teacher – Jenn Leah Ko

My Past Paper Resource for the ever-dwindling Classicists

I’ve complained before—perhaps over a cup of tea in the staff room, or in the quiet echo chamber of my own thoughts—about the peculiar solitude of teaching CIE Classical Studies 9274. Where was the bustling agora for us? The CIE support hub could be quiet, the Facebook groups a ghost town, and Reddit… well, let’s just say the threads exemplify how few people are crazy enough to take this course. We were a scattered cohort of teachers and learners, navigating this magnificent, dense course largely on our own.

So, I did the only thing a frustrated classicist can do. I’ve created a resource for A-Level Classical Studies 9274, using the same obsessive-compulsive principle as my IGCSE History 0470 one. It’s all here: past papers dissected, topics mapped, and question trends laid bare in an attempt to create the shared foundation I felt was missing.

But let’s get to the fun part. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

Back in October 2025, as we were deep in the final revision push for the November series, I decided to test a theory. I fed years of meticulously organised data for Paper 4 (Homer’s Epics) into an AI and posed a simple, high-stakes question: Based on the patterns of the last several years, what are the highest probability topics for the upcoming exam?

The AI, coolly analytical, spat out its top candidates. And lo and behold, when my students opened their exam papers, there it was: a question focusing squarely on the theme of Xenia.

Screenshot from my October 2025 chat with Deepseek.

Cue my stunned silence, followed by a very undignified moment of triumph at my desk!!! The resource I built to create clarity had just proven its predictive power. A screenshot of that AI conversation is my new favourite piece of pedagogical evidence. Do you need any more convincing of how useful this is?

The point isn’t that we can now gamble on exams. The point is that by systematically understanding the past, we can better prepare for the future. This tool makes that possible.

So, consider this your invitation to the 9274 agora. This resource is here, free for any teacher or learner who needs it. May it save you time, spark your ideas, and maybe—just maybe—give you a glimpse into the mind of the examiner.

If you find it useful, or if you have ideas to make it better, let me know. Let’s stop teaching in isolation and start building this community ourselves. After all, that’s how the classics have survived this long—through shared scholarship, one scroll (or spreadsheet) at a time.

The First Draft: On Building a Classical Studies Course from the Ground Up

Education, Pedagogy

The light is different now. The sharp, golden clarity of a Hong Kong autumn has settled in, and with it, a certain quiet. The frantic energy of the 2025 October/November exam series has dissipated, leaving behind that peculiar, post-campaign stillness that Alexander must have felt after reaching Hydaspes. The battlefield of past papers and revision notes has been cleared away, and in the quiet, I’ve been thinking about what we’ve just built.

This past cycle of teaching Cambridge’s Classical Studies 9274 felt less like teaching a prescribed course and more like building a ship while already out at sea. The blueprint was the syllabus, yes, but the timber and the nails—the very substance of it—we had to fashion ourselves.

The most palpable challenge was the silence. Not the silence of a focused classroom, but the vast, echoing silence of a subject without a definitive textbook. It’s a peculiar kind of vertigo, standing in front of a class and knowing that the canonical resource they’re relying on is the one you stayed up past midnight formatting, the one with your own marginalia embedded in the headers. I became less a deliverer of content and more its architect, obsessively cross-referencing my homemade workbooks with the CIE scheme of work, terrified that some crucial nuance of the Athenian legal system or a pivotal flaw in Trajan’s propaganda might slip through a crack I had created.

This was compounded by a professional solitude I hadn’t anticipated. Where were the other ship-builders? The online spaces and official CIE Support hubs where teachers typically congregate to share war stories and lesson plans were, for this course, not even ghost towns. They were non-existent. It felt like just me and my 3 students, our little vessel, and a great wide ocean of curriculum.

And the calendar itself, as CIE only offers November series exams for this course, felt like a contraption designed to test our mettle. Compressing a two-year AS/A2 journey into little over a year created a peculiar, accelerated rhythm. Our summer “break” was punctuated by the faint chime of a Teams call connecting, my students’ faces blinking onto my screen from a beach in Korea, a family home in Romania, and a sleepy town in Canada, all of us trying to untangle the complexities of Homeric heroes from our scattered corners of the world. There was something beautifully anachronistic about discussing ancient myths while we were all so decidedly, digitally nomadic.

But this is where the magic, stubborn thing, took root.

Building something from scratch means you get to see the flaws in the first draft—and you are granted the rare, immediate privilege of a second draft. The lessons from this pioneer cohort are not abstract notes for some distant future; they are immediate, actionable blueprints for the students who walked in the following August. That initial, frantic build has now given way to thoughtful renovation. For example, I immediately changed the Paper 2 topic from Roman Architecture to Augustus. Ultimately, a single man’s rise to power is easier to comprehend than the unimaginable construction of some of the world’s greatest ancient remains. Additionally, I assigned the 25-26 cohort ALL of Plutarch’s Life of Alexander in the summer between their IGCSE and A-Levels. This saved us considerable time and allowed us to hit the ground running in Term 1.

The greatest unexpected yield, however, was the depth of the relationship forged in that pressure cooker. There’s no time for the formalities of a slow-burn academic relationship when you’re navigating such treacherous waters on a tight schedule. We became a tight-knit crew, fast. And the pride I feel is not the distant, professional satisfaction of a job completed, but something far more visceral. It’s the swelling, almost Priam-like pride of seeing them achieve something monumental, something they themselves might have doubted was possible in such a short span.

The light is shifting on my desk. The afternoon is waning, and there are new workbooks to refine, new primary sources to discover for the next cohort. The ship, though tested, is seaworthy. And I can’t wait to see where we sail next.

Cold days and warm insights: Another term of teaching done

Education, History, Pedagogy

It’s 9°C in Hong Kong at the moment—veritably freezing for this little isle on the South China Sea—and the CNY holiday has gifted me with some respite to reflect on what might be my most satisfactory period of work to date.

Two years ago today, I was sitting in my considerably chillier Montréal apartment, working from home as a historical researcher, desperately trying to conquer the voices of the void. I loved the research, but I dearly missed teaching. There is something unquantifiably exciting about engaging with young students who are grappling with new ideas for the first time; collaborating with fellow educators who are passionate about the value they bring to a community; contributing to building a more positive microcosm of the school; and embracing the never-ending novelty of learning something every day.

January marks the end of the first term of my second year teaching at an international school in Hong Kong. Due to some career changes, a global pandemic, and some family matters, it’s actually the longest I’ve worked anywhere. This academic year is for other firsts as well: first time teaching humanities and first time serving as a Head of Year.

I had anticipated some challenges prior to taking on these new roles. Would I be able to keep up with all the new content knowledge required of my IGCSE and A-Level courses? (The answer was yes—I actually struggled more with economics within KS3 Social Studies.) Would I be able to prove that I deserved a leadership position in pastoral amongst the many more-experienced teachers at my school? (I hope so—this one I still struggle answering with critical self-empathy.) Could I do this on top of expanding the scope and success of the Yearbook Committee? (TBD—the full publication and distribution should be completed by June 2025.) Would I be able to juggle everything while also completing an assignment-heavy PGCE? (Yes—although I cannot say I did so happily.) Looking back, these challenges appear easily overcome.

Being able to combine my love of teaching with my love for history has been a large tenet of why this first term has been so successful. An astute IGCSE History student, H.N., has asked more than once “why does it seem like you don’t miss being an English teacher?” There’s nothing wrong with the subject of course—I love language and literature, and an aspect I miss more than others is how reading my students’ written work allowed me to know them a little more deeply. More than once, I responded to H.N.’s inquiry by making a joke about how I no longer know how to speak English.

But if I were to answer honestly, I would probably say… I have loved the study of the past since I took four separate history electives in my suburban Ontario high school. Or perhaps even earlier, when my dad brought me to Unionville Public Library during summer break, and I borrowed out my pre-teen weight’s worth of historical fiction. It could be further back still, when my wee brother and I sat with our feet dangling from the dining room table, listening to stories of our family’s diasporic paths. Being able to plan and deliver lessons for a subject I am so passionate about makes every workday a joyful one. Being able to geek out with fellow history enthusiasts brings out the child in me. Being able to inspire students who initially dislike the subject to change their minds is incredibly motivating!

This blog started as an exercise to prove to myself that I can still write without AI, but it seems that I have waffled for long enough. I’ve soliloquised for so long it is now 17°C and I can go enjoy the last of my break with a trip to the beach. Here’s hoping for another good term.