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In this section, Prof. Arthur Bahr describes how 21L.601J has evolved in the years he has been teaching it.
The course has been pretty stable since its first incarnation. I’ve varied some texts, and recently cut down the amount of Aelfric and Bede I assign in the second third of the class. But it still moves very fast, without much slack built into the syllabus such as I’ve tried to in other classes. So I’ve been thinking through ways of doing so in future.
One adjustment I’ve already made is to the weighting of exams. The first third of the class, covering grammar, is much easier if one already knows a case-based language. Not every student does, of course, and for them, the learning curve can feel dauntingly steep. So I’ve reweighted the three exams, which used to be 25% each (with attendance and participation 15% and daily vocabulary quizzes 10%), to be either 25% each as before, or 15%-25%-35%, whichever works to the individual student’s advantage. This variable weighting levels the playing field without penalizing anybody (since MIT, to its great credit, does not allow curving of grades).
Another innovation that I made in Spring 2023 was to have the grammar lectures and exam preparations videotaped, to be posted to the online class site and now to OCW as well. My short-term goal was to make that content available for students who had to be absent that day, or who would benefit from the ability to review it. By sharing the videos on OCW, I hope to make it possible for folks to study Old English on their own, and to offer some models for other instructors who’d like to bring Old English to their institution. It’s such a wonderful language.
If folks would like to get a sense of the class dynamic, here’s a clip from the review session before the first exam, just four weeks into the semester. The students have done a mock exam with sight translation using vocabulary memorized from Stephen Barney’s Word-Hoard. In this clip, a student takes us through one of the sight translation sentences from the first mock exam. It’s pretty impressive how much they can do after just four weeks!
Instructor Interview
Below, Prof. Arthur Bahr describes various aspects of how he taught 21L.601J Old English and Beowulf in the spring of 2023.
- The Challenge of Learning Old English
- Selecting the Assigned Texts
- Priorities for Student Learning
- The Mental Health Day
- How the Course Has Evolved
- Plans for Future Iterations of the Course
For insights into how Prof. Bahr taught an earlier iteration of this course, see the page linked below.
Curriculum Information
Prerequisites
None
Requirements Satisfied
- 21L.601J can be applied toward a Bachelor of Science in Literature, a Bachelor of Science in Linguistics, or an interdisciplinary concentration in Ancient and Medieval Studies, but is not required.
- 21L.601J counts toward MIT’s General Institute Requirement in Humanities and Social Sciences.
Offered
About once a year
Assessment and Grading
Students’ grades were based on the following activities:
- 75% Three exams (weighted either 25%-25%-25% or 15%-25%-35%, whichever is more advantageous to the student’s grade)
- 10% Daily vocabulary quizzes
- 15% Attendance, participation, and preparation
Student Information
Enrollment
10 students
Student Background
Most were juniors or seniors, but there were a few sophomores and one first-year student. Almost all had primary majors in science or engineering, but most had a second major in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, concentrating in ancient and medieval studies (AMS), linguistics, and/or literature.
How Student Time Was Spent
During an average week, students were expected to spend 12 hours on the course, roughly divided as follows:
Lectures
- Met twice per week for 1.5 hours per session; 26 sessions total; mandatory attendance.
Out of Class
- Outside of class, students completed the assigned readings and studied vocabulary and grammar in preparation for exams and quizzes.
The following mock exam was provided to students during session 8 and was submitted to the instructor in advance of session 9. Session 9 then included a discussion of the mock exam.
In this section, Prof. Arthur Bahr describes how he may change the way he teaches 21L.601J in future years.
I’m considering substantially reconfiguring the class by dropping Beowulf, which would become the subject of its own, six-unit readings class for which 21L.601 would be the prerequisite. There are a few advantages I can see to doing so: 1) it would let me build more slack into the syllabus, bringing it in line with my other classes (I had to drop Wulf and Eadwacer this semester because of my own Mental Health Day, for example); 2) it would allow us to translate a few more short poems; and 3) it would give Beowulf the time it deserves. Right now Beowulf gets just a few class periods, which is better than nothing but nowhere near enough!
One other revision to the syllabus that I’m considering would give students an opportunity to do prose composition: composing Old English sentences as a way of gaining more active control over the inflectional endings and syntactic rhythms of the language. Prose composition has a long, distinguished history in Greek and Latin pedagogy, and students from multiple semesters have proposed this innovation, so I’m going to try to figure out how to make it work.
In this section, Prof. Arthur Bahr describes the relative importance of learning to read and speak Old English, and explains how by studying literary texts students also learn about the culture of early-medieval England.
I joke that I want students to end the semester with “Hollywood archaeologist”-level knowledge of Old English. That is, if they find themselves with an unfamiliar text in Old English and an audience of eager onlookers, they should know enough to explain the gist of what it’s about, even if they can’t translate every word and clause precisely. That’s why I include sight translation on all three exams, using vocabulary that students memorize from Stephen Barney’s Word-Hoard, a brilliant guide to the most common poetic vocabulary in Old English. (Each class starts with a vocab quiz.)
Since the meaning and beauty of Old English poetry, especially, is so bound up in its sounds, we do a lot of reading out loud, but I don’t teach conversational Old English—though I’d love to figure out how to do so!
Teaching early medieval English culture happens mostly organically, from discussion of the texts and their Word-Hoard vocabulary. The “Preface to Genesis” and Dream of the Rood offer great ways to learn about Old English religious and textual culture.
[B] Beowulf, trans. Seamus Heaney. Norton, 2001. ISBN: 9780393320978.
[IOE] Peter Baker, Introduction to Old English, 3rd edition. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. ISBN: 9780470659847.
[M & R] Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson, A Guide to Old English, 8th edition. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. ISBN: 9780470671078.
[WE] Greg Delanty and Michael Matto, eds., The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation. Norton, 2011. ISBN: 9780393342413.
[WH] Stephen Barney, Word-Hoard, 2nd edition. Yale, 1985. ISBN: 9780300035063.
Unit One: Old English Grammar and Short Prose
Session 1
No readings assigned.
Session 2
[IOE], pp. 1–40 (Pronunciation, Grammar Review, and the Case System). [Preview with Google Books]
[M & R], pp. 55–60 (Word-Formation).
[WE] ‘‘The Rune Poem" and “The Icelandic Rune Poem.”
[WH] “Introduction” and Word Groups 1–6.
Session 3
[IOE], pp. 41–49 (Pronouns). [Preview with Google Books]
[M & R], pp. 17–19 (Pronouns). [Preview with Google Books]
[WE] “The Wanderer,” and “Deor.”
[WH] Word Groups 7–12.
Session 4
[IOE], pp. 50–63 (Nouns).
[M & R], pp. 20–30 (Pronouns). [Preview with Google Books]
Burton Raffel’s translations of the Elegies. In Poems and Prose from the Old English, 2nd edition. Yale University Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780300069952.
[WH] Word Groups 13–22.
Session 5
[IOE], pp. 63–79 (Verbs, 7.1–7.4).
[M & R] Paragraph 93.
[WH] Word Groups 23–30.
[I strongly urge you to use Old English Aerobics to drill verb forms over the weekend!]
Session 6
[IOE], pp. 79–95 (Finish Verbs plus Adjectives).
[M & R] For more nitty-gritty about verbs, if you’re interested.
[WH] Word Groups 31–40.
Session 7
[IOE], pp. 96–122 (Numerals; Adverbs, Conjunctions, and Prepositions; Concord; Word Order).
[M & R], pp. 99–103, Ælfric’s Preface to Genesis, lines 1–24.
[WH] Word Groups 41–50.
Session 8
[M & R], pp. 61–75 (Syntax).
[M & R] Ælfric’s Preface to Genesis, lines 24–43.
[WH] Word Groups 51–60.
Session 9
[M & R] Ælfric’s Preface to Genesis, lines 44–58.
[M & R], pp. 75–96 (Syntax, continued).
Session 10
No readings assigned.
Unit Two: Longer Prose and Short Poems
Session 11
[IOE], pp. 119–41 (Meter and Poetic Style).
[M & R] Ælfric’s Preface to Genesis, lines 59–80.
[M & R], pp. 228–33, Bede’s Account of the Poet Caedmon, lines 1–17.
[WH] Word Groups 61–72.
Session 12
[IOE], pp. 152–69 (The Grammar of Poetry; Reading Old English Manuscripts).
[M & R], pp. 228–33, Bede’s Account of the Poet Caedmon, lines 18–60.
[WH] Word Groups 73–85.
Session 13
[M & R], pp. 239–48, Riddles C, E, and L.
[IOE], pp. 223–27, Riddle A.
[WH] Word Groups 86–98.
Session 14
[IOE], Text 17, The Wife’s Lament.
[WH] Word Groups 99–110.
Session 15
[IOE], Text 18, The Husband’s Message.
[WH] Word Groups 111–23.
Session 16
[IOE], Text 16, Wulf and Eadwacer.
[WH] Word Groups 124–35.
Session 17
No readings assigned.
Unit Three: Longer Poems
Session 18
[IOE], Text 13, The Dream of the Rood, lines 1–49.
[WH] Word Groups 136–42.
Session 19
[IOE], Text 13, The Dream of the Rood, lines 50–100.
[WH] Word Groups 143–50.
Session 20
[IOE], Text 13, The Dream of the Rood, lines 101–56.
[WH] Word Groups 151–70.
Session 21
[B]
[IOE] Beowulf, lines 1–11.
[M & R], p. 295.
[WH] Word Groups 171–85.
Session 22
[B] The Fight with Grendel (lines 702b–745a).
[M & R], pp. 297–99.
[WH] Word Groups 186–96.
Session 23
[B] The Fight with Grendel, continued (lines 745b–790).
[WH] Word Groups 197–210.
Session 24
[B] The Death of Grendel (lines 791–852).
[M & R], pp. 299–301.
[WH] Word Groups 211–27. (Congratulations, you now know the 2000 most commonly used words of Old English poetry!!!)
Session 25
[B] The Lay of the Last Survivor and Beowulf’s Funeral (lines 2247–66, and 3157–82).
[M & R], pp. 307–08.
Session 26
No readings assigned.
In this section, Prof. Arthur Bahr describes how he selected the texts for the class.
The class really has three types of readings: short “mini-texts” that Peter Baker includes in his Introduction to Old English, our primary textbook; longer prose texts; and, finally, poems. I’ll take these three types of texts in order.
One reason I love Baker’s textbook is that it includes short excerpts of real Old English—mini-texts—from the very opening chapters, when students still know very little. I invite them to notice things based on what they do know: “That -as looks like an accusative ending!” or “This þā could mean many things.” Sometimes they’re right and sometimes they aren’t, and I always correct mistakes; but the large point is to start developing the patterns of mind necessary to read Old English with skill and pleasure. They also offer brilliant illustrative examples of the grammatical principles we are mostly concerned with in this early stage of the semester.
After about a month of intensive grammar, we transition to longer texts that students have to translate before class using a glossary. First is Aelfric’s “Preface to Genesis,” which explains his reluctance to translate the Bible: foolish people may understand only the literal meaning of the text and not the deeper, spiritual sense. This tension is a great introduction to medieval culture, and since we have by that point translated bits of Aelfric’s (reluctantly produced) translation as a mini-text, it’s fun for students on that level, too. Then we read an Old English version of Bede’s account of the first poem in English, “Caedmon’s Hymn,” which praises the majesty of God’s creation. That connects well with the previous Aelfric selection on Genesis (i.e., Creation), while also introducing students to the challenges and beauties of Old English poetry.
From there, the texts may vary a bit from semester to semester, but we we read a few Old English riddles (some of which inspired those of Bilbo and Gollum in The Hobbit), as well as “The Wife’s Lament” and “The Husband’s Message,” two hauntingly evocative poems about love, loss, and potential reunion. The latter uses runes to inscribe a riddle, so that connects nicely with the earlier riddles. Then we move to The Dream of the Rood, my absolute favorite Old English poem, before finishing with greatest hits of Beowulf.
Below, Professor Bahr describes various aspects of how he taught 21L.705 Major Authors: Old English and Beowulf in spring 2014.
Curricular Scope and Sequence
My goal for the course was for students to read Old English. I wanted them, if they were faced with a sentence in Old English, to be able to confidently navigate it. This is significant given that this course is typically taught over two semesters: Old English is taught in the first semester, and reading Beowulf in the second. Because these are MIT students, I felt empowered to compress a lot into the first half of the semester, which focused on grammar. Classes began with a vocabulary quiz, followed by questions about the grammatical elements of prose included in our text, Introduction to Old English. We started by identifying the subjects, verbs, nouns, etc., and then worked through passages that became longer and more complex as the semester progressed. Students started reading Old English very early on in the semester—probably the fifth day of class.
During the second half of the semester, we were working with riddles and other passages in Old English, and Beowulf. I had students read out loud as we translated these texts. I offered feedback, students asked questions, and if there were any particularly tricky grammatical or syntactic elements, I recorded these on the board. I also carved out time for literary-critical conversations. In fact, in the second half of the semester, I required that students came prepared to share a literary-critical comment or appreciation, or a grammatical question, which contributed to their participation grade.
Choice of Textbook
Introduction to Old English was the main text we used in this course. It is user-friendly, does not assume extensive background knowledge, and moves students quickly into translating. I used A Guide to Old English as a reference work. It helped to have both books because they contain different texts. I also used—and loved—Word-Hoard, a vocabulary book containing over 200 of the most common word groups in Old English poetry. Each word group has a paragraph or two of comparative etymologies indicating cognates with Latin, Greek, and so on, along with an explanation of semantic relationships between various words that are derived from one another. For students with a background in another Indo-European language or who were interested in etymology, this text offers a much more interesting way of learning vocabulary than just rote memorization.
The other really interesting book I used was The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation. One neat feature of this book is that it contains a translation of every Anglo-Saxon poem that exists, excluding the lengthier Beowulf. The second special feature is that actual poets—not scholars—have translated the poems. As an Anglo-Saxonist, I occasionally thought, “My God! This translation is terrible!,” while other translations seemed awesome or just kooky. These variations created an opportunity for rich discussion as students compared their own translations with those of the poets. This facilitated conversations about concepts central to translation, such as literalism versus flexibility.
Assessment
Creating Challenging Exams
Classes I taught previously were essay-based, as opposed to exam-based, so determining how difficult to make the exams for this course was challenging. I wanted to stretch students academically, but because they are so smart, this required throwing tough stuff at them. The dilemma is how to do this without the exams seeming punitive. One strategy I devised is to allow students opportunities to make choices throughout the exam. For example, I asked them to select seven out of nine sentences to translate, and I assessed their best translations. This strategy is still a work in progress, and I’m not yet completely satisfied. One thing I’m certain about, however, is that exams should push students outside of their comfort zones. Exams assessing students’ mastery of dead languages, such as Old English, Latin, or Greek, too often ask students to regurgitate translations or rely too heavily on overly helpful glossaries. Although these should be components of the exam, I encourage educators to think of ways to help students move beyond these exercises. Often this involves a lot of effort on the part of the course facilitator, as composing sentences in Old English from scratch for students to translate is hard work!
Using Mock Exams as an Opportunity to Model Thought Processes
I borrowed the concept of mock exams from science and engineering classes at MIT. I felt mock exams were valuable for students taking Old English primarily because the mock exams gave them a sense of how difficult the real assessments would be and how they needed to pace themselves when taking the exams. Additionally, they provided an opportunity for me to model the thought processes involved in completing complex tasks, such as sight translations, which are unusual to include on exams. I don’t know of anyone else who includes them, but I do because all of the Old English textbooks have glossaries that are extremely helpful—but almost overly helpful. When glossaries hold your hand too much by telling you that a word is accusative, plural, or masculine, for example, you are not really learning Old English—you are learning how to use an Old English dictionary. I wanted to help students move beyond that. Sight translations were very challenging for students on the first exam because they’d only been taking Old English for four or five weeks, and I was expecting them to translate sentences without the help of a glossary.
After they completed the mock exam on their own, we went through each sentence together during a class session. We discussed how they approached their translations and typical syntactic structures in each sentence. For especially hard sight translations, I shared with them what was particularly difficult about the sentence and why I expected them to figure it out. This process of modeling was very important for students who had limited exposure to foreign languages prior to this course.
The mock exams were also valuable to me, as an instructor, as a form of self-assessment. I knew that if all of the students performed poorly on a particular item, I needed to reassess how I was teaching that concept.
Developing Rapport with Students
I developed good rapport with students because I treated them like colleagues. When I was a junior faculty member, I had wonderful senior colleagues who treated me as a peer, but also as somebody who should be mentored, helped, and guided. My relationship with students was not entirely parallel to my relationship with senior faculty because of the wider professional gap, but it was comparable—my students were incredibly talented and smart people from whom I learned as well. Conveying a sense that “we’re all in this together” and that learning was not a zero sum game also helped me develop productive relationships with students. Many MIT students feel that the success of another student is at their expense, especially in fields like science and engineering—even though MIT does not grade on a curve. I made it very clear that another student’s success did not negatively effect their grade in my class, as this would have been a deeply pernicious way to approach learning. Finally, I really love teaching, and I think if you love something, that comes through.
Course Meeting Times
Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session
Prerequisites
There are no prerequisites for this course.
Course Description
hƿæt ƿe gardena in geardagum þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon…
Those are the first words of the Old English epic Beowulf, and in this class, you will learn to read them. The language of Rohan in the novels of Tolkien, Old English speaks of long, cold, and lonely winters; of haunting beauty found in unexpected places; and of unshakable resolve in the face of insurmountable odds. It is, in short, the perfect language for MIT students.
After quickly learning the basics of grammar and vocabulary, we will read greatest (bloodiest) hits from the epic Beowulf as well as moving laments, the personified Cross’s first-person account of the Crucifixion, and riddles whose solutions range from the sacred to the obscene.
Book List
Required
Peter Baker, Introduction to Old English, 3rd edition. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. ISBN: 9780470659847. [Preview with Google Books]
Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson, A Guide to Old English, 8th edition. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. ISBN: 9780470671078. [Preview with Google Books]
Stephen Barney, Word-Hoard, 2nd edition. Yale, 1985. ISBN: 9780300035063.
Beowulf, trans. Seamus Heaney, Norton, 2001. ISBN: 9780393320978. [Preview with Google Books]
Optional
Greg Delanty and Michael Matto, eds. The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation. Norton, 2011. ISBN: 9780393342413. [Preview with Google Books]
J.R. Clark Hall, A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Toronto, 1961. ISBN: 9780802065483. [Preview with Google Books]
Comments about These Books
Our main textbook will be Baker’s Introduction to Old English (IOE), but I am asking you to get Mitchell and Robinson (M&R) as well because their handling of the grammar is more detailed and technical; that may appeal to some of you, and all of us will benefit from having the same grammatical principles laid out in different ways. (M&R also includes several texts we will be working with that IOE inexplicably does not, including Beowulf).
Word-Hoard is a wonderful guide to the most common word-groups of the Old English poetic corpus. Its word-groups are organized with attention to shared etymologies that will help anyone who has studied another Indo-European language, and will interest anyone with any degree of native curiosity (which you clearly have, or you wouldn’t have signed up for Old English). Its word-groups will also serve as the basis of your daily vocabulary quizzes.
Finally, I am assigning Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf, whose popularity is well-deserved despite its occasional idiosyncrasies. (The version that I assign also includes the Old English text, which will prove handy when we come to work with the original.)
You may acquire any edition of these textbooks that has the assigned readings, but it is YOUR responsibility to make sure that it does indeed have them (consult the Readings section); one thing editors sometimes do between editions is change up reading selections.
I have also assigned two optional texts. The Word Exchange is a very cool set of loose, poetic renderings of the entire Old English poetic corpus (save Beowulf, of which many translations exist). We will discuss a few of these early in the semester while we’re knee-deep in grammar, but those who are interested (or completionists) may be interested in the whole volume. Finally, Clark-Hall is the standard “intermediate” dictionary if you want a hard copy.
Your final resource is not a book but a website, Old English Aerobics, which is a set of online exercises keyed to Baker’s IOE. I have not formally assigned anything from here, but I’ve played around with it and found it useful, especially for drilling verb forms. Poke around at it according to your interest and sense of your own needs in terms of paradigm reinforcement.
Grading Policy
ACTIVITIES | PERCENTAGES |
---|---|
Exams 1, 2, and 3 | 25% each or increasing gradually in weight (15, 25, and 35%), whichever benefits you more. We move extremely quickly early in the semester, the on-ramp to this material is steep, and not everyone will start with the same linguistic background. I am committed to making the class accessible to all, however, and the variable exam weighting is one way of doing so without penalizing anyone (since this subject is not graded on a curve, a practice that MIT has long rightly prohibited). |
Daily vocab quizzes | 10% |
Attendance, participation, and preparation | 15% |
Calendar
Unit One: Old English Grammar and Short Prose
Session 1
Course introduction; preliminary discussion of case system and pronunciation.
Session 2
Vocab quiz.
Session 3
Vocab quiz.
In-class translation: Minitext A.
Session 4
Vocab quiz.
In-class translation: Minitext B.
Session 5
Vocab quiz.
In-class translation: excerpts from the Old English prose translation of Genesis.
[I strongly urge you to use Old English Aerobics to drill verb forms over the weekend!]
Session 6
Vocab quiz.
In-class translation: Genesis, continued.
Session 7
Vocab quiz.
Session 8
Vocab quiz.
Mock Exam 1 (PDF) distributed (complete and bring to class for session 9).
Session 9
Discussion of mock exams.
Session 10
Exam 1 (on cases, declension of pronouns, noun and verb form recognition, principles of syntax, and WH groups 1–60; will also include basic assisted and sight translation).
Unit Two: Longer Prose and Short Poems
Session 11
Vocab quiz.
Session 12
Vocab quiz.
Session 13
Vocab quiz.
Session 14
Vocab quiz.
Mock Exam 2 distributed (to be discussed during session 16).
Session 15
Vocab quiz.
Session 16
Vocab quiz.
Discussion of mock exams.
Session 17
Exam 2 (Vocabulary, WH groups 1–135, and translation, assisted and sight)
Unit Three: Longer Poems
Session 18–24
Vocab quizzes.
Session 25
Vocab quiz.
Discussion of Exam 3; subject evaluations to be completed in class.
Session 26
Exam 3 (covering all of Word-Hoard and translation, assisted and sight).
In this section, Prof. Arthur Bahr describes the chief hurdles students face in learning Old English.
One hurdle Old English poses is that, like Latin or German, it uses the endings of nouns and adjectives, so-called “case endings,” to indicate their grammatical function. Modern English has mostly lost its case endings, except in plurals (cat/cats), genitives (cat’s/cats’), and pronouns (she/her; they/them/their; he/him/his); but it has much stricter word order to compensate.
The many inflections of Old English—both case endings and a wider range of verb endings than we have—enable highly flexible word order, especially in poetry, so a reader needs rock-solid control of those endings to make sense of what’s going on. Yet because many of these endings are ambiguous, and the word order is often a jumble, you also need creative problem-solving and flexible thinking. Each sentence is like a puzzle, some easier and some harder. Fortunately, MIT students tend to be quite good at puzzles!
In this section, Prof. Arthur Bahr describes his motivation for allowing each student (and himself) one Mental Health Day over the course of the semester.
I first want to be clear that this accommodation is only a supplement to the important resources provided by Student Support Services. That said, my own mental health policy was building for a good while before it became reality. I have low-level anxiety and depression, so I’ve navigated a version of that landscape all my life. I love teaching—it’s why I became a professor—but it demands a lot of energy, and sometimes, when I’m not in a good place, I just can’t make myself get in front of a classroom. It always felt shameful to admit that, so I would lie and say the problem was physical rather than psychological, cancel class, and call it a day.
But the longer I worked at MIT, the more I saw how many others deal with mental health issues: students, staff, and faculty alike. So once I had tenure (key caveat!), I decided I would be honest about what was going on the next time it happened. That time came in the fall of 2017, and it was really scary to tell the students the truth, but they were overwhelmingly supportive; it was very moving. I think it’s pedagogically appropriate, too, since my classes are trying to teach students how to deal with the real world, and part of dealing with the real world is knowing when and how to ask for help.
So now everyone can now miss one day of class without penalty as long as they write me a simple email: “I’m taking my Mental Health Day.” Most semesters, most students do so. I think they all get different kinds and degrees of benefits from that—as do I—so I try to build one free/flex day into my syllabi in case I need to cancel class, for whatever reason. If everything runs smoothly, there’s always plenty to do in a bonus class period!