By John Rohlf, The Message assistant editor
Reitz Memorial High School teacher William Lismore said his recent trip to England funded through the Lilly Fellowship helped him understand historical contexts and build that into his classes and a new extracurricular club, The Scriptorian.
Funded through the Lilly Endowment Teacher Creativity Grant, Lismore returned to his homeland of England to experience the literary and lexicographical landmarks of Oxford and London and reunite with family. The six-week trip included two weeks in London, just under two weeks in Oxford and two weeks at home to reflect on the entire trip.
Lismore said after the trip, he started appreciating history in general more. It has formed a serious part of his freshman English classes, he said.
He said they also now have an extracurricular club at Reitz Memorial called The Scriptorian, which researches the history of Evansville’s Reitz Memorial. The idea is to write a dictionary of the school. They have already uncovered things about the school just by observing its history or going through literary history, he said.
“We found things about the school that even Mr. (Larry) Mattingly, who seems to know everything about the school, not even he knew,” Lismore said. “So that’s probably the most influential part. That’s how it’s influenced my practice, is definitely understanding historical contexts and really trying to build that into my classes and into this new club.”
Lismore said as of December, they had 45 pages so far in the dictionary.
Lismore said his favorite part of the trip was going to the house of Samuel Johnson, who Lismore said was a famous 18th century writer who wrote “probably the first true English dictionary as we think of it today.” He has a house in central London where people can go and visit.
“You can go up to his top floor, called his garret, where he wrote the dictionary with his literary assistants,” Lismore said. “You can sit in that room and look out the windows. And that was very nice.”
In Oxford, Lismore went to the Oxford University Press Museum, where there is memorabilia related to the Oxford English dictionary.
Lismore and his wife, Anna, took their two young children on the trip to spend time with Lismore’s parents throughout the trip. Lismore said his children “got to spend proper time there.”
“My kids are still talking about it and sort of keeping those memories alive,” Lismore said. “And that’s what I was really seeking for them. So I’m very glad they came along. They seemed to have formed those memories.”
Lismore expressed gratitude to the Lilly Endowment for helping him make this trip. Taking the time to be there, go to the various landmarks and have the various experiences, that simply would not have happened the way it did with that efficiency without the Lilly grant, Lismore said.
He added going on the trip “impacted me in ways I didn’t expect.”
“That seems to be the way it is with sort of big planned events like this is that you expect it to impact you in one way and it doesn’t,” Lismore said. “And you get benefits that you just never thought would happen. It’s something that’s impacting my practice every day. So I am very glad I did it. It certainly wasn’t just a vacation or anything like that. It was certainly something different.”
Along with Lismore, Becky Humm, fifth grade teacher at Resurrection School in Evansville; Matt Moore, principal at Annunciation School at Christ the King in Evansville; and Beth Browning, teacher at Reitz Memorial High School in Evansville; were four of 129 educators in the state of Indiana to be approved for grants as part of the Lilly Endowment Teacher Creativity Fellowship program. The grants of up to $15,000 fund renewal projects the educators designed themselves, which the Endowment hopes will help restore their commitment to their profession, foster creativity and, in turn, enhance the educational experiences of their students.