TCA Moments Blog

Some of my favorite TCA Moments happen while observing students at the end of their K-12 career, when they begin to see the big-picture arc of their education. Last year, I shared about the AP Government experience. More recently, I had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Jeremy Reed, senior Rhetoric and Advanced Placement English Teacher at TCA High School. He and his colleagues are leading students to think well about life with the help of some great literature. 

TCA Advancement: What kind of reading and thinking are your senior students doing these days?

Mr. Reed: We just finished Brothers K [The Brothers Karamazov] in AP and now we're reading it in World Lit. AP is reading Plato's Meno dialogue now. We're wrestling with virtue a lot: what does it mean to be virtuous, and can it be taught? 

They're having very meta conversations about virtue. The students say, "I know what to do, but I don't always do it." So they are thinking about thinking, and they are thinking about virtue. All of the books we use in senior year are used in that way: Hamlet, The Awakening, Heart of Darkness, 1984. We're asking "how do we know what the right thing is, and how do we make it more likely that we will do it?"

TCA Advancement: Some of those books have difficult things in them. What's the role of reading about unvirtuous things in teaching virtue?

Mr. Reed: It's super important. Forever and always we have learned what's right by looking not only at what's right, but at what's bad. Western Civilization was built on Judeo-Christian values, and there we have the tree of knowledge of good and evil, not just the tree of knowledge of good. 

I would argue that literature is a safe place to encounter vice. Here, they are surrounded by students they trust, under the guidance of teachers they trust, and then they are at the dinner table with parents they trust. In that context, they can vicariously encounter vice and learn from it without having to endure the real injury from vice. What a blessing for students to be able to say no to the bad choices that our literary characters make, all while being safe in their room, reading a book.

TCA Advancement: For families who have only elementary students, this might sound very different from how literature has been handled at the elementary level. Do you think they will find the approach in secondary consistent with what they’ve experienced in elementary? 

Mr. Reed: Yes. Literature studies aren’t the same in secondary as they were in elementary, because the students aren’t at the same stage of development. Junior High and High School literature studies are age appropriate, and they adhere to and support TCA’s Core Values. 

In my 25 years at TCA, I can boldly state that while some inessentials have changed, nothing essential has. Or, more accurately, if anything has changed, we are more consistent in our adherence to TCA's Core Values than we ever have been. 

TCA Advancement: What are some of the capstone assignments that seniors complete that facilitate good analytical and moral thinking? 

Mr. Reed: In the Senior Defense, students choose from among 10 capstone questions and use a text from their TCA experience to defend their answer to it. These are questions like, "What does it mean to be human?" and "How does one pursue truth, beauty, and goodness?" Their "texts" can be anything from their TCA education—art, math, science, literature, or history. 

In the Senior Thesis, which is a different project, they choose a work of literature not from the classroom. Then they write a 10-page literary analysis that can be anything they want (except bio crit, because that's what they do in junior year). They have to create the prompt and the thesis and maintain it for 10 pages. We give them very little how or what and see if they can fly. 

In a few months, they will be out in the world where they will be free to read whatever they want. One of the ways the senior thesis facilitates the TCA mission is by creating students who are capable of picking up any book with any college professor and they can say, "No, that’s wrong." Students need to be able to stand up for themselves and the ideas their parents have taught them. We have them pick books for the senior thesis as their first chance to encounter a text with minimal guidance.

TCA Advancement: How do you invite parents into the experience? 

Mr. Reed:  We send home a list of text options categorized by genre and difficulty—parents are included in the selection process. We require parental permission for every single book. Everything on that list—even when it has vice in it—exists to help students choose the virtue. 

This sounds kind of funny for an English teacher to say it, but parents "Spark-Noting" their child's book is really helpful. Or reading the book with the child. Or encouraging your child pick a book you have read before. If the book does emotionally affect your child, you know what they’re being affected by.

TCA Advancement: And what's the role of the TCA teachers in guiding this whole process? What's your joy in walking with these students?

Mr. Reed: Let's go back to the Meno dialogue. In it, Socrates argues that virtue can't be taught like wrestling can, or horsemanship can. Let's say he's right—that virtue can't be taught. It seems, then, that it must be experienced, modeled, caught. Isn't literature such a wonderful way for students to experience the good and the bad in a way that does stick? And we get to facilitate that.

Teachers are also the counter-example to Socrates' proposition that virtue can't be taught. I want to communicate to my students, "You’re going to forget most of what I teach you, but I hope you remember how you were taught." In the way we treat them, that’s where the virtue training happens.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.