law Athaulf kidnapped Galla Placidia and married her, and she gave birth to a son Theodosius, who died as an infant. Athaulf died not long after (murdered while bathing), and Galla returned to her brother Honorius as part of a peace treaty with the Visigoths, and married Constantius III; Honorius was childless after he divorced his wife, so Constantius was named an Augustus (emperor) and Galla an Augusta - unheard of in that time. When Constantius died, Galla basically became empress of the Western Roman Empire.
We didn't role-play that so much as I gave kids different names in the story and pointed while I told it, and every so often gave one of them a sword to stab one another. I reassured them they would not be tested on that - I'm not even sure I got it all right - but that the point was that Rome was plagued by a lot of political infighting, and issues of loyalty and racism between native-born Romans and barbarians. Since many commanders in barbarian armies were originally trained in Rome, it was easy to turn their tactics against them. All of this contributed to the decline of the empire.
It felt like a wasted day to me; a day of sword play to get the jitters out, and a crazy soap opera that confused them and me. But the next day, we had conversations like this:
Me: "Tell me about how military weakness contributed to the decline of the Roman empire."
Student 1: "Well, a lot of barbarian commanders were trained by Rome, so they used Roman army tactics against them."
Student 2: "But if they already knew the tactics, wouldn't the Romans see them coming?"
Student 3: "But weren't the Romans, like, super racist against the barbarians, so they wouldn't think they'd be able to be beaten?"
Student 4: "Yeah, and there were a lot more barbarians. They were overpopulated, which was why they kept invading Roman land - to get more resources."
I was pretty impressed with the connections they made from our day of sword playing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Spartacus has done really well at daycare so far - I can't believe how fast three months went, and now we're getting into our new routine. My little peanut has gone from 5 pounds, 13 ounces, to a whopping 15 pounds - I can't get over the amazing changes -
 |
| 4 days - my peanut |
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| 5 weeks old |
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| 3 months old, on his way to daycare...I think we got a handle on this breastfeeding thing. |
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