Known across campus for his dynamic personality, Mr. Dudley Battle has been an educator at Saint Francis for over twenty years. He teaches French 1, French 3, and AP Psychology, and he is currently the moderator of Saint Francis’ Sophomore Student Council and the coach for the Boys’ Junior Varsity Tennis Team.
The Lancer: Where did you grow up, and what was your experience like as a student in high school and university?
Mr. Dudley Battle: I grew up in Ohio, specifically an eastern suburb of Cleveland called Cleveland Heights. I was a public school kid until college. I did wrestling and tennis, I did some AP classes, and I really thought I was on a path to be a biology major, heading toward a pre-med life. I didn’t like French so much, but college changed that. I left Ohio for college and went to a school called Bates College in Maine where the first semester, I was just looking to get my language requirement out of the way, and I got enthralled with it. A teacher, whose name was Kirk Reed, made me reconsider French. It was less grammar and drill and more like hearing the music of the language, and I stuck with it. That made me consider a junior year abroad, where I went to Aix-en-Provence, France, and I was pretty disciplined—I was the mediocre kid in French who got a lot better because of really trying. I ended up being a history major in college, which is interesting because now I’m with AP Psychology in social sciences. I liked my time in Maine, but it was cold, it was snowy, and it made you really appreciate the library.
TL: What made you decide to become a teacher?
DB: I’d been comfortable teaching skills in the Boy Scouts, I’m kind of extroverted, and I like that moment when students get the “aha”—it’s rewarding. In my lifetime, I’ve never been off the academic calendar, and travel was a value for me, and May, June, July, and August really give me a chance [to travel]. I like the academic life, I like the teaching life, I generally liked school, and being a teacher was kind of an extension [of] that. I think once I decided to change from a history major, I wasn’t so interested in being a doctor anymore, and the thought of a history PhD, which normally takes about twelve to fifteen years and doesn’t always end up in a job, kind of made me say, “You know, why am I trying to become a PhD? Let’s try teaching.” And it was actually a part-time job when I crossed the country, and I was going to go back, but a friend of mine said, “Hey, I don’t have a roommate.” I agreed to move in with him and found a job in the Yellow Pages in Berkeley, and I called home and said, “Hey, I’m moving to California.”
TL: What makes Saint Francis special to you as an educator, and how do you think it reflects in students’ experiences?
DB: I think there’s a lot of nice things here. I’ve heard students be jerks to others in the past, but I think the general thrust of campus is people want a place where they can find friends, trust one another, get some ownership in the school, whether it’s with activities or friends, and I find Lancers being super welcoming. Like when we had that committee on the campus last week, asking the kids to be nice or even be nice to shadows—or Future Lancers, as they call them—I think a lot of our kids are proud of being Lancers and willing to share that, and at least in front of the teachers they’re nice. Now, I don’t know if they go behind a tree or in the bathroom, and then they’re all mean to each other, but generally, there’s a critical mass of caring and kindness with our students, and I’m willing to deal with things that make teaching not so fun because the community as a whole has an underpinning of caring.
TL: What is the most rewarding and most taxing part of your job?
DB: Rewarding is when people get something—so like maybe a topic in French or Psychology that they’re just not getting, and that “aha” moment. I think that part’s really good. And then the grading is kind of like doing your taxes. I love retakes, but it’s increased our grading burden as teachers, and unfortunately, it used to feel like all your grading’s done, and then you’re done, but here, it’s almost like you’re done, but you’re not done. It’s almost like the post office, where there’s always more, so it’s just a rhythm of life that you have to constantly be responsible, and if there were year-round schooling, I might not do it. It’s what it is. Grading is kind of like the daily homework for teachers, and it doesn’t go away. The good news is that in world language, I can ask somebody a question and know, can they speak French? Whereas my English colleagues, they have to grade and read full essays. It’s just different. But yeah, the grading is the hardest part.
TL: Could you explain your teaching philosophy and how you exemplify it in your teaching?
DB: It’s different in world language than it is in AP Psychology. French is a tool to almost perform—you need to take ownership of it, almost like driving a car, and it’s skill-based, so it’s like running a basketball practice. My job is to give [students] as much time in class to try and practice those skills, and failing is part of it, so there’s terrible French at the beginning, but it gets better. I have to make these four walls really safe to let that failing not be the thing that shuts students down because if they’re scared to talk, that’s what I remember from my high school experience—you’re either right or wrong when you’re talking, and you’re not really communicating. So, always taking it back to, is there an idea being shared? That’s important. And in AP Psychology, I’m actually less fun. I still carry over some things—I do a lot of repeating, and that’s from my world language teaching. What [my AP Psychology students] notice is I say things three times, and I think I’m used to that from French 1, where what I want is them to hear it over and over again. I think in AP Psychology, my job is just to not screw up the textbook. It talks about how to train a dog, parenthood, why your brain thinks about everything, from drugs to sex. It’s like real world topics, and accent isn’t important, I don’t have to do skits or dialogues, and the students are just more mature. Everything we do is kind of related to their life—I know there’s an AP exam, but at some point, they might need to figure out how to train a dog or know why they’re feeling anxiety, and it feels real-world. I think I’m less clownish in that class—I do more pantomime especially in French 1 and French 3.
TL: Why do you think it’s important to learn a different language?
DB: I think there’s some humility in it—the entire world is working to learn English. They put more resources and time into speaking English than we have to do anything else, and so we could just sit back and say “Okay, come to us.” But that doesn’t show much humility. I think language is liquid thought, and I think students can see a bigger world by learning a language. We’re trapped in these walls, and for high school, honestly, maybe in your summers you get to travel? But I think you get to think in a different way, you get to hear different sounds, and hopefully it leads to actual human communication, like travel and stuff.
TL: What are some of your hobbies outside of the classroom?
DB: I like exercise in lots of forms. I am a tennis player, but I also kayak, I bike, I garden, I jog (although my knees are getting older), I like hiking, and I did a lot of it over the pandemic. I enjoy cooking, or at least the challenge of coming up with food.
TL: If you could travel to any place in the world that you haven’t been to yet, where would you go?
DB: Maybe the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean. It was on my shortlist for honeymoon choices just in the last year. And maybe Kenya or Tanzania just because of big mammals, like elephants and giraffes and prides of lions—things like that. Actually, they’re pretty close. I was looking for a trip that potentially would go to East Africa and then the Indian Ocean, and I was going to tie it with Madagascar, but then COVID hit. That one might have to wait.
TL: What’s your favorite movie and TV show?
DB: I like The Graduate—it was a Dustin Hoffman movie from 1967. I like Star Wars. I was the perfect age to pretend I was a robot for the original Star Wars: A New Hope in 1977. And I’m a big fan of Parks and Recreation—I find it funny. It’s goofy stuff.
TL: Do you have a favorite food?
DB: Oranges. In high school, I used to sit with a salad bowl of oranges, and I would just, one after another, eat them and watch television. It was remarkably relaxing for me. The acids probably weren’t great for the enamel of my teeth, but oranges in most forms, like tangerines, clementines—yeah, oranges.
TL: What’s the best piece of advice someone’s given to you?
DB: My scoutmaster used to have an adage: proper preparation prevents poor performance. I think it talked about the importance of rehearsal, thinking about something ahead of time—not just winging it.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
