{"id":171,"date":"2017-11-18T23:09:23","date_gmt":"2017-11-18T23:09:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/labschool\/?p=171"},"modified":"2017-12-05T17:24:55","modified_gmt":"2017-12-05T17:24:55","slug":"medieval-memories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/labschool\/2017\/11\/18\/medieval-memories\/","title":{"rendered":"“Medieval Memories,” by Liz Scheer ’02"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nElizabeth Scheer graduated from the Campus School in 2002.\u00a0 She is now a PhD student in English literature at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.\u00a0 She received her BA from Haverford College and her MA from Oxford University, UK.\u00a0 Below, she recounts her study of the Medieval World in Ms. Cooney’s fifth grade class.<\/em><\/p>\n

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As my parents like to say, I am \u201ca pure product\u201d of the Smith College Campus School.\u00a0 Having arrived at the infant care center at the tender age of 3 months, I passed through a succession of classrooms, all led by wonderful teachers, until my sixth grade graduation in 2002.\u00a0 I have so many vivid memories of units and projects from SCCS, and I still keep mementos of work I did at the school.<\/p>\n

One of the most memorable of those units was the one on the Medieval World in Ms. Cooney\u2019s fifth grade class.\u00a0 What I remember most distinctly were the marvelous and varied activities Ms. Cooney assigned.\u00a0 I remember, for example, copying over (in my own jaunty version of medieval script) a passage of Chaucer onto a piece of pseudo-\u201cparchment,\u201d and then decorating my \u201cilluminated manuscript\u201d with gold gel pens and tying it at the corners with ribbon.\u00a0 That manuscript still sits on my bookshelf.<\/p>\n

Another particularly memorable project from the medieval unit was the construction of our own personal \u201ccoat of arms.\u201d\u00a0 The assignment corresponded to our lessons on heraldic color codes: the ways in which different colors signified different attributes: black means wisdom; green, abundance; purple, justice.\u00a0 I remember how much I loved learning about these metaphorical correspondences\u2014how each shape and color had a fixed meaning and significance: this color means this.\u00a0 In retrospect, all that preoccupation with \u201csigns\u201d and \u201csymbols\u201d was probably an indication that I was going to go on to love analyzing literature.<\/p>\n

The medieval unit culminated with a special banquet.\u00a0 All of us dressed up in
\nmedieval costumes and, coats of arms in tow, lined up to be dubbed \u201cknights\u201d by Ms. Cooney.\u00a0 We dined on \u201cmedieval\u201d snacks\u2014figs and cakes, and drank grape juice out of \u201cgoblets\u201d that we had decorated in art class.<\/p>\n

Looking back, the medieval unit epitomizes everything that I loved about Ms.
\nCooney\u2019s class and about the Campus School in general.\u00a0 At SCCS, the classroom experience was never tedious; it was imaginative and joyful.\u00a0 I feel so lucky to have gone there.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elizabeth Scheer graduated from the Campus School in 2002.\u00a0 She is now a PhD student in English literature at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.\u00a0 She received her BA from Haverford […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":666,"featured_media":389,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issue-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/labschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/labschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/labschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/labschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/666"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/labschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/labschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":316,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/labschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions\/316"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/labschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/labschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/labschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/labschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/labschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}