It’s the end of a school term and I’m reflecting on three good months. Most of my classes are going pretty well, I wrote and delivered a new unit and assessment task for the year 12 group. They tried hard with their end of term project. I’ve encourage a dozen students out onto the harbour and helped them consider who they are in moments of challenge and obstacle. I’ve built good relationships with new teachers to our school. Yeah, it’s been a good three month of work. Not all easy but I’m pleased.
I was driving home this week ruminating on the time and I got to thinking about how in a similar amount of time, a season of 218BCE, Hannibal Barca crossed the Italian Alps, with 50000 soldiers, a baggage train of equipment, supplies and treasure, a few thousand cavalry, while fighting native tribes, and managing 37 North African forest elephants. It’s recorded as one of the great feats of ancient history, so completely unthinkable that the Roman legions stationed in the north of Italy to protect against Hannibal left the roads down from the Alps completely unguarded. There is an account told that on the passage down into Italy, the pass or track was totally inappropriate for wagons and pack animals. The cold, exhausted and frightened soldiers had to use fire to melt the ice in order to cut steps and a path into the mountain. To get the elephants down. The North African war elephants. They did it though, they crossed the mountains while being shot with arrows from the hill tribes and freezing their North African hides off. It took a few months. Now that’s a good term of work. Then Hannibal and his armies spent 15 years completely terrorising Rome and Italy. The whole thing leaves me with a sense of ground to make up. I better have a strong term 2.
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AuthorHigh school teacher Archives
September 2023
CategoriesThemes |