My son Alex is now an alumnus of my alma mater, and I couldn’t be more proud. He graduated 35 years after I did.  Our curricula were nearly identical – Latin doesn’t change much – but our educational experiences were vastly different.

I was a student in the 1980s when the world was analog and, in my opinion, was a simpler time. My son started Boston Latin Academy just like any other sixie (our term for a 7th grader, class six in the old terminology).  His second year was when COVID struck, so he spent the last third of that year at home on Zoom.

Alex’s freshman year of high school was spent in the dining room where we set up a desk for his year of remote learning.  He returned to in-person learning as a sophomore but a lot had changed.  The world was different and so was my son: he’d started shaving and was now nearly my height.

In his junior and senior years he discovered the theater. I did one play in my senior year, but that production was nothing like the magic inspired by my son’s drama and chorus teachers. My son blossomed in his extracurricular musicals.

In my childhood the common refrain from the school leaders was “Look to your left, look to your right; these people will not be here when you graduate.” At the time I thought this was a normal way to encourage excellence from a child. Thank the Olympian gods the world has changed.

The Boston Public Schools’ move to full inclusion is relatively new; it was not in place when my son first started school. Fortunately for him the principal of his first school believed that what is good for a special education student is good for all students. In other words, that school was inclusive before inclusion was cool.

I would like to thank Alex’s teachers, from K-12, who aided and guided him along the way. I was 16 years into my own teaching career when an epiphany hit me: my son’s kindergarten teacher would see him for more time in the day than I would. While this should have been obvious to me as a teacher, it struck the parent in me as surreal. Someone other than my wife, who left her career in human resources to raise our children, would be in charge of our child.

I did get my son and daughter back for a year when COVID hit. As inconvenient as that year was overall, it was beyond thrilling to see my children every day, all day. I was especially impressed by my children’s teachers. Because of Zoom classes, I could “see” into their instruction every day. I often watched my children’s classes when I was on a break from my own classes.  Again, I was and still am impressed by the level of creativity employed by my colleagues.

The year at home helped Alex in a different way: he could stand up and move around the dining room as he needed; he could schedule his work when he had the focus, not based on a demand that he focus on someone else’s schedule. His schedule had a long break in between two blocks of classes, so it was like starting over for his afternoon classes allowing him fresh focus and energy.

In my 30 years of teaching, I have never preferred to sit behind my desk. I stand at a podium and walk around the classroom. While it may appear that I am circulating around the room in order to monitor my students, which is also true, I am moving because it is how I work best.  As an adult, I can choose to do that.

Unfortunately we in education compel our young people to sit all day.  Some can easily do this, some expend great energy into doing what they are supposed to against their own needs and others simply cannot. In my exam school days, such “disruptive” children were punished. Thankfully, today we are better recognizing the neurodiversity of our students.

Inscribed on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi is “know thyself.” If the goal of education is for students to become self-aware and self-learners, then Alex achieved this goal at a far younger age than I did. I didn’t figure out who I was until my early 20s. Alex knew when he was still in the single digits. He always communicated to us what his needs and goals were, sadly I didn’t always recognize it in time. Thus my son taught me more about being an attentive teacher than all my education courses combined.

I am proud and thankful that Alex, in his junior and senior years, waged a campaign to bring more attention to the neurodiverse needs of our students. He openly and publicly declared who he is even though school society still treats neurodiversity as something to be hidden, managed, or fixed. I shall celebrate his achievement by continuing what he started – embracing and valuing the neurodiversity of our students – while he is off exploring new frontiers in college.

In parting I wish to leave a message for my son: Vita Tua Est Sincera.

Michael Maguire teaches Latin and Ancient Greek at Boston Latin Academy and serves on the Executive Board of the Boston Teachers Union. The words expressed here are his own.

Alex Maguire, BLA Class of 2024, wearing his Proudly Neurodiverse stole. (Photo by Jill Maguire)