The Aquilian
March 2021 Volume 83 Number 5
Gonzaga College High School Men For Others Since 1821
19 Eye St, NW Washington, DC 20001
Thousands of Students, A Million Thanks
By: Gabe Brady ‘21 Editor-in-Chief
Like many sophomores, I learned about Mrs. Free during course selection for my junior year classes. Even more than most classes, the opinions on AP Language and Composition were especially hyperbolic. You’d hear one student say “it was the hardest class I ever took,” the next say “I never had to study– it was great,” and the
next say “I studied every night, and I still got a C.” But the one constant was, regardless of their grades or their stress levels while writing an RS Essay, that every upperclassman who took her class never regretted it. Whether they were an academic stalwart or an all-four-quarters struggler in her class, every single junior I asked about AP Lang made sure that I took the class. Those contradictory opinions on the course, wide-ranging as ever, always stemmed from how legendary the class was. Those juniors couldn’t fully express its monumental significance, so they exaggerated their claims about the class and its difficulty– but lurking underneath that facade of groaning about its
challenge was a deep respect for Mrs. Free and her teaching. I’ve heard every statement possible from students about Mrs. Free’s grading scale and her high standards for students’ writing, but I’ve never heard a single student complain about not getting enough out of the class– AP Lang has set up hundreds of Gonzaga juniors for success in college essay writing and beyond, and each and every one of them has Mrs. Free to thank. Over the time Mrs. Free has taught at Gonzaga, she has witnessed world-changing events from Eye Street– 9/11, the start of a pandemic, GonzagaFest– and as the world has changed over the past few decades, so have attitudes among Gonzaga
students. Mrs. Free says she remembered how students used to greet each other exclusively by roughhousing, but nowadays it’s different. She says, “You know, you see somebody put their arm around somebody and walk down the hall. It’s no big deal, right?” Of course, Gonzaga students aren’t the only ones who have changed. Mrs. Free acknowledged how her teaching style has evolved over her teaching career: “When I first came here, I was one of the few women teachers,” she says, “and I was the only woman in the English department for decades. And I felt I had to be super strict and super smart instead of letting the boys be smart– I felt like I had to be the smartest in the
Top #5 Cereals, 3
Saying Goodbye, 2
Saying Xie Xie Ni, 4&5
MLB, NFL, NCAA, 6-8
For a second straight year Gonzaga is saying goodbye to legends. But who gets the front page? Coach Jackson, Mr. Lipari, Mrs. Wei? Easy decision. You might not know it, but for years Mrs. Free was the moderator of The Aquilian...and The Aquilian always pays its debts.
room, and I just don’t teach that way at all anymore. Now, I let students give me inspiration and I want to hear their smarts instead of me directing what I want them to understand from the book. Now, I embrace– You don’t like the book? Tell me why you don’t like it. Let’s talk about it.” For some courses, a teacher might consider a good class to be when all the students understand the material the same way and say the right answers. Mrs. Free has a different definition– “When the students do most of the talking, and when they don’t always agree with each other. So there’s a lot of diversity in the answers, which happens when no one is afraid to say Continued on p. 2