For the past 10 years, Gladewater High School’s Kevin Clark has been serving up a course fit for a king.
Four courses, actually, ensuring the young lords and ladies of his Senior Advanced English class feed body and mind with a medieval flare.
The veteran educator (and serving City of Gladewater councilman) is quick to credit his colleagues at Hawkins ISD as the inspiration for the first local effort a decade back. He and other faculty members at GHS have since made it their own many times over, steadily amassing an impressive array of tableware, costumes and, more importantly, memories of imparting the chivalric traditions to students.
The most recent medieval feast in mid-December resurrected history again for an in-depth, hands-on series of lessons.
“Basically, it’s a two-week immersion into chivalry and the chivalric romance,” Clark said, “where the kids get extensive classes on the Arthurian legend, the whole idea behind chivalry.”
By the time they graduate GISD, every senior will get some exposure to the broad romance genre, he added, but each a year one group – from 10 to as many as 26 – will enjoy a closer look in costume and at-table.
“This allows the kids to really get involved in it. We study (chivalry) in-depth then I pair them up so that each lady has a knight. During the actual week of the feast, they are in character the whole time.”
That includes a bit of the vernacular – whether M’lord, M’lady, Sire or the like – as well as common practices.
For example, “They do exchanges of tokens and boons. They’re encouraged to give things that are very simple, nothing that costs money — a pretty rock or a flower or poem. The gentlemen wear their ladies’ colors throughout the week. Then the ladies give their knights a quest,” usually some form of scavenger hunt throughout the school and student body.
The lengthy lesson culminates on a feast day, with the participants decked out in period attire courtesy of Theater instructor Jessica Smith, their own handiwork and others’. They dine on an ever-growing collection of silver tableware amassed as old family collections reach garage and estate sales at a bargain, finding their way into the high school’s repository.
“We have four courses of food, which for the kids is a highlight. Most of it I get from hunting,” Clark said: “Venison, the wild hog, chicken quarters. You’re not rushed eating — it’s a true feast.”
Naturally, the students also test on the material they’ve been taught in-class, including Sir Thomas Malory’s work on Arthur, the hierarchy of royals and other elements.
In addition to a ranging quest from their sovereign (aka Clark) the students also play medieval games like chess and Nine Men’s Morris. (Historically, “A lot of the warriors had the Nine Men’s Morris game inside of their shields,” Clark noted.)
All things considered, the effort creates indelible memories for students.
“I’m a product of the New England schools… I’m a huge fan of immersion as an educational technique,” Clark said. “This is more than just talking about the stations in life and how manners and things were. They actually get to practice them.
“They’re stunned at how women, even royal women, were subjected to the will of their fathers and brothers, who literally controlled every aspect of their lives including marriage — very few medieval weddings were because of love. It was about advancing one’s landholdings or armies or whatever political alliance they needed to manufacture. We do go in-depth.”
Immersion is a superior educational tactic, Clark says, and the all-out effort makes a long-term impact.
“They get a real experience to go along with the learning and it makes a difference.”
