Ask any seventh grader what their favorite thing about math class is, and they probably will not say “distributive property” or “least common multiple.” I predict that eight out of ten students would say, “Teatime!”

We begin math class each day with Tea and Puzzles. Each student comes in early to claim their favorite mug (and possibly the last sugar cube), and they begin working on the puzzle of the day. It is such a joy to hear comments like, “Oooh, did you try the blueberry tea? It’s so good!” and when doing a logic puzzle, “No, the Nova spaceship can’t be doing the Nebula Mapping mission because the Celestia did not launch in 2012, therefore the Celestia must have done Nebula Mapping.”

These kinds of activities help us achieve our mission to cultivate wisdom, virtue, and joy and to build a community of eager, life-long learners. The middle and upper school math and science faculty have spent a good deal of time trying to articulate our educational mission within our fields of study. The first line of our mission statement:

Saint Constantine science and mathematics education prioritizes the revelation of beauty and divine order within math and science.

We hope to develop our students into true mathematicians, not biological calculators. Mathematics is a truly creative endeavor and requires a significant amount of perseverance. Tea and Puzzles is my attempt to create an environment suitable to this pursuit.

My engineering class, on the other hand, has spent the semester not drinking tea but stacking concrete masonry units to build a compost bin for the garden. Sometimes I struggle to decide what is the proper balance of advanced theoretical instruction and practical application. I wondered if the students would feel that building a compost bin was a valuable exercise in their engineering education. It seems simple – stack the blocks and build some walls (as you have done countless times in your childhood). Maybe we should be doing something more…sophisticated.

There were two thoughts that led me to believe this was, in fact, valuable to the students. First, we are striving to educate servant-leaders through classical, Christian, practical education, nurturing the minds and hearts of students for their own salvation, for the benefit of the world, and to the glory of God. In addition, we were already beginning our study of ancient engineering water systems. We spent some time in ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian canal systems, with plans to land in the marvelous Roman aqueducts. It turns out, building the compost bin offered some practical education in ancient aqueduct design and construction and will serve great purpose in our school gardening program.

Through this project, the students calculated the materials needed and dimensions allowed, then cleared the land and leveled the surface, and, finally, carefully placed and leveled each block to build the walls. We even modeled and used an ancient leveling device called a chorabates during construction. And, I dare say, the students enjoyed working with their hands and finding grub worms in the dirt.

Vitruvius may have been onto something in first century B.C. in his treatise to Caesar, De Architectura:

"The architect should be equipped with knowledge of many branches of study and varied kinds of learning, for it is by his judgement that all work done by the other arts is put to test. This knowledge is the child of practice and theory. …"

It follows, therefore, that architects who have aimed at acquiring manual skill without scholarship have never been able to reach a position of authority to correspond to their pains, while those who relied only upon theories and scholarship were obviously hunting the shadow, not the substance. But those who have a thorough knowledge of both, like men armed at all points, have sooner attained their object and carried authority with them.