{"id":7813,"date":"2014-10-29T23:01:01","date_gmt":"2014-10-30T04:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thorenson.com\/inklings\/?p=7813"},"modified":"2014-10-30T06:56:25","modified_gmt":"2014-10-30T11:56:25","slug":"magister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thorenson.com\/inklings\/magister\/","title":{"rendered":"Magister"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"axtmann\"<\/a>
\nOnce in a while I reminisce about my school days and think about those teachers in my life who most inspired me to learn.<\/strong> Ed Axtmann was one such\u00a0teacher. His deep baritone, rumbled along with a hint of old country German as he recited countless verb conjugations in Latin. He was an animated presence, often stooping low and taking deep steps as he marched around the front of the classroom holding his hardwood chalkboard pointer. Occasionally he would burst out in a fit of mock anger and slam that pointer onto the desktop of some unsuspecting student, uttering a German phrase that I can only transpose\u00a0as ‘deuter gewitter, loci mol’<\/em>. To this day I don’t know what the literal\u00a0translation is but he often assured us that it was Bavarian profanity and was best said to mean ‘thunderstorm’.<\/p>\n

If I learned anything in his class, it was to be prepared for anything. Participation was something Mr. Axtmann expected and the fact that we didn’t know when<\/em> we would be called to participate was especially unnerving. To make Fate a major player in our education he often utilized Pandora’s Box<\/i>, which was nothing more than an old Sucrets tin\u00a0that held a small collection of red paperboard\u00a0bingo disks.\u00a0Each disk had been\u00a0inscribed\u00a0with a number in\u00a0felt tip pen and represented a student in the classroom. Axtmann would allow a random student to choose from Pandora’s Box<\/em>, and when the (un)lucky number was read aloud, that student\u00a0would get to translate \u2013 ready, or not \u2013 a passage of\u00a0Latin\u00a0for the rest of the class.
\n\"Pandora's<\/p>\n

I\u00a0was\u00a0reminded\u00a0time and again\u00a0by many friends that took Spanish or German that\u00a0my three years of Latin were a waste of a foreign language. ‘It’s a dead<\/em> language,’ they would say. Maybe. But I would remind them<\/em> that Latin is the root of many languages, including English. Thanks to Ed Axtmann and my studies in\u00a0Latin\u00a0I have a pretty good handle on the English language. It not only improved my spelling habits, but has been tremendously helpful in deciphering\u00a0difficult vocabulary. Above all, Ed\u00a0taught me the importance of having passion for what you’re teaching.<\/p>\n

Mr. Axtmann, Magister, you made a difference. Thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once in a while I reminisce about my school days and think about those teachers in my life who most inspired me to learn. Ed Axtmann was one such\u00a0teacher. His deep baritone, rumbled along with a hint of old country German as he recited countless verb conjugations in Latin. He was an animated presence, often […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18,57,53,62,155],"tags":[209,208],"class_list":["post-7813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-illustration","category-inktober","category-inspiration","category-memories","category-teaching","tag-axtmann","tag-latin"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s3XRuE-magister","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thorenson.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thorenson.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thorenson.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thorenson.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thorenson.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7813"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.thorenson.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7824,"href":"https:\/\/www.thorenson.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7813\/revisions\/7824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thorenson.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thorenson.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thorenson.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}