Classics and Careers: Jonathan Goddard, Educator and Rapper

Hello there, I'm Katrina Kelly, host of this series of the Classics Podcast, where we're talking classics and careers. What classicists bring to the workplace and to the world, how to forge your own path, the resonance of the ancient world, and where studying the past can take you. Over the next few weeks, we're talking to fascinating people who lead fascinating lives with a connection to the classical world, from anthropologists to actuaries, producers to policy advisors. We hope you enjoyed last week's episode with Claire Marchetti, and keep listening now for episode four. But first, a reminder that if you're involved or looking to start a project which increases access to the teaching and learning of classical subjects, especially in schools, you may be eligible for a CA grant. The Classical Association is a major provider of grants, giving tens of thousands of pounds each year to fund activities undertaken by teachers, academics, students, and other organisations that widen participation in classics, from study days to museum trips, workshops, performances, and much more. To find out more and apply for funding, go to classicalassociation.org/grants. And now, here's a short intro of Classics and Careers. Hello and welcome back to the Classics podcast. Today's guest, Jonathan Goddard, is a musician and educator. He brings hip hop to the classroom as teaching and learning director of the Latin programme and the executive director of RapTeach. It's a pleasure to have you with us today, Jonathan. question to start how do you think that music can connect us to the ancient world well i think the music can connect us to any idea that we want uh to engage with in a way that unlocks the other part of the brain just the same way that story can or the art can so music can um allow us to subconsciously engage with an idea so by engaging with a song or by listening to a song you can you can allow for repetition you can allow for all kinds of opportunities for your brain to wrestle with an idea in a different context and i know in the classroom you combine sort of creativity and also kinetics how does that actually translate itself into when you're teaching and learning latin so i work for the latin program which teaches roughly between twelve hundred and fifteen hundred children a week a week in week out program that we come into primary schools as specialists teaching their modern foreign language and in order to do that we have to have a system a curriculum that progresses and a curriculum that engages because often the children that um we teach have not really got much of an understanding of what latin is even when we start off so primarily um for us using kinesthetic games movement-based activities can involve activities that help us learn particular and specific grammar points such as a group of endings or a particular function of a particular case or they can be illustrative of the creativity that the children have if they're acting out something that they've maybe written or they've devised or it can also be something that helps us actually illustrate or bring to life a topic or a classical art or something like that so i think that's something that we can myth or story such as the film we made a while ago which was the Aeneas Project which was a rap retelling of the Aeneid that was written in conjunction with our staff our children and was performed by about 300 children that we had premiered at the BFI. It was amazing it was yeah so so cool. Oh you've seen it right cool. For yourself was it music that was your first love or was it language? Do you know what I'd say the two were intertwined for me language because growing up I had the opportunity to learn Latin from quite a young age actually so about a similar age to my students like eight or nine I didn't come to Latin quite late so actually Latin and other languages that I was learning at the time I learned French and Russian pretty much all at the same age eight nine ten so languages were always part of what I was doing and music was from my home life my big brother was very into hip-hop and I was freestyling around that age maybe 10 11 so I guess I always sort of in my private moments brought the two together like whenever I was studying I was sort of finding little ways to make little rhymes out of tricky concepts or concepts I wanted to keep with me so that was always something I did so I guess that's kind of the seeds of rap teaching and I carried that through so my A-levels basically and then I sort of forgot about that up until A-levels I was before my exams I remember a little rhyming away to myself with little cue cards or whatever thinking okay that's that and it helped you know if it helped me as somebody I guess whether you believe in these frameworks but I think they're useful models as somebody who has a good auditory memory it was a useful way for me to carry information. And did you ever imagine that it would be a way that you would share with other people or did you do it with your friends did you try and teach them using your own methods that worked for you? No I had no intent no interest in doing that it was purely selfish so I never thought that it would be something that would be useful for anybody else it can be like I've been a musician before and done shows in different contexts and seen things which I've come across and I've been like okay well that's kind of to use the phrase that young people use a bit cringe isn't it sometimes when you're bringing those two bridging those two stools. So I was like okay well when I became a teacher and educator I found that actually a lot of the useful tools that I had were the things that I could use to overlap with my students whether that's knowledge of the same cultural material whether that's interest in the same aspects of the material we're learning so if we're learning about a myth and it's the gore if we're learning about gladiators and it's learning about the adulation they received and comparing that to a modern context. So when I thought okay well embracing that moment realizing that if I have this ability to make rhymes of complex-ish material aim to simplify it that's actually just a useful tool so I didn't really think it was something that I would ever share with anybody else until I became a teacher and teaching just like I'm sure lots of teachers might listen to this podcast or if people who you know recognize when their teachers are doing something like that they're going to doing something that's effective a teacher will use an effective tool in order to create their message and to craft their message and share it and disseminate it with their students in a way that resonates with them. When you were eight, nine, ten and you were actually studying so Latin and French and Russian how did you find the links between all of those the three did you find that they complemented each other was that something you were aware of at a young age of how languages link together? Definitely I'm somebody who likes to make connections between the things I learn. But I think they're obvious in terms of the French the vocabulary the linguistic structures the tense system all right the the cases the nouns are different fine but you could see lots and lots of resonances between the Latin and the French and that's something that you know I think is very useful when somebody is learning Latin in the context of it might be the second language they've come across or third particularly in the UK school system where historically and traditionally we've been learning those Romance languages. In terms of Russian yeah the case system was was the thing that resonated actually some of the vocabulary some of the like high culture vocabulary which has obviously come from maybe a French root some of that resonated but definitely like the grammatical structures all of that sort of thing and now teaching in London schools I have children from all over the world and it's really one of the greatest joys to see somebody come with no English in term one so I think it's really important for me to be able to make connections between the two of them. So I think it's really important for me to be able to make connections between the two of them. In term two they're sitting in on Latin lessons and we're just doing very basic vocabulary connection by getting them to draw they might play some of the games and then by term three or four they're actually able to live with the Latin as well as they're living with English in class so it's kind of like oh and that happens with children from Slavic languages Romance languages and other backgrounds too but like I see those the frameworks that they have already are easily transferable. And I suppose in that way Latin really is a leveler if you're all coming at it with a clean slate it's not something that you're probably speaking at home or having that previous knowledge of so you're all starting from a similar point despite everyone's backgrounds and own languages being so different. Yes which means that actually it does allow sometimes children who might be struggling across the board or maybe not getting a chance to achieve because they haven't got the basis in English yet that everybody else has it allows them a chance to excel in the classroom often. And also it allows those who might not have the most flowing and vivid English vocabulary to find a way to examine English and look at structures and look at where words have come from and develop their own understanding of English. Sometimes you find that that obviously flows much better when it's in the context of myths, but even just examining them in the just linguistic sense, looking at the words, where they've come from, how they're derived and all those kinds of things is very useful. And the Latin programs approach, I suppose, is slightly different from some other programs and that does have a more grammatic focus. Do you feel that grammar is really at the heart of trying to understand a language, but also the culture of that particular language and time? So personally, I would say not necessarily, no. I think it's a tool for the context that we work in. I think at the stage that the children are at, it's kind of like a mirror for, you know, like a prism for looking at syntax and grammar and understanding English as well. It reflects on what they're already, grappling with in grammar and English. So it reinforces that. It's kind of a fundamentals course. They're learning about the building blocks of language in a way that supports their study of English and lays the groundwork for their study of other languages. I believe that actually, if we were talking about the best way into a culture, it's the stories, it's the human aspects that are the best. It's the best way into the culture. But having said that, there's other work to be done, if you see what I mean. So I get that we've taken over the years a variety of approaches, but I think over the past two or three years, we've integrated a topic-based approach at the same time maintaining the grammatical focus that we have. So the aim has been to allow both sides of that task to happen without sacrificing the thing that really a lot of headteachers in particular, tell us that they value, which is that we are supporting their understanding of language in that way, in a transferable and systematic way. And so you work predominantly with state schools in London, a primary level, but I know you also have your annual summer school, which is sponsored by the Classical Association. Can you tell us a bit more about that and about ways in which young people can get involved with your work? Well, we have a range of projects that we've run. We've worked in partnership with art specialists, spaces and museums and heritage spaces, such as Leighton House, to run part of their in-house provision. We run a summer school annually. We've run for the past four or five years, which is part of a hybrid, now hybrid offering of half online and half offline. And it's a mix of arts practitioners, artists, dancers, poets, authors, coming in and delivering services to children of all ages and genders. And we've also run a number of workshops and sessions that have a linguistic base, but also involve their art. So the children get to work with a theatre company that helps them devise games and short pieces that might have a springboard that comes from Latin language. They get to work with Caroline Lawrence, who's been a great supporter of ours, who's obviously a former Latin teacher herself, and an expert in some aspects of the material that inspired her stories. But at the same time, learning some language. Dance sessions, which are inspired by the ancient world. These kinds of things. So in terms of our outreach work, and of course we have language sessions that are part of that as well. And those are delivered in person and online. As well as that, we've run various outreach activities in the past, from working with local libraries, we've had in the past nighttime storytelling, which was something, it's been heartening actually. Some of the people that we see come through the summer schools year on year, are people that have come in via these other sort of entry points, as well as our schools. So we do a variety of things, but the main activity of the Latin program is working in primary schools. Key stage two, we have worked with key stage three, and we do do GCSE as well, but mainly key stage two, primary schools, often in areas or in schools where there are eye marks of disadvantage, or schools where there are lots of children with EAL. And we've found success in helping to raise attainment and standards in doing that. - It's brilliant work from a brilliant mission. And I especially love that fusion of all of the different humanities that you're bringing together through dance, through creativity, through song, through music. And that in a way is at the heart of what classes and understanding the ancient world is all about. And these are very ancient concepts and ancient ways of education too. I mean, to what extent do you think that oral poetry is the way in which the ancient Greeks transmitted their creativity? In which ways do you feel that that still has power today? And that's part of a legacy and a kind of longer tradition of both education and also entertainment and storytelling? - Ah, well, I think that's an interesting question because we've got to look at it in terms of, for us now, we live in the age of self-expression. We live in the age where everybody has the right and the ability to express their feelings and have them heard and have them recorded. So actually a lot of the time when we do, we go into using poetry and song, it's actually for the purpose of expression of the knowledge that our students have internalized. So it's like, okay, we've learned about these things. Now, how can we express them? Maybe there's a framework. Maybe there's no framework. Obviously I have a channel where I make songs, which are about bits of knowledge, discrete bits of knowledge, grammar, or a little bit of a myth or a little bit of history. And that kind of song, that's, I mean, that will resonate with a percentage of people who will then take that away and they'll learn it. And they might use it in their classroom. Their teacher might use it. They might use it and it's a part of them of the memory of them learning Latin. Like it amazes me the amount of comments I get years down the line when somebody says they're in Wisconsin or they're somebody that I taught and they say, oh, I love this or our teacher used to hate this. He may just listen to this. It's like, okay, this is part of your memory of your education. And obviously education is about the constant buildup of steps towards learning. But it's about those moments where there's an emotional resonance or there's a, you know, a coming to consciousness about something you've learned. So yeah, that's another way that we use song. So obviously there's this expressive tranche of what we're doing and people can use, I think that's valuable in and of itself, obviously expressing yourself, but obviously towards the ends of what we're trying to teach, that's how we've got to channel it. And then we have these other songs, which are, you know, okay, this is a discrete piece of information. And sometimes, you know, like I've been doing this long enough now that I've had people go, grown men approach me in the street and then they'll sing a song back that they learned in year five. And I'm like, oh, oh, I remember, great. You know, that's interesting. It's like, okay, well, that's stuck with you. I wonder what else is stuck with you. I can't probe you as we stand here in the shopping center, but you know. - It must be so nice to have that connection with people, as you say, and sometimes maybe the things that you've forgotten or the bits of rap that you didn't think were your best, you know, but are the things that stick with people. And that you're still hearing and stick in their memory. I mean, what has been the highlight for you of your career so far? Are there any particular moments that stand out? - In terms of working for the Latin program, there have been highlights that have been like making the film and seeing that premiere. That was really good because obviously we're a peripatetic organization. We work in a variety of schools and I've always wanted to have an occasion where all of our schools could come together and interact and sort of share a moment of, we're all learning this thing together. We're all doing this. And that was a perfect opportunity for that. And it was a packed auditorium, hundreds of kids. They've come, they've watched this film, which most of them have participated in. That was actually a really, really great moment. And that was put together by Dr. Jan Doley, who was one of our previous directors. And I was really grateful for that moment. Most of the highlights are, you know, usual things when you're sort of teaching. You have a great period where you have a class that, I do private tuition as well. And I can honestly say that some of our children have attained a standard where they easily fit in in any setting. And obviously that's a great joy from going from nothing. They're just starting, we're just feeding their talents and their ambition and their willingness to do this task. And they really achieve. That's nothing more rewarding than seeing a group or several members in a group just really stretch themselves and see how far they can go and throwing challenges to me saying, "Sir, we really want to learn about X. And if we've done this, well, okay, I've got to go ahead and take them with us." That's partly what excites me the most, actually. I think that's what excites me the most about doing the work. - So let's go onto your own personal journey a little bit. bit more so we've got that you loved music loved languages from an early age and then were studying those through through school you then went to university and studied social anthropology so what was your interest in that how did that come about and what did that entail as a university experience for you oh a university I had no idea what I was going to study really I had let me put it in context but I'm in my the year I left school at 18 and you know with a levels a good a level so it's obviously assumed I'm going to university and then I went off doing music I went on tour to some different countries with some groups and that was a great experience and then I came back to um university and just sort of was there and I'm not a very good student I'm more of a self-study person and at the time you know I had um problems with university so I didn't really anthropology it didn't resonate with me and I mean I love the study of different people and I love certain aspects of reading and I love doing the dissertation going to do a piece of research that was really interesting but like being in university wasn't something I was I think I was built for at that time so I guess what I'm trying to say is that if I am a good teacher I think part of it comes from being a bad student being a student who really I'm pretty disrespectful to most of my teachers I think why are we learning this? I'm often the person that will ask those questions and I can recognize ahead of time when I'm going to be asked those questions so I may not I may still do what I'm doing but I'm like okay well yeah but I this is why we're doing I'm ahead of that do you see what I mean I don't come at it with those assumptions so at university I kind of what I didn't think was important didn't do well how did you then choose to more formally enter into education and become a teacher? I've always enjoyed working with even when I was a young person I used to run music workshops I used to I learned some Japanese they wrote me in at the community center to try and like do a manga club watching this was quite early so like these kids were you know bleeding edge kids they we watched manga and tried to translate that kind of thing so this is from when I was young I've always worked with children so it was natural for me to work in education I worked for in special education for a couple of years and I've always enjoyed working with kids and I've always enjoyed working with children for a couple of years working with children with um a wide variety of needs obviously that was great experience it was um it was very enjoyable job as well and then um I think I moved and I thought okay I'd like to move more formally into education I had a look at some of the positions that were out there and the the Latin program were hiring and they specifically even at that stage were requesting for people who had some sort of creative background or a approach well I thought that might suit me and as soon as I started I really enjoyed it I remember the first I'm the first place that I ever went to I'm still teaching there yeah in fact some when I was talking about one of the children who came up to me in the shopping center like he was in one of those first classes I often see children who I've taught over the years from that from that school and um like that was the transition it was just okay I would like to do something more formal with an education and I think that was that was how it happened and how do you find time to fit both the Latin program and rap teach and all of your own various creative projects and teaching and tutoring within all of that it sounds like you have a lot on your plate but also it's everything that you love what does a a day in the life look like for you these days well life's busy but I think if I was I'm not I don't think I'm that good at being idle like I think if I can be idle I'm not saying I'm one of those people that you know I'm not I'm not that good at being idle I'm not saying I'm not that good at being idle I'm not that good at being idle so you hear people who say I'm unable to sit still and do nothing I can do that but I'm trying to find a way to say this without sounding extremely pompous I think everyone's got things that they have to just do and these are the things that I have to do and not like anybody's compelling me to do them like I love doing them so I'm going to do them that's just what happens so I've always loved like I said learning I've loved language I mean even on top of that I'll try and self-study you know I'm trying to brush up on my Russian every so often goes to the back but you know I'm trying to keep active and learning I mean and then I'll justify I'll say well I've got 10 Russian students dotted about my various classes it helps me communicate with them better but you know really it's just a desire to want to do that thing it's quite selfishly motivated I think I mean in terms of teaching teaching that's obviously the most important thing I think the part of my life where I think it's it's altruistic it's something that you can do that helps others and you see the results fairly quickly but even within that how you approach it there's how are you going to do it well you can do it in a way that that feeds feeds the things that excite you as well so on the podcast we've been asking every contributor to reflect on the person place idea concept from the ancient world that resonates with you the most which is yours Jonathan I'd have to say the place that resonates with me the most would be Silchester just because that was the first time I ever realized that the ancient world was actually all around us and it's not only there as this abstract idea of okay there were these things that happened there are physical manifestations of it in places that are close to where you are and that's actually been one of the biggest motivators for doing some of the activities we've done in terms of outreach and a topic-based curriculum knowing that we can use the world as a canvas bringing the past to life but the aim is the aim is to examine the present and change the future brilliant thank you perfect answer so finally we have a few quick fire questions if you don't mind okay yeah are we ready yeah go for it Kithara or Aulos oh Kithara lyric or hexameter hexameter gerund or gerundive gerund would you prefer to write an Olympian ode like Pindar or a powerful love poem like Catullus's Ode yet amo I hate and I love Catullus but I can only remember the root list who's your favorite character from mythology um my favorite character from mythology all the Olympians they're so all the flawed Olympians I love I love flawed characters you gotta pick one you gotta pick one oh Zeus then Zeus and Japanese or Russian um Russian I can do the literature better and if you had to sum up why we should all learn Latin in a few words or a sentence what would you say well it underpins so much of what is our society and understanding of knowledge and culture today that I think it's just like a superpower it's a you know a tunnel into everything it helps you understand the structure of so much about society in the world oh and obviously it's got great literature thank you Jonathan Goddard for being on the classics podcast it's been a pleasure oh thank you very much for having me and um thank you very much to the classical Association for all that they do foreign please give us a follow on Instagram at the classical pod and follow the CA's channels at classical a sock on Twitter Facebook and at our website classicalassociation.org you can rate and review us on Apple podcasts and please give us a follow on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast from