I had a hard time find­ing the Brook­lyn Latin School. As I approached the block where I knew it was sup­posed to be, after hav­ing dou­ble and triple-checked the address of the school, all I could see was a grand stone build­ing, obvi­ously labeled “Pub­lic School 250.” I asked the cross­ing guard where TBLS was, and she pointed to the Pub­lic School. I walked in, and real­ized that TBLS was fully con­tained within two floors of this build­ing that they share with a pub­lic ele­men­tary school. It was the first of many times that my expec­ta­tions were sur­passed dur­ing my time as a “Princetern” with the head­mas­ter of the Brook­lyn Latin School, Jason Grif­fiths ’97.

The Brook­lyn Latin School, founded in 2006, is mod­eled after the Boston Latin School, the first pub­lic high school in Amer­ica. TBLS has lifted the centuries-old tra­di­tions of the Boston Latin School and trans­planted them to Bush­wick Avenue. The stu­dents wear uni­forms, learn four years of Latin, call their teach­ers “mag­is­tra” and “mag­is­ter,” and per­form decla­ma­tions in class and sev­eral times a year in front of the entire school.

My expe­ri­ences for the three days of the Princetern­ship were incred­i­bly reward­ing. I had the oppor­tu­nity to shadow Mr. Grif­fiths in his meet­ings with var­i­ous mem­bers of the fac­ulty, includ­ing check-ins with the grade-level lead­ers, col­lege coun­selor, depart­ment heads, and office staff, as well as mem­bers of the com­mu­nity that are work­ing with the school to build men­tor­ship pro­grams, exchange facil­i­ties, etc. Dur­ing lunch I sat in on two inter­views that Mr. Grif­fiths con­ducted for an open posi­tion in the His­tory depart­ment. Observ­ing him meet with his fac­ulty gave me first hand insight on inter­ac­tions between teach­ers and admin­is­tra­tion, and gave me a full appre­ci­a­tion of the eye for detail that Mr. Grif­fiths is able to main­tain even as the school, and his respon­si­bil­i­ties out­side the class­room, grow. Observ­ing the inter­views he con­ducted was incred­i­bly infor­ma­tive, espe­cially because as an aspir­ing teacher I will even­tu­ally find myself on the other side of the table being interviewed.

Jason Grif­fiths and Lekha

When I was not join­ing Mr. Grif­fiths for meet­ings, I was able to sit in on classes to observe. TBLS fol­lows the Inter­na­tional Bac­calau­re­ate cur­ricu­lum and con­ducts most classes using the Socratic method, so many classes that I observed con­sisted almost entirely of student-based dis­cus­sion. I was able to sit in on classes as var­ied as fresh­man level Art His­tory, sopho­more year Health, and Higher Level Latin, where I stopped tak­ing notes about the class, and started pay­ing atten­tion as if I was a stu­dent too. The fac­ulty was wel­com­ing and warm, and the stu­dents con­sis­tently impressed me with how well-spoken and con­fi­dent they were. Sit­ting in on classes also posed a sharp con­trast to the admin­is­tra­tive work that Mr. Grif­fiths is pri­mar­ily involved with. As TBLS grows, his respon­si­bil­i­ties will mainly focus on keep­ing the school well-funded and well-run. One thing this Princetern­ship helped me con­firm was that I would rather pri­mar­ily spend time in the class­room with students.

My last day at TBLS, as luck would have it, was the day of their penul­ti­mate Pub­lic Decla­ma­tion, an oppor­tu­nity for stu­dents (selected by audi­tion) to declaim a poem or prose pas­sage in front of the entire school. Pub­lic Decla­ma­tion is some­thing to look for­ward to at TBLS, no doubt. The excite­ment in the audi­to­rium was pal­pa­ble, and though stu­dents are told to with­hold applause until all the declaimers have per­formed, after each decla­ma­tion the audi­ence could barely con­tain their applause. One stu­dent declaimed Cat­ul­lus 101 in both Eng­lish and Latin, while another per­formed the mono­logue “Mad as Hell” from the 1976 movie Net­work. It was an elec­tri­fy­ing per­for­mance. At one point, she demanded from the audi­ence: “I want you to get up right now and go to the win­dow. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!” For a moment, I thought some­one would spring up from their seat. “Mad as Hell” was the last decla­ma­tion of the after­noon, and the declaimer’s last line prompted absolute uproar. Pub­lic decla­ma­tion gave me chills, and I was sad to leave TBLS shortly afterward.

There is a lot of dis­cus­sion today about edu­ca­tion reform, edu­ca­tion pol­icy, and the state of edu­ca­tion in Amer­ica, espe­cially in urban areas. My expe­ri­ence with Mr. Grif­fiths gave me an oppor­tu­nity to watch the work of edu­ca­tion reform—the real, on-the-ground work of it. It helped me under­stand the impor­tance of qual­ity teach­ing and main­tain­ing a cohe­sive school phi­los­o­phy. The Brook­lyn Latin School offers, as Mr. Grif­fiths described it to me, “an unapolo­get­i­cally lib­eral arts edu­ca­tion.” It isn’t the right school for every­one, but for the stu­dents that have grad­u­ated in the last two years, and have gone to col­lege, it has worked well. What espe­cially struck me was that Mr. Grif­fiths did not start his career as a teacher with grandiose visions that he would sin­gle hand­edly save the sys­tem of Amer­i­can edu­ca­tion, but instead founded a school in line with his edu­ca­tion val­ues, and is, one grad­u­at­ing class at a time, improv­ing the niche that he has made. My Princetern­ship gave me valu­able expo­sure to a won­der­ful school, and cer­tainly inspired me to pur­sue a path that will bring me back to high school, not as a stu­dent or observer, but as a teacher.